Generational status, immigrant concentration and academic achievement: comparing first and second-generation immigrants with third-plus generation students

Abstract

Background: Immigrants and their children are the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States, and schools are often the first social institution young immigrants engage with on a sustained basis. As such, the academic achievement of immigrant students can be viewed as an indicator of their incorporation and a predictor of educational and employment outcomes in adulthood. In this study, we examined the factors associated with differences in mathematics achievement between first, second, and third-plus generation students in the US. Methods: We analyzed the data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012. Our analytic sample included 3700 15 year-old students attending US public and private schools. We used information on students' background and school characteristics from the student and school questionnaires. We used multiple linear regression models to predict mathematics achievement. To address the sampling design of PISA and the use of plausible values we fitted the models using the IDB Analyzer. Results: Our analysis shows that the families and schools of second-generation students are more similar to their first-generation than their third-plus generation peers. Once we control for student background characteristics and school contextual factors, the achievement gap between first-generation students and their second and third-plus generation peers disappears. Our results suggest that what we observed as generational differences in achievement are more likely to be gender, racial, and socioeconomic gaps. Conclusions: Our findings imply that student background and school contextual factors counteract some of the disadvantages that first-generation students face in the US. Our results also support existing evidence about the second-generation advantage in academic achievement. Taken together, these findings suggest that mathematics achievement can be addressed by policies and practices that support all students alongside policies and practices that target immigrant students.

Differential impact of COVID-19 school closures on immigrant students: A transnational comparison

“…These negative effects were perhaps most acute for marginalized populations, including immigrant students (Gonzàlez and Bonal, 2021;Loganathan et al, 2021;Santiago et al, 2021). This study explored a set of mechanisms that previous research suggested might be associated with the pandemic's effects on the educational experiences of immigrant students (Schleicher, 2006;Levels and Dronkers, 2008;Marx and Stanat, 2011;Shapira, 2012;Andon et al, 2014;Pivovarova and Powers, 2019;Borgonovi and Ferrara, 2020;He and Fischer, 2020). The three nations selected from the REDS survey database were chosen because they have been shown to be representative of differing attitudes and policies toward immigration over the last decade (Finch et al, 2021).…”

“…In addition, a supportive learning environment for immigrant students (Schleicher, 2006), and a sense of welcome and belonging in their school (Rodríguez et al, 2020) were also associated with higher achievement test scores. In contrast, when immigrant students are segregated into schools with higher concentrations of other immigrants and thereby less contact with native born children, the achievement gap vis-à-vis these native-born students was higher (Melkonian et al, 2019;Pivovarova and Powers, 2019). These results highlight the important role that schools can play in fostering academic success for immigrant students, through the provision of sufficient resources, the creation of a positive environment for learning, and the opportunity to interact with native born children.…”

“…Research prior to the pandemic identified multiple variables that helped explain the achievement test score gap for immigrant students, and that may help in understanding the specific impact of COVID-19 on academic outcomes for these individuals. Trenchant factors identified by this earlier work include lower income (Andon et al, 2014;Giannelli and Rapallini, 2016;Radišić et al, 2021), a lack of facility in the host-nation language (Marks, 2005;Schnepf, 2006;Pivovarova and Powers, 2019), cultural barriers (Rindermann and Thompson, 2014;Bilican Demir and Yildirim, 2020), and lower parental education attainment (Schnepf, 2006;Andon et al, 2014).…”

“…Such students may also be economically disadvantaged. Multiple researchers have found that students from this population typically exhibit lower test scores than do native-born students across academic disciplines and nations (Schleicher, 2006;Levels and Dronkers, 2008;Marx and Stanat, 2011;Shapira, 2012;Andon et al, 2014;Pivovarova and Powers, 2019;Borgonovi and Ferrara, 2020;He and Fischer, 2020).…”

Perspektiva životnog puta u istraživanjima starenja i migracija

“…The fourth chapter, Life and Migration Perspective, explains certain characteristics of migration and migrants, especially when moving to the country of immigration. Thus, Jasso (2003: 334) grouped them into characteristics that affect adaptation -age, gender, country of origin, level of education (Finney and Marshall, 2018;Podgorelec, Klempić Bogadi and Gregurović, 2020); degree of success -from assimilation, acculturation and adaptation to integration into the receiving society (Berry, 1990;Amit, 2012;Amit and Bar-Lev, 2014;Podgorelec, Gregurović and Klempić Bogadi, 2019) or failure -giving up and returning to the country of origin or moving to a third country; the success of migrants in childhood or the second generation of migrants (childhood and schooling in the country of immigration) (Pivovarova and Powers, 2019); demographic and economic effects on societies of origin and immigration -studies of loss and gain (relocation of qualified migrants, artists, entrepreneurs) (Gregurović, 2019), remittances (Nzima, Duma and Moyo, 2017), etc.…”