Educational performance of native and immigrant children from various countries of origin (original) (raw)
2008, Ethnic and Racial Studies
https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701682238
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Abstract
Mostly due to the lack of suitable data, cross-national research on the integration of migrant pupils is still scarce. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question of the extent to which native and first-and second-generation migrants from various regions of origin, living in thirteen different countries of destination, differ in their scholastic ability. Using the PISA 2003 data, we focus primarily on the impact of origin and destination effects on the scholastic achievement of migrants.
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This paper documents the change in educational achievement differences between native and foreign background students between the ages of 10 and 15, as they progress from primary to secondary education. We examine three cohorts of students in a number of Western European and traditional English-speaking immigration countries using combinations of PIRLS, TIMSS and PISA survey data. While the performance of students with mixed parents is not markedly different from native students', foreign background children-both first-and second-generation-exhibit a large achievement gap at age 10 in continental Europe, even when accounting for observable differences in socioeconomic characteristics. The gap tends to narrow down by age 15 in reading, but no catching up is observed in mathematics. By contrast, we do not find significant differences between the academic achievements of immigrant children and their native-born peers in traditional immigration countries.
F ollowing the "age of migration" (Castles and Miller 2003), most Western countries now host a substantial and growing population of immigrants, a considerable number of whom are children. The first-and second-generation children, who accompany their parents to a new country or are born there, often experience problems in the destination country's society. Though education arguably is not the proverbial silver bullet, many Western countries regard it as vital for both the social integration and the socioeconomic success of immigrants' children. Indeed, policymakers have often made immigrant children's educational performance a core concern, as have social scientists. Research highlights two macro-level empirical regularities in need of explanation. First, the educational performance of children with immigration backgrounds differs cross-nationally. Second, achievement varies by the origin group of immigrant children. The relevance of classic individual-level determinants for explaining the educational achievement of children with immigration backgrounds is well documented . By aggregate, these micro-level effects partly explain why immigrant children perform better in some host coun-
The main research question of this paper is the combined estimation of the effects of educational systems, school-composition and track-level on the educational achievement of 15-years-old students. We specifically focus on the effects of socioeconomic and ethnic background on achievement scores and to what extent these effects are affected by characteristics of the school, track or educational system these students are in. In doing so, we examine the 'sorting' mechanisms of schools and tracks in highly stratified, moderately stratified and comprehensive education systems. We use data from the 2006 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) wave. Compared to previous research in this area the main contribution of this paper is that we explicitly include track-level and school-level as separate units of analyses, which leads to less biased results of the effects of characteristics of the educational system. The results highlight the importance of including track-level and school-level factors in the debate of educational inequality of opportunity for students in different education contexts. The findings clearly indicate that the effects of educational system characteristics are flawed if the analysis uses only a country and a student level and ignores the track-and school-level characteristics. Moreover the inclusion of the track-level is necessary to avoid overestimation of the school-composition effect, especially in stratified educational systems. From a policy perspective, the most important finding is that educational system are not uniformly 'good' or 'bad', but they have different consequences for different groups. Some groups are better off in comprehensive systems, while other groups are better off in moderately or highly stratified systems.
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With recent increases in international migration, some political and academic narratives argue for limiting migration because of possible negative effects on the host country. Among other outcomes, these groups argue that immigrant students have an impact on education, negatively affecting native-born students’ academic performance. The authors contextualize the relationship between immigrant status and academic achievement by considering a macro social setting: country-level foreign-born population. The authors examine achievement from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment in 41 high-income countries. The authors use within- and cross-level interactions to examine (1) the relationship between immigrant status and academic achievement, (2) the moderating effect of student socioeconomic status on achievement, and (3) how country-level foreign-born population affects both immigrant and native-born students’ performance. The findings indicate that immigrant students perform similarly to native-born students when considering other contextual factors, with socioeconomic status moderating the effect of immigrant status. Furthermore, all students, immigrant and nonimmigrant students alike, benefit academically from more immigration.
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The authors use 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to link institutional arrangements in OECD countries’ to disparities in reading, math, and science test scores for migrant and native-born students. The authors find that achievement gaps are larger for migrant youths who arrive at older ages and for those who do not speak the language of the PISA test at home. Institutional arrangements often serve to mitigate the achievement gaps of some migrant students while leaving unaffected or exacerbating those of others. For example, earlier school starting ages help migrant youths in some cases but by no means in all. Limited tracking of students by ability appears to be beneficial for migrants’ relative achievement, while complete tracking and the presence of a large private school sector appear to be detrimental. Migrant students’ achievement, relative to their native-born peers, suffers as educational spending and teachers’ salaries increase, but it improves...
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Migration is a universal reality. The United Nations estimated that, in 2010, approximately every tenth person living in the more developed regions of the world was born in another country (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs [UN DESA], 2009). Accordingly, the integration of immigrants and their descendants is of considerable concern worldwide. School systems play a central role in the integration process. They are in charge of developing knowledge and skills relevant for participation in the receiving countries’ economic and sociopolitical systems, they grant school leaving certificates channelling career options, and they help to transmit norms and values relevant for social cohesion. Immigrant students lag behind their peers from native families in terms of achievement and school success in many countries. In Germany, for instance, students from immigrant families are much more likely to quit school without a school leaving certificate and much less likely to...
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This paper investigates the educational achievements of second generation immigrants in several OECD countries in a comparative perspective. We first show that the educational achievement (measured as test scores in PISA achievement tests) of children of immigrants is quite heterogeneous across countries, and strongly related to achievements of the parent generation. The disadvantage considerably reduces, and even disappears for some countries, once we condition on parental background characteristics. Second, we provide novel analysis of cross-country comparisons of test scores of children from the same country of origin, and compare (conditional) achievement scores in home and host countries. The focus is on Turkish immigrants, whom we observe in several destination countries. We investigate both mathematics and reading test scores, and show that the results vary according to the type of skills tested. For mathematics, in most countries and even if the test scores achievement of th...
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References (11)
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- ROSEN, B.C. 1959 Race, ethnicity and the achievement syndrome', American Sociological Review, vol. 24, pp. 47Á60
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