Reading Mathematics And Science Achievement Of Language Minority Students In Grade 8 Issue Brief Nces 2012 028

During a period when the school-age language-minority population grew, from 8.8 million in 1999 to 10.8 million in 2007 (U.S. Department of Education 2010, indicator 5), the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) tracked the educational experiences of a nationally representative sample of children who were in kindergarten in the 1998-99 school year. Approximately 12 percent of the ECLS-K cohort came from homes where the primary language was one other than English in the fall of kindergarten (table 1). Previous analyses of the ECLS-K cohort have shown that language-minority students in public schools scored lower on a mathematics assessment in grade 1 than their peers whose primary home language was English (Hampden-Thompson et al. 2008). While all students made gains in mathematics knowledge and skills by grade 5, the differences in assessment scores persisted between language minorities and students whose primary home language was English. This Issue Brief extends previous ECLS-K analyses, which were limited to an examination of mathematics achievement, by examining achievement in reading, mathematics, and science for language minorities in the ECLS-K cohort. The analyses present a picture of students' achievement at the end of the study by focusing on students' scores on the standardized assessments that were administered in the spring of 2007, when most students were in grade 8. The analysis is restricted to children who were first-time kindergartners in the 1998-99 school year and who attended public school in every wave of the study. Scores are reported by three background characteristics--students' race/ethnicity, poverty status, and mother's education--that have been found to be related to achievement (Rathbun and West 2004). Students are categorized into four groups according to language background and English language proficiency. The first group consists of language-minority students who were proficient in English at kindergarten entry (referred to as English Proficient). Two other groups of language-minority students are identified as English language learners (ELLs): those not proficient in English at kindergarten entry, but proficient by the spring of kindergarten (the second group); and those not proficient by the spring of kindergarten (the third group). The fourth group consists of students whose parents reported that English was their primary home language. Language-minority students' English proficiency is based on their scores on a direct measure of oral English language skills in kindergarten. Language minorities are categorized by the timing of their acquisition of basic English language skills because research suggests that acquisition of such skills before, during, or after their first year of formal schooling is related to later academic outcomes (Halle et al. 2012, Kieffer 2011). (Contains 2 tables and 8 endnotes.).