ERIC ED473904: Who Are Our Students? A Statistical Portrait of Immigrant Students in New York City Elementary and Middle Schools.

41 Pages·0.49 MB·English

by  ERIC

DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 473 904
UD 035 522
AUTHOR
Conger, Dylan; Schwartz, Amy Ellen; Stiefel, Leanna
Who Are Our Students? A Statistical Portrait of Immigrant
TITLE
Students in New York City Elementary and Middle Schools.
INSTITUTION
New York Univ., NY.
SPONS AGENCY
Rockefeller Foundation, New York, NY.; Spencer Foundation,
Chicago, IL.; Russell Sage Foundation, New York, NY.
PUB DATE
2003-01-00
39p.; Produced by the Taub Urban Research Center.
NOTE
AVAILABLE FROM
Taub Urban Research Center, New York University,
4 Washington
Square North, New York, NY 10003. Tel: [phone]; Fax:
212-995-3890; Web site: http://www.urban.nyu.edu.
PUB TYPE
Numerical/Quantitative Data (110) -- Reports
Descriptive
(141)
EDRS PRICE
EDRS Price MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage.
DESCRIPTORS
*Academic Achievement; Elementary Education; Elementary
School Students; Enrollment Trends; Ethnicity; *Immigrants;
Limited English Speaking; Middle School Students; Middle
Schools; *Minority Group Children; Racial Differences;
*Student Characteristics; Urban Schools
IDENTIFIERS
*New York (New York)
ABSTRACT
This report describes the demographic characteristics and
educational experiences of immigrant students in New York City's elementary
and middle schools. Immigrants comprise a substantial share of the elementary
and middle school student body. Far more immigrant than native-born students
are limited English proficient (LEP) and Asian, and far fewer are black.
Immigrant students outperform native born students on standardized tests and
have lower special education rates. Differences in school performance between
native born and immigrant students are not completely driven by poverty.
Within racial/ethnic groups, immigrants have lower test scores than native
born students. Most LEP students are native born. Differences between native
born and immigrant students are not driven by LEP status. More recent than
nonrecent immigrants and native born students are LEP and Asian, and fewer
are Hispanic. Recent immigrants have lower test scores and lower
participation in special education. Poverty does not change school
performance differences by recent immigrant status. School performance
differences among nativity groups vary by race/ethnicity. Immigrant students
from different regions of the world have very different characteristics. Two
appendices present differences in school performance of region groups within
poverty, racial/ethnic, and English proficiency subgroups, and countries by
region. (Contains 13 tables and 17 references.)
(SM)
Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
from the original document.
TAUB
URBAN
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
RESEARCH
ROBERT F. WAGNER GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE
4 WASHINGTON SQUARE NORTH NEW YORK, NY 10003
CENTER
TELEPHONE: [phone] FACSIMILE: 212 995 3890
http://urban.nyu.edu
Who are Our Students?
A Statistical Portrait of Immigrant Students in New York City
Elementary and Middle Schools
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Office of Educational Research and Improvement
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION
Dylan Conger
CENTER (ERIC)
document has been reproduced as
ce"This
dc51(@nvu.edu
received from the person or organization
originating it.
Minor changes have been made to
Amy Ellen Schwartz
improve reproduction quality.
amv.schwartznyu.edu
Points of view or opinions stated in this
document do not necessarily represent
official OERI position or policy.
Leanna Stiefel
leanna.stiefelanyu.edu
PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND
DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS
BEEN GRANTED BY
January 2003
L
SLUM:NI: eattemmieeti
Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service
TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)
New York University
This report was made possible by funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and
the Russell Sage Foundation. We also gratefully acknowledge Ingrid Gould Ellen, Katherine O'Regan,
Fred Frelow, and Norm Fruchter.
4
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BEST COPY
Introduction
Major increases in immigration and the shift in immigrant origins over the past three decades have
substantially changed the composition of New York City's public schools. Unlike their primarily European
predecessors, today's immigrant students come from countries all over the world, speak a wide variety of
languages, and present a range of educational needs and prior schooling experiences.' Where do
immigrant students come from? How many are new arrivals to the school system? How do their
experiences and backgrounds differ from the native-born?
This report answers these and other important questions through a statistical portrait of the
demographic characteristics and educational experiences of immigrant students in New York City's
elementary and middle schools. In this report, the terms immigrant and foreign-born are used
interchangeably to refer to students who were not born on United States territory. We begin by describing
the composition of immigrant students in our schools, including where they were born and how recently
they entered the school system (section one). We then compare the demographic characteristics and
school performance of immigrant and native-born students, with additional comparisons of native-born and
immigrant students within racial/ethnic, poverty, and English proficiency subgroups (section two). The
paper then considers differences within the immigrant population. In particular, we compare recent and
other immigrant students (section three) and immigrants born in different regions of the world (section four).
In each section, we present descriptive tables and figures that can be interpreted by readers without
statistical training and endnotes for detailed descriptions of the data used. We conclude with a brief
summary of what we learn from this descriptive profile of New York City students and a discussion of how
this profile differs or resembles findings from previous research.
3
Section One: Numbers and Origins of Immigrant
Students
This section provides an overview of immigrant students in the city's elementary and middle
schools. These figures, and all others in this report, are based upon analysis of student-level
data provided by the New York City Department of Education on all students in elementary
and middle schools in the 1999-2000 school yearii Due to the large sample size, all noted
differences are statistically significant at the 5% level.
4
KEY FINDINGS
Immigrant students comprise a substantial share of the elementary and middle school
student body (Table 1, Figures la and 1b).
Of the roughly 660,000 elementary and middle school students in New York City schools, almost
16% are immigrants, and approximately 43% of these immigrant students are recent immigrants.
Recent immigrants are foreign-born students who have been in the United States school system for
less than three years, a group for whom schools receive federal funding for assistance in the
transition from home to host country.w The city's foreign-born students come from all over the world,
with the largest group originating in one dominant sending country: the Dominican Republic (19%).iv
In addition to serving many immigrant students from Caribbean, Latin American, and Asian
countries, New York City is home to a large population of students from the Former Soviet Union.
Figure la: Nativity Composition
Figure lb: Immigrant Students' Birth Regions
China Region,
7.4%
Other , 22.3%
Former USSR,
9.5%
South Asia,
10.5%
Dominican
Republic, 18.6%
\_Caribbean,
14.8%
Latin America,
16.9%
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Table 1: Characteristics of New York City Elementary and
Middle School Students, 1999-2000
Number
of
Percent of
students students
Total Students
100%
658,591
Native-born
84.2%
554,331
Immigrant
104,260
15.8%
100%
Characteristics of Immigrants
Recent immigrant 44,760
42.9%
Nonrecent immigrant
59,500
57.1.%
100%
9.5%
Former USSR 9,907
4,376
Other East Europe 4.2%
West Europe
2,852
2.7%
China Region
7.4%
7,691
4,834
East Asia/Pacific
4.6%
10,917
South Asia
10.5%
West Asia/North Africa
3,209
3.1%
SubSaharan Africa 2,807
2.7%
Dominican Republic
19,403
18.6%
Caribbean
15,388
14.8%
Caribbean South America
5.0%
5,221
17,655
Latin America
16.9%
100%
Notes: Immigrants are students not born on U.S. soil. Recent immigrants are
immigrant students who have been in the U.S. school system for less than
three years. Sample includes students registered on October 31, 1999 in the
1st through 8th and full-time special education grades: 488 students were
excluded because their birthplace was missing or unknown.
6
Immigrant students were born in 192 countries, territories, and provinces but most come
from 15 countries (Table 2).
The regions provided in Table 1 mask the substantial number of countries, territories, and provinces
represented in the city's foreign-born students. v Some countries, such as Guadeloupe and Seychelles, are
represented by only a few students. Yet almost three-quarters come from just 15 dominant sending
countries. The Dominican Republic far surpasses the other nations in numbers with almost 20,000
students. The next three largest sending countries are Russia, Jamaica, and China, each with populations
of almost 7,000 students.
Table 2: Top 15 Sending Countries of Immigrant Students,
1999-2000
Number
of
Percent of
students
students
Dominican Republic
19,403
18.6%
6,945 6.7%
Russian
Jamaica
6,700
6.4%
China
6,532
6.3%
Mexico
5.3%
5,561
4.8%
Guyana 5,036
Bangladesh
3,963
3.8%
3,775
Trinidad & Tobago
3.6%
Pakistan
3,589
3.4%
Ecuador
3,486
3.3%
3,365
3.2%
India
Columbia 2,717
2.6%
2,364
2.3%
Haiti
2,214
South Korea
2.1%
Ukraine
1.4%
1,480
Other 27,130
26.1%
104,260
Total 100.0%
5
Section Two: Differences in Characteristics and
School Performance by Nativity
In this section, we explore the differences between native-born and immigrant students in
terms of their demographic characteristics and school performance. We then examine
differences between the native-born and immigrant students within racial/ethnic, poverty,
English proficiency subgroups.
6
8
A far higher percentage of immigrant than native-born students are Limited English
Proficient and Asian, and a far lower percentage are black (Table 3, Figure 3). vi
For instance, approximately 27% of immigrants are Asian in comparison to only 8% of native-born students.
In contrast, roughly 38% of native-born students and 19% of immigrant students are black. Additionally,
approximately 30% of all foreign-born are limited English proficient (LEP) while only 7% of native-born
students (almost 39,000 students) are LEP.
Table 3: Characteristics by Nativity, 1999-2000
% Limited
%
English
%
% % %
Poor Hispanic
Proficient
Asian
Black White
85.7%
Native-born 37.9%
7.9% 39.0%
14.8%
7.0%
Immigrant 89.6%
36.0%
30.1% 26.9%
17.5%
19.3%
86.3%
35.0% 38.5%
15.2%
10.7% 10.9%
All (n=658,951)
Notes: Students are identified as Limited Enalish Proficient if they score at or below the 40th percentile on the
Language Assessment Battery. Poor students are those eligible for free or reduced-price lunch: the percentages
poor are calculated as a fraction of the students with nonmissing data. Approximately 5% of all groups are missing
data for free or reduced-price lunch eligibility. The racial/ethnic groups left out of the table include Native
Americans, "other" ethnic groups, and students who did not provide their ethnicity.
Figure 3: Race/Ethnicity of
Native-born and Immigrant Students
o Native-bom
o Immigrant
50%
39%
38%
36%
40%
27%
30%
19%
18
18%
15%
20%
8%
P
10%
0%
White
Black
Hispanic
Asian
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9
Immigrant students outperform native-born students on standardized tests and have lower
rates of participation in special education (Table 4, Figure 4)
We examine four school outcomes, two that reflect the services students' receive for disabilities (full and
part time special education) and another two that reflect their academic performance (reading and math
test scores).vIi Full-time special education programs are for students with moderate to severe disabilities,
such as blindness, while part-time special education programs serve students with less severe disabilities,
such as speech impediments. Reading and math achievement test scores are for 3rd through 8th graders
only and are measured in units that capture students' performance relative to other test-takers in their
grade (these scores have an overall mean of zero and a standard deviation of one).viii In addition to
providing test scores, the table includes the percentage of all 3rd to 8th graders in the group who took the
exams. One reason students do not take exams is that they are LEP. ix These analyses reveal that native-
born students are classified as special education at twice the rate of immigrants. Additionally, immigrant
students outperform native-born students in both reading and math, on average, and fewer of them take the
exams perhaps due to their higher LEP rates.
Table 4: School Performance by Nativity, 1999-2000
% Full-time % Part-time Average % Took
% Took
Average
special
special
reading reading math math
test test test test
education education
-0.008
-0.007
Native-born 5.9% 7.2% 94%
93%
Immigrant
0.045
3.1%
2.5% 68% 78%
0.041
0.000
6.5% 0.000
5.4% 89% 91%
All (n=658,951)
Notes: Test scores are measured in z-scores and include all 3rd through 8th graders who took the tests. Z-scores are
calculated by subtracting the average score for all test takers from each student's score and dividing by the standard
deviation of scores for all test takers.
Figure 4: Test Scores by Nativity
o Native-bom
0.045
0.050
o Immigrant
0.041
0.040
0.030 -
0.020
0.010
0.000
-0.010
-0.007
-0.008
-0.020
Reading Math
8
10
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