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Mathematics Performance of Immigrant Students Across Different Racial Groups: An Indirect Examination of the Influence of Culture and Schooling

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Abstract

Immigrant students are commonly assumed lower performers in US schools. Their inadequate English language skills and adaptation to the mainstream US school norms are often seen as obstacles to their successful school learning. However, whether and to what extent this assumption is sustainable for immigrant students' performances in mathematics is the question that has not been empirically explored. Proper answer to the question would help verify the popular assumption about the immigrant students and their learning in the mainstream US schools. Guided by the straight-line, segmented assimilation and cultural capital theories, this study examined this issue using US grades 4 and 8 datasets of Trend in International Mathematics and Science Study 2007 and 15-year-old dataset of Program for International Student Assessment 2009. It was found that there were substantial differences in the mathematics performances of students across different racial groups. Being immigrant students does not always mean they are lower performers than their mainstream peers. The immigrant students coming to the USA earlier did not always show worse mathematics performance over their immigrant peers who came to the USA later. These findings challenge the popular assumption that immigrant students' inadequate English language skills and adaptation to the mainstream US school norms are obstacles to their successful school learning and call for a deeper understanding about the academic performance of immigrant students in different content areas and at various stages of immigration across different racial groups.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Teacher Education, School of Education, The University of Mississippi, P.O. Box 1848, University, MS, 38677, USA

    Qiang Cheng

  2. College of Education, Texas Tech University, 3008 18th Street, Lubbock, TX, 79409, USA

    Jian Wang

  3. Michigan Department of Education, Bureau of Assessment and Accountability (BAA), 608 West Allegan Street, PO Box 30008, Lansing, MI, 48909, USA

    Shiqi Hao

  4. Department of Teaching and Learning, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 453005, Las Vegas, NV, 89154-3005, USA

    Qingmin Shi

Authors
  1. Qiang Cheng
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  2. Jian Wang
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  3. Shiqi Hao
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  4. Qingmin Shi
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Correspondence to Qiang Cheng.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 1 Immigration status, grouping information, sample size, and descriptive statistics
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Table 2 Mathematics performance comparison between immigrant students and non-immigration students in TIMSS 2007 and PISA 2009
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Table 3 Mathematics performance comparison among different immigrant groups in TIMSS 2007 and PISA 2009
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Table 4 Results of simple liner regression for group A of 15-year-old immigrant students in PISA 2009
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Cheng, Q., Wang, J., Hao, S. et al. Mathematics Performance of Immigrant Students Across Different Racial Groups: An Indirect Examination of the Influence of Culture and Schooling. Int. Migration & Integration 15, 589–607 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-013-0300-x

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