2005 Poverty Research Small Grants
Funded research
The Effect of Source-Country on the Academic Achievement of Foreign-born Students in New York City Public Schools.
Dylan Conger, Assistant Professor, George Washington University School of Public Policy and Public Administration. Amy Ellen Schwartz, Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics, New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Leanna Stiefel, Professor of Economics, New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
Description
By most accounts, today's immigrant students outperform or equal their native-born peers on traditional measures of school performance. Yet there are substantial, as yet under-explored, differences among the foreign-born by their country of birth. The goals of this study are to uncover and explain these source-country difference~ using a rich dataset combining information on students, schools, surrounding immigrant communities, and source countries in New York City (NYC)-the largest school system in the country. Specifically, we have a unique data set containing demographic, socioeconomic, and academic information on the census of students in the NYC public elementary and middle school system in each of the years 1995-96 to 2001-02. This panel of pupils has been merged with a school-level data set that contains information on the resources of each student's school.
We propose to further incorporate U.S. Census data on the social and economic characteristics of immigrants in NYC by country as well as data from the United Nations statistics division (and other comparable sources) on the economic and social conditions of the source countries. Using these data, our research objective is to examine differences in immigrant performance by source country and to determine the relative influence of the following characteristics: student (e.g. race, poverty), school (e.g. teacher experience), co-ethnic immigrant community (e.g. % homeowners from the Dominican Republic living in NYC), and source country (e.g. GDP).
The study would employ fixed and random effects models to uncover these relative influences. Given the rapid growth in the immigrant population, we believe this research would have significant relevance to educators and policymakers. Specifically, this research sheds light on the "nativity gap" in student performance by identifying whether and how birth country plays a role in immigrant achievement.
