The National Emergence of Newcomer Schools: Their Growth, Characteristics, Outcomes, and Alignment to Migration (Poster 9)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Newcomer schools are specialized schools for children newly arrived in the U.S. with limited English language proficiency and interrupted education. In this study, I examine the characteristics of newcomer schools and the association between newcomer school characteristics and student outcomes. To do this, I constructed a school-by-year dataset that uses data from NCES Common Core of Data (CCD), Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), and the U.S. Census. The dataset includes approximately 80,000-100,000 schools per year and over 300 variables. Additionally, I created a sub-sample of New York City Public Schools, which has the largest number of newcomer schools, and included the Regents Exam data as an achievement measure. Findings indicate statistically significant differences in school characteristics between newcomer schools and non-newcomer schools. Newcomer schools tend to have greater financial resources and smaller support staff to student ratios than non-newcomer schools, but are more likely to employ less experienced educators, offer fewer rigorous courses, and have higher rates of student absenteeism than non-newcomer schools. Still, attendance at a newcomer school is associated with positive effects in Algebra I and English standardized exams, with the greatest effect on students with the least amount of English language ability. Findings from this study hold important policy implications to strengthen newcomer education.

Author

• Elizabeth Davis, George Mason University
  Presenting Author