Poster #48 - Factors Predicting Secondary School Language Course Enrollment and Performance in Heritage Spanish Speakers

• In Event: Poster Session 15

Abstract

The dominant paradigm in the United States is English-medium schooling, although bilingual and dual immersion programs are increasingly offered, almost exclusively in primary schools. Recent research has documented the ‘gentrification’ of bilingual education such that low-income and minoritized students from Spanish-speaking homes are less likely to have access. Spanish language courses include programs that use Spanish as the medium of instruction or Spanish as a subject for just a few hours per week. However, these are relatively scarce in the US, and they often are designed for second language learners rather than heritage speakers. As a result, heritage speakers of Spanish either do not have access to ‘foreign’ language courses or choose to enroll in other non-Spanish language courses. However, recent evidence has demonstrated that Spanish courses and programs designed specifically for heritage speakers are linked to improved educational and emotional outcomes as well as stronger language maintenance and student retention. Thus, it is important to investigate factors that shape heritage speakers’ enrollment in Spanish and other non-English language courses, an issue that has yet to be examined empirically.

In the current large-scale, longitudinal study, we investigate the rates of enrollment in non-English language courses, as well as factors that predicting heritage speakers’ enrollment in Spanish courses and performance in non-English language courses at the secondary level. We used prospective longitudinal data from the Miami School Readiness Project (MSRP) which tracked five cohorts of 4-year-old children who attended pre-K programs in Miami (public school pre-K or subsidized childcare in the community) from 2002 to 2006 through high school. School readiness assessments were administrated at age four, and public-school records, including, courses taken, grades/marks received, and standardized math and reading test scores were collected each year. Our subsample here included students who a) had transcript data in 6th grade or later, b) had home language data at kindergarten, and c) had Spanish listed as their home language as reported by parents at school entry. Our final sample was N = 17,341 heritage speakers of Spanish (47% female, 95.4% Hispanic/Latino, 82.8% received free/reduced-price lunch, and 18.3% with a disability).

Descriptive statistics and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted. Factors considered as predictors of enrollment and performance in elective language courses included child gender, race/ethnicity, poverty status, disability status, school readiness skills at age 4, and prior elementary school (5th grade) academic performance. An impressive 66% of students in the sample enrolled in some type of language course, and heritage speakers enrolled in Spanish at almost twice the rate as

other non-English language courses (~50% and ~25%, respectively). Enrollment patterns varied across different type of languages and grade level. Student-level factors including disability status, poverty status, early behavioral problems, and elementary academic achievement significantly predicted students’ enrollment in Spanish, and performance in non-English language courses. Findings shed light on the long-term language learning and maintenance of this growing segment of the US school population with implications for future research and school policies that improve equitable access in language education for language-minority students.

Authors

• My Viet Ha Nguyen, University of Houston
  Presenting Author

• Ellen Serafini

• Jennifer Leeman, George Mason University

• Adam Winsler, George Mason University