Academic Performance among Children of Immigrant Families from the Dominican Republic: The Influence of Language

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

Immigrant children under eighteen are the fastest growing sub-population of children in the U.S. today. As in the past, today’s immigrants will be instrumental in shaping the future of this country. Because education is intimately tied to health and economic advancement, the academic success of immigrant children is crucial for the entire nation.

Research to date has found that immigrant youth are more motivated towards school, have a more positive outlook and attitude towards school, and have higher levels of academic achievement compared to those of U.S.-born families. Moreover, the research has found that youth who are less acculturated and speak less English, i.e., those who are bilingual, do better in school than those who are more acculturated and speak more English. These findings suggest that maintenance of the home language and culture is an asset for immigrant adolescents, whereas loss of it can be detrimental.

However, little is known about children during middle childhood. The present research seeks to reduce this gap in the literature by answering the question, Can some of the variation in academic performance for children of immigrant families from the Dominican Republic be explained by differences in language acculturation? The study entailed a secondary analysis of data from the study Children of Immigrants: Development in Context (CIDC). The CIDC was a three-year, two-cohort, study of elementary school aged immigrant children living in Providence, RI, conducted between 1998 and 2001. All children of immigrant families from the Dominican Republic (n=139) were used for this research. The primary focus of this study was to test whether children who were bilingual had better or worse levels of academic performance compared to children who were assimilated. In addition, this study examined whether the language spoken by the mother/in the home and the language spoken in the school had direct or indirect effects on academic performance. Three levels of analysis were employed: cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, and structural equation modeling (SEM), of which SEM was the central analytical method. Three different types of models of language and academic performance were created: regression models, linear mixed models, and structural equation models.

Results indicated that bilingual language preference was strongly predictive of academic performance for girls, but had little explanatory power for boys. However, a measurable effect of home language on academic performance was not found. Additionally, it was not possible to fit a measure of the latent construct language spoken in the school with the structural equation modeling. Thus, it was not possible to measure associations between the language spoken in the school and academic performance.  

The strong association between bilingual preference and academic achievement among girls suggests that bilingual preference provides them with tools for successful participation in both home and school cultures. However, the results indicate that sex interacts with acculturation, as language preference was not predictive of academic performance for boys. This may be because academic performance is tied to socio-cultural factors that might be less of an issue for girls, such as racial stereotypes and barriers, as well as social pressures and expectations, which shape acculturation. Thus, perhaps a better research approach for boys would be one that seeks to understand overall acculturation, not just language acculturation, with an emphasis on studying how matters of race and culture impact the acculturation of young children of color to life in the U.S.

A measurable effect of home language on academic performance may not have been identified because of homogeneity within the sample. Alternatively, it may not have been possible to tease out the impact of parent/family language acculturation without examining the more complex process of acculturation. Inability to measure the language spoken in the school indicates that either the indicators used to build the construct were insufficient or that the measures themselves were poor.

Because maintenance of the home language appears to be a resource for immigrant children, policies that endorse and foster bilingualism are needed. The results also indicate that acculturation is not a uniform process. This is consistent with the literature to date which indicates that immigrants adjust to life in the U.S. using different strategies and following different paths. In light of these findings, broad federal and state social policies intended to promote the optimal development and wellbeing of people, should be matched with more specific municipal and community level policies and programs that can more accurately speak to the needs of distinct populations.