Strong English Seen as Key to Immigrants’ School Success
English proficiency is the biggest predictor of the academic achievement of immigrant students, and the quality of the overall language arts program at a school—not just programs for English-language learners within the school—is strongly linked to whether they acquire English, an in-depth study has found.
Researchers Carola and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Irina Todorova conclude that English proficiency has more of an impact on immigrant students’ academic success, as measured by grade point averages and standardized-test scores, than all other variables they studied put together. Those other variables were students’ behavioral engagement, maternal education, having a working father, and being in a two-parent family.
The study found that how well students learn English is also very strongly correlated with the quality of schools they attend. A school’s percentage of students who scored as proficient or above on the state’s English-language-arts test and the school’s average-daily-attendance rate were highly predictive of whether...
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