The achievement gap in reading in California between students coming from homes where only English is spoken and those from Spanish-speaking homes increased during the students’ first six years of school, according to an analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.
The analysis examined achievement data for language-minority students—students who come from homes where a language other than English is regularly spoken. Achievement gaps between English-only and language-minority students decrease overall during elementary school, writes Russell W. Rumberger, the director of the Linguistic Minority Research Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who conducted the analysis.
“Lagging Behind: Linguistic Minorities’ Educational Progress During Elementary School” is available from the Linguistic Minority Research Institute.
