Young Children in Immigrant Families: Still "Divided Fates"?

Jennifer E. Glick, Arizona State University

One in five children in primary and secondary school have at least one foreign born parent. This paper utilizes the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 1998 Kindergartners (ECLS-K) that follows children as they make the initial transition into school through subsequent elementary school grades. The paper presents descriptive analyses of the status of children of immigrant families in these first two years of school. In addition, multivariate models of academic achievement as measured by progress through school and standardized test results are presented. Analyses confirm that first and second generation children are more likely to come from lower SES backgrounds but they are also more likely to have families strongly supportive of their academic achievement. Yet, despite these high expectations and even at this early age, these children do not perform as well on standardized tests as their later generation peers.