Presentation by Amy Ellen Schwartz New York University November 14, 2007 Citywide Council on High Schools Immigrants, Race and the High School Graduation Gap

Why Should We Care? Immigrants represent a large group in NYC schools Success in school will shape: –The education of the labor force –Demands/supports for social safety net –Competitiveness of the NYC economy

Previous Research Schwartz and Stiefel (2006) and others show that foreign born students outperform otherwise similar native born students through the eighth grade Chiswick and DebBurman (2004) and Ruiz-de- Velasco et al. (2002) and a wide range of advocates, educators and researchers suggest that high school may be different.

Why might high school results differ? Prior human capital –Quality differences,Transferability Developmental stage –Social, Language acquisition skills Institutional/School differences Mobility Selective Migration K-8 successes may not be sustained

This Project We use data on NYC high school students to: examine high school outcomes for foreign and native born students by entry level –Estimate the “nativity gap” by entry level –Estimate the impact of entry level within groups estimate the impact of the entry level on outcomes of foreign born students relative to otherwise similar native born students.

Our data Over 60,000 students in 2002 high school cohort (N=61,338: 20,707 foreign and 40,631 native) Four year high school graduation information Test taking and test score data Birth country Include controls for students’ race, home language, age relative to others in grade, sex, ELL status, high school and birth country regions.

Immigrant and Native-born Students Differ Significantly Race Home language English language skills In the time they enter NYC public schools In their testing and graduation outcomes

Mean Characteristics of 2002 High School Cohort

Graduation Outcomes by Nativity and Entry Level

Graduation Outcomes by Nativity and Entry Level, Adjusted for Student Characteristics

Graduation Outcomes by Nativity and Entry Level, Adjusted for Student Characteristics and Schools Attended

Results Immigrants do quite well. Among immigrants, high school entrants do better than elementary or middle school entrants. Among native born, high school entrants do less well. High school entry seems to have a positive effect on foreign-born performance.

Why do these results emerge? Consistent with selective migration –Stronger for foreign born Selective dropping out? High schools may, indeed, be better suited to accomodating/acclimating newcomers than middle schools

Next Steps Replication – other cohorts Variability in success across schools and its causes Subgroup Analyses –By region –By race

Evidence on Race Differences in Graduation Outcomes Adjusted for Student and School Characteristics

Evidence on Race High School Test-Taking & Test Scores Adjusted for Student and School Characteristics

Evidence on Race Differences in Graduation Outcomes Adjusted for Student and School Characteristics and Past Performance

Results Race matters But adjusting for other things -- like ELL -- reduces the size of the disparity across races. Most important, race considerably less important to graduation outcomes, given performance on early regents exams.