While English is the United States' lingua franca, a growing proportion of US households regularly speaks a non-English language at home. Children from these households, however, often face academic disadvantages. Building on the existing literature, this thesis examines how the K–5 academic achievement of these linguistically minoritized (LM) children relates to their English proficiency when they enter kindergarten. The dataset is sourced from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011). The analysis employs two-level hierarchical quadratic growth modeling on a selected subsample of LM children (n = 5,021). The outcomes are K–5 assessment scores in reading and math, and the main predictor is English proficiency at kindergarten entry. Drawing on cumulative disadvantage theory, the analysis adjusts for time-invariant covariates: gender, race/ethnicity, home language usage, baseline household socioeconomic status (SES), household structure, and school district impoverishment. Regression results show an achievement gap in both reading and math between LM children from similar backgrounds who entered kindergarten with lower versus higher proficiency in English. Yet, due to the faster academic growth of those with initially lower proficiency, the gaps in the autumn of kindergarten (1.8 years of typical learning in reading and 0.93 years in math) narrowed to around 0.5 years for both subjects by the spring of Grade 5. These results remained qualitatively consistent after covariate adjustment. Notably, household SES exerted substantial influence in the opposite direction of early English proficiency. These findings highlight the long-term impact of early English proficiency in the academic development of LM children and point to the crucial role of continual academic and linguistic supports that are suited to LM children's multilingual repertoires.
Xinran Chen (Fri,) studied this question.