New research calls into question a widespread perception that multilingual students in the United States consistently perform poorly, muster only marginal academic progress and are being failed by school systems.
In fact, a once-considerable gap in fourth-and eighth-grade reading and math scores between multilingual and English-only speakers in 2003 narrowed a great deal by 2015. Specifically, the test scores among multilingual students improved at two or three times the rate of their monolingual peers during that 12-year period.
These are among the findings published this month in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The findings are based on a study of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the congressionally mandated project commonly known as “the nation’s report card.”
The report’s lead author, Dr. Michael J. Kieffer of New York University, called the progress shown by multilingual students “remarkable.”
The study defined multilingual students as those who, at one time or another, reported speaking primarily a non-English language at home. That included youths who were categorized by their schools as English learners, those formerly categorized as English learners and youths who spoke other languages at home but were proficient in English by the time they began school.
Estimates from multiple states suggest that at least 25 percent of students who entered kindergarten as English learners have been reclassified before they reach fourth grade, and at least 70 percent of them before eighth grade.
From 2003 to 2015, the test scores of all students improved, regardless of how many or few languages they could speak. Scores were higher, on average, for English-only students in 2015, according to the study.
