English Learners and High School Graduation: A Pattern-Centered Approach to Understand within-Group Variations

Abstract

Despite increases in the high school graduation rate in the United States, large disparities persist for English learners (ELs). These disparities are particularly important given that ELs are the fastest growing segment of the United States public school population. EL youth, though, are not a homogeneous population. Instead, EL youth speak many languages in their homes, have varying levels of English proficiency, and come from a variety of immigration circumstances and socioeconomic statuses. Previous research on EL students has primarily used variable-centered analytic approaches, which are not designed to examine how a constellation of factors function within an individual and differ from each other. Thus, the current study uses latent class analysis (LCA) to provide an example of how a patterned-centered analytic approach can provide insights into differences within the population of EL youth that a variable-centered approach would miss. Using student-level data from the state of Massachusetts that includes a set of academic and demographic variables, we find that ELs vary in their high school graduation rates by identified latent class. We find that there are groups of EL youth graduating at rates above the state average, but that there are also EL groups who are lagging substantially behind their peers. These classes of youth are unevenly distributed across school districts and therefore could provide insights for more targeted interventions. Policy and practice implications are discussed.