Hispanic High Schoolers and Mathematics: Follow-Up of Students Who Had Participated in Two-Way Bilingual Elementary Programs

Abstract

Research shows a serious underrepresentation of Hispanic students entering the math, science, and engineering fields, possibly fueled by a large gap in math achievement between Hispanic and Euro-American students. The current study addressed this concern by examining the general school-related attitudes, coursework, and achievement, with a focus on math for 139 high school students—Hispanics who were previous English language learners, native English-speaking Hispanics, and Euro-American English speakers—who had been enrolled in a two-way bilingual program throughout elementary school. The results showed that all three groups of students had positive attitudes toward math and school in general and were scoring at grade level in math. They were taking higher level college preparation math courses and getting mostly average grades (B's and C's) in those courses. These results suggest that the two-way bilingual program may provide the academic preparation and schooling attitudes, including in mathematics, that enable all three groups of students to be more successful than the average Hispanic and low-socioeconomic status students described in the literature.