What Matters? The Relative Impact of Language Background And Socioeconomic Status on Reading Achievement

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine the cause of the reading achievement gap between language minority students and non-language minority students. Analyzing the intricate relationship among language background, socioeconomic status and ethnicity in the High School and Beyond data set, it was found that both language background and SES have a substantial and independent impact on reading achievement scores, but SES has more of an impact on white students than on Hispanic students. In addition, using Duncan’s statistical technique to decompose the reading achievement gap between language minority and non-language minority students, it was found that only about half of the reading gap was accounted for by removing the effects of SES and ethnicity. Therefore, the remaining 50% of the reading gap was a product of language background and other unexplained variables.