Abstract
English Learners, students who are not proficient in English and speak a non-English language at home, make up more than 10 percent of the nation’s K-12 student body. Achieving proficiency in English for these students is a major goal of both state and federal education policy, motivating the provision of bilingual education policies. Using data for nearly 500,000 English Learners from California, I show that students in bilingual education have substantially lower English proficiency than other English Learners in first and second grades. In contrast, there is little difference between bilingual education and other programs for students in grades three through five. These results hold across fixed effects, propensity score, and instrumental variables models.
Document Type
Research Paper
Publication Date
1-2009
Discussion Paper Number
DP 2009-01
Repository Citation
Jepsen, Christopher, "Bilingual Education and English Proficiency" (2009). University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series. 72.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/ukcpr_papers/72
Included in
Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Income Distribution Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons
