Educational gaps between immigrant and native students in Europe: The role of grade

Abstract

Using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000, we compare differences in reading performance between immigrant and native 15-year-olds in 10 European countries. Our results show considerable variation in the immigrant-native performance gap among our 10 European countries, even after socioeconomic conditions are taken into account. We examine the extent to which between-country differences in grad retention account for the cross-national variation in the effect of immigrant status on reading performance. In countries with grade retention, immigrant students are more likely to be in lower grades than their native peers of the same age, whereas in countries without grade retention, immigrant students do not differ in grade distributions from native students. Our major hypothesis is that countries, where immigrant students are more likely to be retained than their native peers of the same age, should have a larger performance gap between immigrant and native students given previous literature on negative consequences of grade retention. The regression analysis with country dummy variables and two-level hierarchical linear models provide evidence consistent with the expectation. Policy implications of the significant effect of grade retention are discussed for immigrant children's educational integration in European societies. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.