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Immigrant Educators and Students' Academic Achievement

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  • Seah, Kelvin

    (National University of Singapore)

Abstract

Using a dataset which allows students to be linked to their teachers, this paper examines how educators with an immigrant background affect the academic achievements of secondary school students in the United States. To account for the possibility that immigrant and native teachers may be assigned to different types of schools, and even within schools, to different types of students, two estimation strategies are employed. The first estimates the immigrant teacher impact by comparing the achievements of students with immigrant teachers to the achievements of observationally similar students with native teachers, within schools. The second compares the achievement of a student with an immigrant teacher in one subject to the achievement of the same student with a native teacher in another subject. The results suggest that, overall, immigrant teachers do not have a negative impact on the educational achievements of native students. Additional tests suggest that this non-adverse effect is due to the greater effectiveness of White immigrant teachers relative to native teachers.

Suggested Citation

  • Seah, Kelvin, 2016. "Immigrant Educators and Students' Academic Achievement," IZA Discussion Papers 10032, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10032
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    Cited by:

    1. Lisa Sofie Höckel, 2024. "Language lesson learned—foreign-origin teachers and their effect on students’ language skills," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(2), pages 1-32, June.
    2. Kelvin K. C. Seah, 2021. "Do you speak my language? The effect of sharing a teacher's native language on student achievement," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 88(1), pages 245-273, July.
    3. Sakaue, Katsuki & Wokadala, James, 2022. "Effects of including refugees in local government schools on pupils’ learning achievement: Evidence from West Nile, Uganda," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    education economics; immigrant teacher; academic achievement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

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