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Systematized Discrimination: Linguistic, Racial and Cultural Differences Can Equal Mathematics Success

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Abstract

Researchers analyzed quantitative data from the Education Longitudinal Study (2002–2004) to investigate the relationship between the highest mathematics course taken and the achievement of 12th-grade students minoritized by their racial-ethnic and language backgrounds in urban schools. Employing hierarchical linear models, researchers analyzed the effects of student linguistic minority (LM) status, English-language proficiency, and school urbanicity on mathematics achievement. Findings suggest an interdependent relationship between (a) students’ English-language and racial-ethnic backgrounds, (b) college-preparatory mathematics course-taking, (c) the urban school context, and (d) mathematics achievement. Researchers suggest promising education policies and pedagogical practices for improving LMs’ inequitable achievement outcomes by maximizing students’ opportunities-to-learn in college preparatory courses and facilitating the academic language of mathematics.

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Notes

  1. Widely cited large-scale sociological studies of immigrants using similar types of datasets have used these same self-reported English proficiency measures and find that they are relatively reliable measures of language skills (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).

  2. The principal components analysis routine in STATA yielded the following weighted composite equation: ENG_PROF = 0.486*UNDERSTAND + 0.511*SPEAK + 0.510*READ + 0.492*WRITE. This single construct of English proficiency captured 68% of the variance in the four English-language proficiency subscales.

  3. The questionnaire weight (for F1) applies to all first follow-up respondents.

  4. We calculated the percentage of variance for individual student (level-one) and school-level (level-2) using the formula ρ = τ00 / (τ00 + σ2).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Education, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, CA, USA

    Eduardo Mosqueda

  2. Dual Language and English Learner Education, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

    Saúl I. Maldonado

  3. Teaching, Learning and Culture and Aggie STEM, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Mary M. Capraro & Robert M. Capraro

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  1. Eduardo Mosqueda
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  2. Saúl I. Maldonado
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  3. Mary M. Capraro
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Mosqueda, E., Maldonado, S.I., Capraro, M.M. et al. Systematized Discrimination: Linguistic, Racial and Cultural Differences Can Equal Mathematics Success. Urban Rev 54, 428–449 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-021-00620-3

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