Study finds immigrants don’t affect U.S.-born students’ chances of good SATs, getting into college
High school students born in the United States need not view their immigrant classmates as a threat to getting a good standardized test score and, ultimately, into a good college, according to a K-State economist.
Florence Neymotin, an assistant professor of economics, evaluated students’ Scholastic Aptitude Test scores over seven years, taking into account the immigrant makeup of the students’ communities. She concluded that the native students’ scores weren’t negatively affected by immigration and that their chances of applying to a top college or university weren’t diminished.
“With immigration, I think people do get concerned and wonder whether their non-immigrant children are going to get a good education if they are in public schools with many immigrants, and whether the parents of these non-immigrant children should, therefore, move their children to schools with fewer immigrants,” Neymotin said. “These results can quell anti-immigrant sentiment to some extent, but I don’t think this is the complete picture of immigration by any means.”
In October 2009, the research appeared in the Economics Education Review and was featured in the editor’s choice section of the journal Science.