Is There a Nativity Gap? New Evidence on the Academic Performance of Immigrant Students

Public schools across the United States are educating an increasingnumberanddiversityofimmigrantstudents. Unfortunately, little is known about their performance relative to native-born students and the extent to which the "nativity gap" might be explained by school and de- mographic characteristics. This article takes a step to- ward filling that void using data from New York City where 17 percent of elementary and middle school stu- dents are immigrants. We explore disparities in perfor- mance between foreign-born and native-born students on reading and math tests in three ways—using lev- els (unadjusted scores), "value-added" scores (adjusted for prior performance), and an education production function. While unadjusted levels and value-added mea- suresoftenindicatesuperiorperformanceamongimmi- grants, disparities are substantially explained by student and school characteristics. Further, while the nativity gap differs for students from different world regions, disparities are considerably diminished in fully speci- fied models. We conclude with implications for urban schools in the United States.