The Effects of Age at Arrival and Enclave Schools on the Academic Performance of Immigrant Children

Kalena E. Cortes, University of California at Berkeley

This paper analyzes the relationship between age at arrival and immigrant receiving high schools (i.e., enclave schools) on the academic performance of immigrant children using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) 1992-1993 and the Common Core of Data (CCD) 1992-1993. I classify the public schools in the CILS universe as enclave schools based on the fraction of children in the school sample who were born abroad. More precisely, schools that had greater than 25 percent of the interviewed school sample born abroad were classified as immigrant receiving schools. I find that the test score gap between US-born and first generation immigrant children decreases the longer immigrant children reside in the US. Overall, the findings in this paper suggest that immigrant children in enclave schools perform as well as immigrant children that attend non-enclave schools.