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Achievement Effects of Dual Language Immersion in One-Way and Two-Way Programs: Evidence from a Statewide Expansion

  • Jennifer L. Steele ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Johanna Watzinger-Tharp ORCID logo , Robert O. Slater , Gregg Roberts-Aguirre and Karl Bowman
Published/Copyright: July 31, 2024

Abstract

The rising demand for dual-language immersion (DLI) programs, which offer core instruction in two languages from early grades onward, has raised questions about program design and access. We leverage the rapid expansion of DLI schools across the U.S. state of Utah to estimate effects of DLI program availability on the academic achievement of primary English speakers and English learners (ELs) in programs that serve mainly the former (one-way) or at least a third of the latter (two-way). Using within-school variation in first graders’ access to DLI programs, we find no overall effects on English, math, or science scores from grades 3 to 6. However, ELs whose primary languages match the schools’ partner languages in two-way schools show notable outperformance in math and higher English-language proficiency at grade 5. Benefits of DLI access are driven by schools with a larger share of primary speakers of the partner language.


Corresponding author: Jennifer L. Steele, American University, School of Education, 4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 20016-8030, USA, E-mail: 

Award Identifier / Grant number: R305H170005

Acknowledgments

This work was made possible by research-practice partnership grant #R305H170005 from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. We are grateful to Kristin Campbell at the Utah State Board of Education for preparing the anonymized administrative datasets. This work has benefitted from feedback we received from Utah dual language program leaders, participants at meetings of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management, the Association of Education Finance and Policy, the American Educational Research Association, the University of Pennsylvania’s IES Doctoral Fellowship Speaker Series, the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform Speaker Series, and insightful peer reviewers. Any errors are our own.

  1. Research funding: This work was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (R305H170005).

Appendix
Table A1:

Selection test regressing grade-by-cohort-by-school attributes on DLI program launches.

Variables One-way Two-way
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Frac white Frac FRL Frac ever-EL Frac sped Frac white Frac FRL Frac ever-EL Frc sped
DLI offered 0.002 −0.031*** −0.032*** −0.001 −0.061*** 0.047** 0.110*** −0.005
(0.005) (0.008) (0.007) (0.003) (0.011) (0.014) (0.020) (0.003)
Linear cohort covariate −0.002*** 0.003*** 0.009*** −0.003*** −0.003*** 0.004*** 0.011*** −0.003***
(0.000) (0.000) (0.001) (0.000) (0.000) (0.001) (0.001) (0.000)
Obs. 4,346,674 4,346,674 4,346,674 4,346,674 3,949,017 3,949,017 3,949,017 3,949,017
R-sq. 0.006 0.008 0.149 0.050 0.014 0.014 0.188 0.048
Schools 419 419 419 419 389 389 389 389
  1. ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, ∼p < 0.1. Models are estimated at the student-by-grade level using an adaptation of Equation (4) in which each grade-by-cohort-by-school covariate in matrix K gcs is individually regressed on the ITT indicator (ITT cs ), the linear cohort term (c c ), and the base school indicators ( S s ), with no additional controls. Standard errors are clustered at the base school level.

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Received: 2022-07-02
Accepted: 2024-07-07
Published Online: 2024-07-31

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