The Decade of Immigrant Dispersion and Growth: A Cohort Analysis of Children of Immigrants' Educational Experiences 1990-2002.

The 1990s marked the beginning of a new era of immigration in terms of volume and settlement patterns and also witnessed significant changes in the social contexts confronting immigrants. These changes could have significant repercussions for immigrant youth. While previous research on high school dropout behavior suggests immigrant youth are faring better in US schools, our research provides a less optimistic outlook. Using the National Educational Longitudinal Study (1988) and Educational Longitudinal Study (2002), we use multivariate analysis, regression decomposition and fixed effect models to examine how reading and math test scores of children of immigrants changed during the 1990s.