Preparing for Citizenship
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Preparing for Citizenship: Immigrant High School Students’ Curriculum and Socialization
Immigrant adolescents are one of the fastest growing segments of our population, yet we know little about how schools prepare them for citizenship. Although prior research suggests that high school civics education, academic achievement, and a sense of connection increase political participation in early adulthood, we do not know if these processes apply to immigrant youth. Using longitudinal, nationally representative data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study (AHAA) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we employ multilevel models to investigate the effects of formal and informal school curricula on early adult voting and registration. We find that children of immigrant parents who take more high school social studies coursework have higher levels of reported voter registration and voting. In addition, attending a high school where students have a greater sense of connection or where parents have more education are important predictors of registration and voting, regardless of immigrant status.
Preparing for Citizenship: Immigrant High School Students’ Curriculum and Socialization
The American common school emerged in the mid-19th century as a means to prepare and educate an active citizenry for participation in a democratic society. With the rise of the urban center as an immigrant receiving ground, the role of schools in transforming immigrant students into civic participants grew in importance (Tyack, 1974). A historical function of U.S. public schools has been to prepare youth, and immigrant youth in particular, to participate in civic society, to participate in the democratic process in general, and to vote in particular (Cremin, 1951; Goodlad, 1984). According to Census 2000, one in five school-age children is an immigrant, or a child of immigrant parents1 (Hernandez, 2004); this dramatic increase in the immigrant student population brings the role of schools in preparing students for the democratic process to the forefront. U.S. schools often serve as a social and educational nexus in the community where immigrant students, and even their parents, can come for socialization into the American mainstream (Olsen, 2000). The struggle to balance immigrant students’ unique educational and linguistic needs has been with the U.S. common school since its earliest incarnation (Deschenes, Cuban, & Tyack, 2001; Tyack, 2003). Ultimately, schools both educate immigrant students through traditional coursework, and socialize them via the formal and informal processes provided within the school context.
Social studies coursework is one element in students’ development as participating citizens in U.S. society; also important is integration into the social and academic fabric of the school. For the purposes of the present study, social studies coursework includes history, government, geography, political science (including civics and economics), international relations, and sociology/psychology. For immigrant students, whose parents are by definition new to the dominant society, the school likely not only provides the academic and civic training necessary for active adult integration, but also provides the forum for social integration on which to build future civic participation (Parker, 2001). Social studies coursework thus has the potential to carry even greater weight for immigrant students because it may provide the political guidance and knowledge not necessarily available in the home. The common school prepares immigrant youth not only through Americanization and socialization, but also through academic preparation and linguistic training.
Research suggests that both high school civics classes (Atherton, 2000; Chaffee, 2000) and higher levels of academic achievement (Nie, Junn, & Stehlik-Barry, 1996) contribute to active political participation during young adulthood via heightened civic awareness (Niemi & Junn, 1998). A sense of belonging to a larger community also contributes to higher levels of civic participation during young adulthood as well (Smith, 1999). However, relatively little research has explored how these processes work for immigrant students as they move from the K-12 school system into adulthood, when they adopt the responsibilities that come with age. The literature exploring immigrant voting behaviors pertains primarily to the immigrant adult community (Barreto & Munoz, 2003; Cassel, 2002; Cho, 1999; Jones-Correa, 2001; Junn, 1999; Ramakrishnan & Espenshade, 2001), with relatively little work exploring these behaviors among immigrant young adults who have participated in the civic training provided by our high school system. This study explores the effects of adolescents’ school experiences, both individual and as a function of the school social environment, on the voting behaviors (voter registration and voting) of young adults. We consider whether these experiences may differently influence the voting behaviors of children of immigrant and native-born parents.
Schooling and Citizenship Education
One focus of social studies coursework is the education of young adults who will actively participate in their community via voting and other civic activities. The social studies education adolescents receive during high school has been linked to their future political participation (Atherton, 2000; Chaffee, 2000; Niemi & Junn, 1998). However, the curriculum does not act in isolation; students’ social positioning and socio-economic status also affect the results of citizenship education (Parker, 2001). In addition, demographic variation across U.S. schools suggests variability in the quality and quantity of the curriculum students, and immigrant students in particular, receive, (Cosentino de Cohen, Deterding, & Clewell, 2005). In an article summarizing findings from a larger project including three separate survey studies of high school and college-age youth, Sherrod (2003) reports that political knowledge during adolescence predicts voting and other behaviors during young adulthood. Key here is the role of knowledge gained, at least in part, from social studies coursework (Sherrod, 2003). For immigrant adolescents and others outside the high school mainstream, then, a strong social studies foundation is critical for future civic integration and active participation.
In addition, research stemming from the IEA Civic Education study, which included over 140,000 14-year-old youth in 28 countries, explores the relationship between the social studies classroom and students’ reported intent to participate in the civic processes as adults (Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz, 2001). Specifically, school context and academic press, the degree to which other students in the school plan to pursue higher education, contributes to building civic knowledge (Torney-Purta, 2002). Results from the IEA Civic Education study indicate a need to connect the school climate and the social studies curriculum to young adult civic behaviors, including voting and registering to vote.
Although social studies education is designed to prepare youth, including relative newcomers, for future civic participation, it is important to note that the curriculum itself is stratified. In a large scale study using High School & Beyond survey data, Gamoran (1987) found that while social studies coursework maintains a small effect on achievement test scores, there was little variation in the quantity of coursework completed. His analyses, however, account for neither student performance in the social studies coursework under study, nor the type of social studies coursework taken. In addition, Oakes (1985) indicates marked differences in content across courses, suggesting that some social studies courses contain relatively more challenging, academically engaging content than others. Honors social studies courses are arguably more academically challenging, and possibly more engaging, for immigrant students than courses that simply fulfill graduation requirements. Furthermore, elective social studies coursework may distinguish the student completing graduation requirements from the student searching for an academic challenge (Oakes, 1985). While history courses are almost always a high school graduation requirement, additional social studies coursework (e.g., political science and international relations) offers access to more specific or deeper content, preparing students for civic participation as well as entry into higher education.
Community Service and Social Integration: Predictors of Young Adult Civic Involvement
High schools not only prepare adolescents academically and cognitively for entry into the adult world, but also provide opportunities for social integration and community involvement via volunteer and community service activities. Active community service during adolescence has been argued to promote civic involvement during adulthood as measured by both voting and registering to vote. However, whether the community service is required as opposed to voluntary has proven contentious. In an analysis of the effects of different types of high school community service on voting at age 26 using NELS survey data, Hart, Donnelly, Youniss, and Atkins (2007) found that voluntary, mixed, and required community service during high school all predict voting, even when controlling for civic knowledge and other relevant background characteristics. Previously, scholars had expressed concern regarding the potentially detrimental effects of mandating community service in high school, possibly contributing to decreased levels of civic involvement during young adulthood (Finn & Vanourek, 1995). Hart et al. (2007) are able to distinguish between the types of community service adolescents perform, ultimately confirming the benefits of service, regardless of whether it is required. In another recent investigation of the effects of high school activities on young adult civic outcomes, McFarland and Thomas (2006) found that community service participation during adolescence strongly predicts civic participation during young adulthood. Using both NELS and Add Health survey data in multilevel models predicting an index of adult political participation, the authors explore the effects of involvement in voluntary organizations during high school while controlling for peer practices, parent education and a variety of school and individual background characteristics.
Along with community service, identification with and participation in a larger social community predict civic integration (Delli Carpini, 2000; Youniss, McLellan, & Yates, 1997). As a template for adult society, the high school community provides the boundaries within which adolescents can begin to develop a sense of community and belonging to a group outside the home. The social climate of the high school has the potential then to influence the early adult civic behaviors and choices of its citizenry. While adults’ social integration and connection to the larger community affect civic integration and participation (Putnam, 2000), whether the social connection of adolescents to their school community promotes their future civic participation in adulthood has yet to be explored. For immigrant adults, belonging to a group and participating in its organized activities results in increased civic engagement (DeSipio, 2002; Leal, 2002). However, we do not know if immigrant adolescents’ connections to school and the socialization that is inherent in the school process promote adult civic participation.
Connection to school is mediated by many factors, school composition being one. In fact, school racial and ethnic composition affects student achievement through academic as well as social interactions (Rumberger & Willms, 1992). It follows then that the linguistic and immigrant composition of the school may also play a role in immigrant young adults’ civic integration. Nearly two-fifths (37%) of individuals who speak a language other than English live in relative linguistic isolation (Shin & Bruno, 2003), suggesting that many immigrant adolescents attend schools with a considerable immigrant population. We hypothesize that in schools with high immigrant concentrations, immigrant students may be more likely to receive curriculum designed to meet their specific linguistic and academic needs, including instruction about citizenship. In these high immigrant contexts, immigrant students may also feel more closely connected to their classmates and to the school overall.
The literature points to the formal and informal facets of schools and schooling as predictors of civic participation in young adulthood, yet does little to differentiate the strength of each for different groups of students within the larger society. We focus our analysis on the predictors of civic participation among a group highly dependent on the school system for their inauguration into American civic life: immigrant adolescents and young adults. Concern for immigrant adolescents as they transition into active roles as young adults in our society leads to our primary questions of interest. We focus our attention on three main research questions: First, does the social studies curriculum affect voter registration and voting? We consider multiple aspects of the curriculum, including the amount of coursework and students’ performance in the courses. Second, turning attention to whether the process operates differently for immigrant students, does the effect of social studies vary for immigrant as opposed to third-plus generation youth? Finally, we ask whether the school context influences voting behaviors. We are especially interested in the school contextual effects for immigrant students in a school.
This study uses new data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study (AHAA) to explore the effects of high school academic and civic training, as well as social integration on young adult voting behaviors. Add Health is a nationally representative longitudinal data set of over 20,000 students in a sample of 80 U.S. high schools, each with one feeder school sampled proportional to its representation of the high school’s student body (Bearman, Jones, & Udry, 1997). An In-School survey was administered to all students attending school in spring of the 1994–1995 academic year. The survey sample was augmented using school records to draw a representative sample of boys and girls (in equal numbers) in grades 7–12 to participate in the Add Health longitudinal study. Three waves of survey data were collected in 1994–1995 (Wave I), 1996 (Wave II) and 2000–2001 (Wave III); the Wave III sample includes 15,163 young adults.
In 2002–2003, when almost all Add Health respondents were no longer attending high school, the AHAA study collected high school transcripts and other education data from the last high school that Wave III Add Health respondents attended (Muller et al., 2007). Transcripts were collected and coded for 12,250 Wave III respondents, over 80% of the Wave III sample. Each course that appeared on the transcript was coded with a standard coding scheme, the Classification System for Secondary Courses (CSSC), using information provided by the schools about course offerings. Grades were coded in a standard format and the courses were assigned Carnegie Units for comparability across schools. In order to ensure that Wave I survey information regarding the participants’ attachment to school would coincide with the school where high school coursework was taken, we limited the sample to students enrolled in a 9th to 12th grade school in Wave I with a valid sample weight (N=9051). All analyses are weighted using the longitudinal weight designed for the AHAA study.
Of the 80 original AHAA high schools, 73 enrolled at least one immigrant student. Because we are interested in estimating the effects of the concentration of immigrant students in school on later voting behaviors, our analytic sample consists of students attending one of these 73 schools. Our models are limited to Add Health/AHAA respondents who reported being citizens in Wave III (N= 8376) because our outcomes (voting and voter registration) are only available for this group. At the time of Wave III, nearly half (49%) of first generation (and by definition all second and third-plus generation) Add Health/AHAA participants were citizens.
In this study we use two dependent variables as measures of the major forms of civic participation2 for adults in their late teens and early 20s. In Wave III, participants were asked in separate questions (a) whether they had voted in the presidential election in 2000 and (b) whether they were currently registered to vote.3 We included the small number (N=28) of participants who reported that they voted in 2000, but did not report being registered to vote at Wave III.4 Overall, 77% of respondents reported having registered to vote and 49% reported having voted in the 2000 presidential election.
A key independent variable of interest for these analyses is the immigrant status of participants’ parents. If one or more of the respondent’s parents was foreign-born, then this variable is coded as 1 and otherwise coded as 0. In supplementary analyses, we distinguished between first (respondent is foreign-born, child of foreign-born parents) and second generation (respondent is U.S.-born child of foreign-born parents) citizens but found no substantive differences in the models predicting civic participation in young adulthood. For parsimony, our analyses combine first and second generations to compare them to those respondents whose parents were both born in the U.S. Children of at least one immigrant parent, first- or second generation, comprised 21% of our analytic sample as evidenced in Table 1.
Proportions, Means & Standard Deviations (Weighted) for Analytic Sample, Immigrant, and Third-plus Generation Youth
Indicates significant difference between immigrant and third-plus generation students: †p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001
In these analyses, we also include standard measures of participants’ social backgrounds – age at Wave I, gender, race/ethnicity, verbal ability, and religious service attendance as an adolescent. The highest level of education completed by a parent, using parents’ reports when available, and supplementing them with student reports when needed and possible, is our proxy for socioeconomic status. For race/ethnicity, we include separate indicators for Latinos of Mexican descent and those from other Latino groups. Verbal ability was measured at Wave I using Add Health’s abbreviated version of the Peabody Vocabulary Test (AH-PVT). We also include an indicator for whether the participant reported attending religious services in the 12 months preceding the Wave I survey during high school.
Two aspects of participants’ high school experiences are reflected in these analyses—academic indicators obtained from high school transcripts and social indicators from surveys. The key academic indicators of interest here are the number of credits earned in social studies courses and the average grade earned in those courses. As mentioned earlier, we include history, government, geography, political science, international relations and sociology/psychology coursework under the social studies label. On average, participants earned almost 3.5 Carnegie units5 in social studies and a grade point average of 2.47 on a 4-point scale in those courses. We use the highest level math course taken during high school as an indicator of participants’ general academic status in their school, coded as a continuous variable ranging from 1 (remedial and basic math) to 9 (Calculus), with a mean of 6.15 (Algebra 2). The highly sequential structure of math means that students’ schedules are often structured around their course in this subject (Hallinan, 1994; Riehl, Pallas, & Natriello, 1999; Stevenson, Schiller, & Schneider, 1994).
We also include two indicators of participants’ social connection to their schools. The first is a composite variable derived from three Likert-scale questions on the Wave 1 survey related to feeling socially connected to the school ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree. The measures include: I feel close to people at this school; I feel happy to be at this school; I feel like I am a part of this school. The resulting variable ranges from 1 to 5 with a mean of 3.73. The second indicator is a variable obtained from participants’ reports on the Wave III survey of whether, during adolescence, they “regularly participate (d) in volunteer or community service work.”6 In our sample, 45.7% reported participating in some form of community service as adolescents. Although reported retrospectively, this variable is a viable indicator of community service during adolescence because it spans the high school period.
The West (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas), the Northeast (New York, New Jersey) and some areas of the South (Florida) have traditionally served as immigrant receiving areas (Alba & Nee, 2003; Portes & Rumbaut, 2001). Beginning in the early 1990s, however, a new immigrant diaspora began to populate the South (Wortham, Murillo, & Hamann, 2002). As such, our models contrast South with Midwest, Northeast, and West.7 The concentration of immigrants in the school was transformed to a logit of the proportion first and second-generation immigrants in the school population. Academic press of the school was measured by the proportion of students taking advanced math (greater than Algebra II) prior to graduation, and the school SES was measured by the average level of parents’ education. School social connection was based on the individual level school connection variable, aggregated to the school level. The Appendix shows the means and standard deviations of school-level variables.
Proportions, Means & Standard Deviations (Weighted) for Schools in the Analytic Sample
We use hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to simultaneously estimate differences between the children of immigrants and non-immigrants within the schools they attend (Level 1) and also consider differences between schools (Level 2). The advantage of the HLM approach is that it takes into account the clustering of students in schools to provide accurate estimates of both the individual and school-level factors that predict the outcome. Because both dependent variables are dichotomous, we use Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling (HGLM) for these analyses (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). At Level 1, the coefficients are similar to coefficients from a traditional single-level logistic regression. Because all Level 1 variables are grand mean centered, the intercept can be interpreted as the expected log-odds of the outcome for the average respondent. The Level 2 coefficients are adjustments to that baseline estimate of log-odds. As with a single-level logistic regression, the log-odds can be transformed into estimated probability of the outcome for a particular type of student.
These analyses were conducted separately for each dependent variable, using a series of nested models in which we first enter indicators of individuals’ social backgrounds including immigrant status, then experiences in high school, then interactions between immigrant status and selected social and academic variables, and finally school variables. This allows us to first estimate the effect on registration or voting of being a child of immigrant parents, and then estimate the effect of high school experiences. Interaction terms were created for the independent variables that preliminary exploratory analyses, conducted separately for each subgroup, suggested may have different relationships with the dependent variable for immigrant than for third-plus generation students.
The main goals of these analyses are to investigate (a) whether high school experiences, and social studies coursework in particular, predict participation in two major forms of civic life (voting and registering to vote); (b) whether the children of immigrants are more or less likely than their schoolmates with native-born parents to participate; and finally, (c) whether these effects vary with school composition and context. To provide baseline estimates, Table 1 shows that the children of immigrants are significantly less likely to register to vote than those of non-immigrants (71.0% compared to 77.5%) and similarly less likely to vote in the most recent presidential election (44.0% compared to 48.3%). Children of immigrants are also much more likely to be of Asian, Mexican, or other Latino/a descent and, on average, have parents with lower levels of formal schooling. Not surprisingly, children of immigrants also have significantly lower average AH-PVT scores than those of non-immigrants in their high schools. The generally higher levels of math courses taken by children of immigrants can be accounted for by the large percentage of Asians (over 30%) in this group. In contrast, children of immigrants tend to take fewer social studies courses than their schoolmates but get similar grades in those courses. Interestingly, children of immigrants are significantly more likely to have performed community service than their other schoolmates.
We first examine factors that are associated with registering to vote, which is the most basic and frequent form of civic participation. Table 2 shows the HGLM results predicting the likelihood of registering among U.S. citizens who attended high schools with children of immigrants. Beginning with Model I, we find no statistically significant difference between the children of immigrants and their schoolmates in the likelihood of registering to vote. The coefficients indicate that African Americans were about 60% more likely (1.603 = exp [.472]) than whites to register to vote and Asian Americans were about 56% less likely (.561 = exp [−.578]) than whites to do so. Background variables indicate that young adults whose parents have higher levels of education, older respondents and those who attended church services at least once a week were more likely to register.
Note: Sample size= 8376 students. Unstandardized coefficients are shown with robust standard errors in parentheses.
In Model II we added indicators for participants’ academic and social experiences in high school to estimate their effect on voter registration net of students’ background. Interestingly, formal course enrollments – either type of math courses or number of social studies courses – did not predict registering to vote. In contrast, students who earned higher grades in social studies courses were more likely to register; an increase of one grade point predicted a 29% increase in the odds of registering. Similarly, those who felt connected to their high school or performed community service as adolescents were more likely to register to vote, with an increase in odds of 12% per standard deviation increase in feeling connected. Community service was one of the strongest predictors of registration. Our estimates suggest that “volunteers” are about 72% more likely to register than schoolmates who did not undertake community service. In general, estimated effects of social background remain substantively unchanged from Model I and the estimated overall difference between the children of immigrants and their schoolmates in the likelihood of registering to vote also remain non-significant.
However, we are not only concerned with overall rates of registering to vote, but whether factors related to registering differ between children of immigrants and their schoolmates. In Model III we included interaction terms between immigrant status and (1) being of Asian descent, (2) parents’ education level, (3) the number of social studies credits taken, and (4) participation in community service as an adolescent. A significant interaction term would suggest a difference between children of immigrants and others in the association of that factor with registering to vote. Again, exploratory analyses indicated that the coefficients for these four variables differed significantly between the two groups of students.
One of the most dramatic results in comparison to earlier models is that third-plus generation Asian Americans are no more or less likely to register than children of white native-born parents, shown by the non-significant coefficient for this group in Model III. In contrast, the children of Asian immigrants are much less likely to register to vote, as shown by the significant interaction term.8 Thus, it is only among Asians who are children of immigrants that we estimate differences in reported voting registration. Model III also shows that it is only children of native-born parents for whom we estimate a significant effect of parents’ education on registration; parents’ level of education does not seem to predict registration for children of immigrants.
Turning to school experiences, we estimate that when children of immigrants accumulate more social studies credits they are more likely to register to vote in young adulthood. Specifically, the interaction term between immigrant status and social studies credits suggests that for each additional credit earned, children of immigrants become 22.5% (1.225 = exp[−.024+ .227]) more likely to register to vote. In contrast, children of native-born parents who performed community service in high school were 87% more likely to register than their peers who did not perform community service. Although children of immigrants who performed community service were also more likely to register, the estimated effect of community service on registering was much more modest for this group (they were only 14% (1.146 = exp [.625−.489]) more likely to register than their peers who did not perform community service).
In summary, racial/ethnic status and formal schooling in social studies are related to the likelihood of registering to vote for the children of immigrants; in contrast, socioeconomic status and community service experience has a stronger association with registering to vote for their third-generation plus schoolmates.
In the final model we added indicators for high school context to examine whether school environments may influence civic participation in young adulthood. First, the location and type of high school attended predict voter registration. Estimates shown in Model IV suggest that young adults who attended high school in the South were 39% more likely to register than those who attended schools in other parts of the country, and those who attended private high schools were 58% less likely to register vote than those who attended public high schools.
In model IV we also estimated the effects on voter registration of the school environment as measured by characteristics of the student body. Schools where students’ parents have higher average levels of education may promote voter registration for all students in the school. For every standard deviation increase in the average level of parents’ education in the school, we estimate a 33% increase in the young adult’s odds of registering. This effect is only somewhat weaker, and is in addition to the estimated effect of individuals’ own parents’ education. Interestingly, the effect of having attended a high school in which students felt connected is almost twice as strong (22% change in odds per standard deviation) as that of an individual’s own feeling of connection (13% per standard deviation). Thus, although we estimate no differences between immigrant and native-born young adults, the social environment of the school in which adolescents spend a large amount of their time is related to their likelihood of registering to vote later in life.
We find similar patterns in the likelihood of participants voting in the 2000 Presidential Election, which occurred just prior to the Wave III in 2001. The similarity is not surprising given that individuals must register to vote in order to participate in the election.9 However, the differences in models for these two outcomes highlight their distinctive natures. As with registering, Asian Americans were less likely to vote. Respondents who were older, those with more educated parents, with higher AH-PVT scores, and those who attended religious services during high school were more likely to vote in early adulthood.
The first substantive difference between the two outcomes is apparent in Model II, in which AH-PVT, which measures both verbal ability and scholastic aptitude, remains a statistically significant predictor of voting after controlling for formal schooling experiences.
More important for our research question about how schools shape immigrants’ voting, Model III does not show statistically significant differences between children of immigrants and their native-born schoolmates in the relationships between either being of Asian descent or not, and participating in community service as adolescents or not. In other words, the children of Asian immigrants were least likely to vote compared not only to native-born whites but also to native-born Asian Americans and white immigrant groups, but there were no significant differences between groups. Furthermore, the estimated effect on voting of participating in community service during adolescence is similar for children of native born and immigrant parents alike.
However, the interactions between immigrant status and both parents’ education level and social studies credits earned remain statistically significant and follow the same pattern as for registering to vote.
Finally, Model IV indicates that only two attributes of adolescents’ high schools predict early adult voting. Even after controlling on students’ own family background, adolescents who attended high schools where the average parents’ education level was higher were more likely to have voted in 2000 than those who attended schools with lower average levels of parents’ education. And, those who attended schools where students reported feeling more connected to the school were also more likely to vote.
In summary, generally the factors that predict young adults’ voting are similar to those that are associated with registering. Although the coefficient for immigrant status alone is not statistically significant in any model, children of immigrants do appear to differ from their schoolmates in which factors are associated with their likelihood of civic participation. First, while the children of Asian immigrants were less likely to register to vote than children of other immigrants or children of native-born Asian Americans, they were no less likely to go to the polls in a Presidential election. Second, community service is more weakly related to registering to vote among children of immigrants than for their schoolmates.
Third, parents’ education level matters less, and formal social studies coursework matters more for children of immigrants compared to their schoolmates. These interaction effects make the lack of a significant coefficient for immigrant status possibly misleading because our estimates suggest that there may be differences between immigrant and native-born students in the contribution of school and parents to the development of civic participation.
Figures 1 and 2, which show expected levels of civic participation for otherwise “average” respondents, illustrate these differences. Figure 1 shows that children of immigrants are both less likely to register and to vote than those of native-born parents with similar levels of education. At low levels of parental education, there is virtually no difference between children of immigrants and native-born parents in the probability that they register or vote in early adulthood. The difference between the two groups increases as parents’ education increases because children of more highly educated native born parents have higher levels of civic participation while parents’ education is unrelated to civic participation among the children of immigrants.
Differences in the Effect of Parents’ Education on Civic Participation in Young Adulthood by Immigrant Status
Differences in the Effects of Social Studies Credits on Civic Participation in Young Adulthood by Immigrant Status
In contrast, we found that some school experiences predict the civic participation of children of immigrants, but not those of native-born parents. Again comparing otherwise “average” students, children of immigrants who accumulate more social studies credits in high school tend to be more likely to register and to vote (Figure 2). While the estimated differences between the two groups in the probabilities of registering and voting is relatively small among students with few social studies credits, the gap widens considerably around three or four credits. This represents about one course per year, which is the average amount of social studies required for high school in most schools and states. The children of immigrants who accumulate more than four social studies credits are over 10 percentage points more likely to register to vote and 20 percentage points more likely to vote than the children of native-born parents. The gap is produced because children of immigrants are more likely to register and to vote when they have taken more social studies, but taking more social studies does not appear to impact the civic participation of children of native-born parents.
The findings presented above provide tangible evidence of the ways in which American high schools can, and do, plant the seeds for civic participation and ultimately the democratic citizenry necessary for the continuation of U.S. civic society. Performance in social studies coursework predicts active civic participation, an indication that our high school curriculum is in fact relevant and contributory in our increasingly disconnected society (Putnam, 2000). In an era of increasing immigration, formal education gains importance; our findings indicate that the social studies instruction students receive in high school is associated with active civic participation in early adulthood, and is even more important for children of immigrants than for children of native-born parents. While formal education in general is a known predictor of voting during young adulthood, in this study we were able to tease apart the effects of social studies coursework in particular to estimate the specific effects of formal civic education on the development of citizenry among immigrant youth.
While we understand that the social studies curriculum, as with high school curriculum generally, remains stratified, this study uses a nationally representative dataset to identify the civic benefits of social studies course taking for a key target population: immigrant young adults. This is not to say that the high school structure and curriculum is without flaw, but rather that there are specific ways in which schools prepare immigrant youth for full, active civic participation during young adulthood. This is especially important in light of the negligible effects of parental education level on immigrant youths’ voting behaviors; where parent education predicts voting for the children of the native-born, it has little effect for children of immigrants. In lieu of parental knowledge of the civic system, the social studies curriculum of the schools appears to guide these students’ civic development. As institutions of the state, schools have the ability to shape the civic behaviors of this growing segment of our population, children of immigrant parents.
Schools provide not only the academic base for young adults’ entry into the academic, civic, and professional spheres, but also act as a source of socialization, providing a template for the organization and negotiation of adult civic society. Schools form the leaders of tomorrow not only through the formal curriculum as discussed above, but also through the informal, social curriculum. In the school, children of immigrants find the segment of American society into which they will begin to assimilate; among adolescents, schools provide the first community in which they, independent of their parents and families, begin to adopt active, participatory roles. We argue that American high schools may provide a microcosm of American society into which immigrant youth initially assimilate while simultaneously receiving their formal education and preparation for the post-secondary world awaiting them upon graduation. High schools provide adolescents with the first experience of belonging to a community outside, even independent of the home, and are thus formative in developing the next generation of active citizens. Connection to the school community as well as commitment to the larger community via community service both predict civic participation during young adulthood for all students, immigrant and third-plus generation alike. In effect, the informal realm of schooling provides the practice steps necessary during adolescence for active participation in adult civic society.
Perhaps most interesting is the importance of school climate and students’ own sense of connection to the school, of belonging. At the school level, the aggregate social connection of the student body has an almost synergistic effect, increasing the likelihood of both registering and voting during young adulthood among all students. Similarly, schools with higher levels of SES (as measured by parents’ education) also promote early adult civic involvement, above and beyond students’ own socioeconomic background, also suggesting that there is something tangible about the school climate that may lay a foundation for a sense of social responsibility or leadership. This speaks to the importance of community building in adolescence as a bridge to civic participation during young adulthood.
Interestingly, school climate and students’ social connection to school appear to apply equally to immigrant and non-immigrant students. The proportion of immigrant students in the school ultimately did not affect immigrant youths’ likelihood of voting or registering to vote. Although we initially expected that immigrant students might benefit from having more immigrant classmates, either because of social connections or through the provision of curriculum tailored to their needs, this does not appear to be the case. We estimated models without other measures of school connection, and we estimated cross-level interactions to determine whether the school climate affected immigrants differently, and found no significant differences for immigrant students, leading us to conclude that our findings about the importance of a welcoming school environment in promoting civic participation apply equally well to immigrants and students with native-born parents.
Ultimately, we conclude that the formal curriculum and informal, social connections provided by schools are each important for the development of civic participation among the youth of today. However, for immigrant youth, the formal curriculum is especially critical. While children of immigrants take significantly less social studies coursework than the children of native-born parents, the amount of coursework they take directly predicts their registration and voting during young adulthood. Although youth voter turnout has begun to increase following the 2000 election covered in this study (Lopez et al., 2006; Lopez, Marcelo, & Kirby, 2007), there is still substantial room for improvement, especially among immigrant youth. With this study, we have identified one clear way in which schools can act to improve participation at the polls. Although we have no way to gauge the quality of their civic knowledge with our data, it is likely that the curriculum is producing better informed voters as well. In this way we may be underestimating the contribution of social studies curriculum to the civic preparation of immigrant students. Improving immigrant students’ access to social studies curriculum and greater social studies coursework will not only promote their overall academic preparation for the adult world, but will also likely directly bolster their civic contributions as young adults.
Note: Sample size= 8376 students. Unstandardized coefficients are shown with robust standard errors in parentheses. †p<.10, *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001
This research was funded by the Russell Sage Project # 88-06-12, Chandra Muller (PI) and Rebecca Callahan (Co-PI). It was also supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01 HD40428-02), from the National Science Foundation (REC-0126167) to the Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Chandra Muller (PI). This study uses data from the Add Health project, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry (PI) and Peter Bearman, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth/contract.html). We are grateful to Dr. Hilary Conklin for her feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript, as well as to Dr. Patricia Avery and three anonymous reviewers at TRSE for their insightful comments and suggestions. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies.
We use the term immigrant to refer to youth who are children of foreign-born parents (either or both parents born outside the United States), encompassing both first- and second generation adolescents. A critical factor in schools’ role in civic education relates to parental familiarity with the civic system; both first and second generation youth have foreign-born parents new to the U.S. civic culture. Preliminary analyses found no significant differences in predicting our outcomes for first as opposed to second generation immigrant citizen young adults.
Readers interested in a detailed description of the coding for these variables and others used for this paper, may contact the first author for a complete listing.
We recognize that these data include individuals’ self-reports of voter registration and voting; there is likely some discrepancy between reported and actual voter registration and voting.
In supplementary analyses, we either eliminated these cases or classified them as “not registered.” In neither case were the results substantively different, which is not surprising given the small number of cases.
One Carnegie unit is equivalent to three hours of instruction per a week for an academic year.
The survey does not allow reliable identification of which community service activities were undertaken by the participant’s own initiative or part of activities sponsored by schools or other organizations.
In analyses not shown we found that the South was the only region that was significantly different, so we combined the other regions for our analytic models.
After adding in the interaction terms, the coefficient for non-Mexican Latino/as becomes statistically significant at the .05 level. However, the p-value remains so close to .05 that we are reluctant to make much of this finding.
The patterns are remarkably substantively similar if a reduced sample of only those registered to vote is used for predicting differences in the likelihood of voting. The only two exceptions are (a) the coefficient for Asian descent is never statistically significant and (b) the interaction between social studies credits and generational status is not statistically significant. In both cases, the increase in standard errors relative to the decrease in the gamma coefficient indicates that the difference may be simply due to the smaller sample size.
Rebecca M. Callahan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602.
Chandra Muller, Professor in the Population Research Center, Department of Sociology at The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 78712..
Kathryn S. Schiller, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Administration & Policy Studies at SUNY University at Albany, Albany, NY, 12222.
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