Educational Attainment in Immigrant Families: Community Context and Family Background (The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society)

read early drafts. I would also like to acknowledge the support of Charles Goldman, Dominic Brewer, and Sue Bodilly in the Education Unit at RAND who gave me valuable time and support to complete this book. Sheila Kirby and Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo provided valuable feedback and suggestions for improvement. M. Yvonne Gonzalez and Jesse Reyes edited early drafts and Louis Ramirez deftly handled a difficult final review. Their reading of drafts of this manuscript improved it greatly, for which I am deeply grateful. However, I claim full responsibility for any errors or faults within. Gonzalez examines how the experiences of immigrant parents in the labor markets of their country of origin and in the U.S. affect their children's schooling experiences. The author analyzes the differences in likelihood to enter post-secondary schooling among white, black, Latino and Asian children who have two parents who are immigrants, only one parent who is foreign-born or both parents who are native-born. She finds that children in homes with two parents who are immigrants go farther in school than those from the other two groups, but that the ethnicity of the two-immigrant-parent families is also a factor. The study offers a number of policy implications for educators and policy makers working with immigrant populations. Gonzalez works as a social scientist for RAND Corporation. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR For many decades the primary debate surrounding immigration policy in the United States has been about the consequences of immigration on the national economy: how well immigrant adults perform in the labor market, to what extent immigrant adults affect the employment potential for native adults, or whether immigrant adults contribute or detract from the economy.