Changes in the educational achievement of immigrant youth in western societies: The contextual effects of national (educational) policies

Prior research has identified a large number of factors that explain differences in scholastic achievement. However, analyses of the educational performance of students from immigrant families and possible changes in these performances over time remain quite scarce. The present article addresses this shortcoming by means of a multilevel analysis of 24 Western countries based on PISA data from 2000 to 2012. Since the relevance of individual explanatory factors and school characteristics has been repeatedly shown, we focus on structural effects at the level of national policies. Our results show that the disparities in educational success between native and immigrant youth declined between 2000 and 2012 in several countries under study, especially in Central Europe. Nevertheless, there still are marked and relatively stable differences between various types of immigrant societies (e.g. traditional immigration countries like Canada vs. Continental European Countries like Germany). Analysing macro-level factors we observe stability as well as change: On the one hand, the positive effect of the quality of the educational system for immigrant students' educational achievement remains stable. On the other hand, negative effects of the stratification of the educational system diminished, while educational expenditures gained influence over the last decade.