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Abstract
English learner (EL) students are a quickly growing school-age population in most Anglophone immigrant-receiving countries. For example, they represent 10% of U.S. K-12 students. With an urgent need for a highly educated workforce, the ability of nations like the U.S. to effectively prepare EL students in schools has become an important agenda. However, a considerable gap exists between U.S. EL and non-EL students in college enrollment rates. While a substantive scholarship has focused on enhancing pedagogical practices for EL students, much less has examined EL students’ access to higher education. In the decades since the passage of the Bilingual Education Act and Lau v. Nichols Supreme Court ruling, EL students and educators have experienced constantly shifting policy and demographic landscapes. However, little is known about how EL students’ college access outcomes have been changed within the historical national backdrops and policy shifts. This dissertation investigates how individual, family, school, and state contextual factors have contributed to U.S. EL students’ variable performance compared to their non-EL peers. The study also examines if and how these outcomes and factors have evolved over the past three decades. In this dissertation, I propose an integrated EL student college access model drawing from human capital theory, Bourdieusian theory of practice, and a five-stage college choice model. This study analyzes the three most recent nationally representative data sets from the NCES secondary longitudinal studies (HSLS:2009, ELS:2002, and NELS:1988) that include longitudinal educational surveys of students, their parents, and educators in the past three decades. Findings demonstrate that although EL students’ college-going performance has improved over the past decades, a major achievement gap exists consistently between EL and non-EL students in terms of their college-going environments and outcomes. EL students have faced challenges from different contexts during their access to college, and these factors have also played different roles at different college access stages from college aspirations to college enrollments. This study provides implications for researchers, educators, and policymakers about effective practices that assist EL students’ academic learning and high school-to-college transition.