Moving for Opportunities? Examining Public School Attendance and Reading Achievement of Migrant Students in Beijing.

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, privately-run migrant schools have been established to provide affordable education for children of migrant workers who encountered difficulties in receiving compulsory education in urban areas due to China’s household registration system. Recent policies promulgated by China’s government have gradually eliminated the institutional and economic barriers to equal access to public schools for migrant children; however, few studies have examined whether these new policies are leading to equitable achievement for migrant children. This study intends to bridge the gaps in previous studies by addressing the following research questions: (1) what is the current magnitude of achievement gap between urban students and migrant students, and does the achievement gap for migrant students differ in public schools and migrant schools? and (2) do migrant students benefit academically from attending public schools, and if so, are public schools effectively narrowing the urban-migrant achievement gap? By making use of a cross-sectional longitudinal dataset collected from 19 elementary schools in a southwestern Beijing school district, I applied three-level hierarchical growth models to estimate the growth trajectories of grade 3 and 5 migrant students. I also combined propensity score matching and hierarchical growth modeling to strengthen the causal inference of school effect in this observational study. Results showed that urban and migrant schools varied significantly in initial reading achievement level and growth rate. They also indicated that the variation within schools was greater than the variation between schools on initial status. However, almost all variation in growth rate was attributable to between-school heterogeneity. Results also showed the achievement gap between migrant students studying in public schools and migrant students studying in migrant schools expanded at both grades; however, the increase was only significant at grade 5. Moreover, migrant students studying in urban public schools demonstrated comparable growth trajectories in reading achievement at both grades. In other words, attending public schools neither widened nor narrowed the urban-migrant achievement gap. These results suggest some ways that the changes in educational policy might benefit migrant students, but even more evident is the need for additional measures to improve migrant students’ opportunities for high quality education.