Abstract:

The underperformance of Emergent Bilingual students compared to their native English-speaking counterparts in the State of Texas have been documented in research (Flores et al., 2012, Martin, 2022; Resilla & Slate, 2022, 2023). However, a gap exists in the research literature regarding the reading college readiness of Emergent Bilingual boys. It is imperative to specifically investigate the issue of their reading college readiness because several researchers (Breda et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2015; Reilly et al., 2015, 2017; Sax et al., 2016; Stoet & Geary, 2013) have explored and concluded that gender gaps exist with respect to reading and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). These authors have asserted that boys outperform girls in STEM whereas girls have better reading and language arts skills than boys.
In this article, we examined the degree to which Emergent Bilingual boys and non-Emergent Bilingual boys differed in their performance on the Texas state-mandated English II End-of-Course exam. We specifically determined whether Emergent Bilingual boys and non-Emergent Bilingual boys differed in their performance on three grade level standards: Approaches Grade Level, Meets Grade Level, and Masters Grade Level. These three measures were examined for two school years: 2017-2018 and 2018-2019, prior to the pandemic.
The research questions we answered in this article were:
(a) What is the effect of language status on the performance of boys on the English I End-of-Course exam Approaches Grade Level standard?;
(b) What is the effect of language status on the performance of boys on the English II End-of-Course exam Meets Grade Level Standard?;
(c) What is the effect of language status on the performance of boys on the English II End-of-Course exam Masters Grade Level Standard?; and
(d) What consistencies are present in the performance of Emergent Bilingual boys and non-Emergent Bilingual boys on the three grade level standards across two school years of data analyzed? The first three research questions were answered separately for the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 school years, whereas both school years of data were analyzed for the fourth research question.
Present in this multiyear investigation was an ex post facto or causal-comparative research design (Johnson & Christensen, 2020). Pre-existing data, obtained from the Texas Education Agency Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS Data Standards, 2018), were analyzed in this investigation. The independent variable was the language status of boys: Emergent Bilingual or non-Emergent Bilingual.
Pearson chi-square inferential statistical procedures were used to answer the three research questions regarding grade level standards.
Results from this statewide investigation may be unequivocally interpreted to reflect the underperformance of Emergent Bilingual boys compared to non-Emergent Bilingual boys with respect to reading college readiness for the two school years of data analyzed herein. Highlighted in this investigation were that the percentages of non-Emergent Bilingual boys who outperformed Emergent Bilingual boys for both school years was about one-fourth times higher in the Approaches Grade Level standard and one-tenth times higher in the Meets Grade Level standard. Having less than 1% of Emergent Bilingual boys meeting Masters Grade Level standard for reading college readiness is quite alarming.

Keywords:

Emergent Bilingual, English II End-of-Course exam, Texas, boys.