Children of Turkish Migrants Need Education Reform Now

Recent findings on the educational attainment of Turkish migrants in Germany are much worse than I expected.  Söhn and Özcan (2006) point out the following:

• In 2003, 14% of Turkish students left school without any degree while only 6% of German students did.
• In the same year, 31% of German students finished school with a higher secondary degree (which is required to attend university) whereas only 10% of Turkish students did.
• 25% of 4th graders with two migrant parents scored “weak” in the PIRLS reading comprehension test, which means they couldn’t understand the sense of short sentences; 5% of 4th graders with no migrant background scored at this level.
• Half of 15-year old Turkish students were in the lowest of five competence levels on the PISA math test, and 20% did not reach the lowest level of reading literacy (compared to 10% of students with German-born parents).

The authors argue that the key personal factors explaining these outcomes are the individual’s migration biography (age at migration, length of residency, intent to stay or return), a student’s facility with German, and the socio-economic background of migrant parents.

Institutionally, they criticize the German system for tracking students at such a young age into different school types based largely on German language ability.  The problem is that German schools provide almost no resources to help migrant children learn German as a second language.  Children who were raised in Turkish neighborhoods and didn’t attend German-language kindergartens often have a deficit in German that places them at greater risk of being sent to “special needs” schools for students with learning disabilities.  Likewise, when decisions are made about whether kids should continue with a vocational education or a university-prep education, Turks are almost twice as likely to be sent to the Hauptschule, the lowest-level secondary school.  Language appears to play a role in this.

Other problems include Turkish parents not being familiar with the German education system and not appreciating the benefits of early childhood education (kindergarten isn’t free, though, so financial as well as cultural factors may lead an unemployed mother, for example, to look after her own children at home).  Also keep in mind that most first generation Turkish migrants had very little education themselves and that teaching a child to read is seen by many Turks as the prerogative of school teachers.

There are certainly more issues involved than what I’ve mentioned here, including a biggie:  ethnic segregation of schools and neighborhoods.  It’s also worth pointing out that the empirical trends are somewhat murky because of limited data on educational attainment, parental nativity, residency status, date of naturalization, etc.  I was told by a WZB employee last night that a new dataset is coming out in 2007 that should address some of these gaps.

What Should Be Done?

I think the authors’ suggestions sound pretty good:

1. Increase supply of quality kindergartens and day-care centers to help migrant children learn German.
2. Train teachers to better manage and cater to culturally diverse classes.
3. Promote positive role models by enhancing scholarship and incentive programs for successful migrant students.
4. Reform the hierarchical system of German schools so that children study together in comprehensive schools for longer.

What they don’t call for directly is the development of “German as a second language” programs.  I suppose that kind of thing would be tricky, both practically and politically, but research from the US is pretty clear about the benefits of bilingualism.  I guess the tough part would be getting German states to expend resources for programs that would emphasize the retention of foreign languages alongside the acquisition of German–that doesn’t seem to be part of the German integration paradigm (someone let me know if I’ve got that wrong).  For one thing, it might require the use of foreign language instruction in public schools, but then, which languages?  Just Turkish?  Arabic?  Serbo-Croatian?

I’m no expert on this and should probably defer to my friend Josh, who teaches ESL in Queens.  Still, I think the issue of language, integration, and social inequality is critical, and it’s really disappointing to see such a dismal track record for Turkish migrants.  I’ll be coming back to this subject of language and integration in a future post.