Is Spanish-only schooling responsible for the Puerto Rican language gap?

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Abstract

Between 1898 and 1948, English was the language of instruction for most post-primary grades in Puerto Rican public schools. Since 1949, the language of instruction in all grades has been Spanish. We use these shifts in language of instruction policy to estimate the effect of English-intensive instruction on the English-language skills of Puerto Ricans. Although naïve estimates suggest that English instruction increased English-speaking ability among Puerto Rican natives, estimates that allow for education-specific cohort trends show no effect. This result is surprising in light of the strong presumption by American policymakers at the time that instruction in English is the best way to raise English proficiency. This has implications for school language policies in former colonies as well as for U.S. education policy toward immigrant children.

Section snippets

Background

After 400 years as a Spanish colony, Puerto Rico became an American possession in 1898 as a result of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Spanish-American War. The U.S. took an active role in the island's administration, particularly in education.5 One American goal was to expand the public school system. Under Spanish rule, educational opportunities had, for the

Data and descriptive statistics

The empirical analysis pools individual-level data from the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census long forms in Puerto Rico and on the mainland.14

Difference-in-differences estimates

Simple differences-in-differences-type estimates suggest that those who received English-intensive instruction were significantly more likely to speak English. This can be seen in Panel A of Table 2, which reports ordinary least squares estimates of Eq. (1) using the sample born 1924–1943.18

Conclusions

Changes in Puerto Rican language of instruction policies, culminating in the 1949 language reform eliminating English instruction, provide a unique opportunity to assess the long-run consequences of English-intensive instruction for the English-language skills of a Spanish-speaking population. Perhaps surprisingly, our results suggest that the change from English to Spanish as the medium of instruction in public schools had little effect on Puerto Rican English proficiency, at least as far as

Acknowledgements

We thank Eli Berman, Chinhui Juhn and participants in the 2003 Texas Econometrics Camp, Fall 2005 NBER Education meetings and Spring 2006 SOLE meetings for helpful comments. The views expressed herein are those of the authors.

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