In the United States, there is a wide academic achievement gap, beginning in early childhood, between children with more and less educated parents. However, we know little about the differences in size and trajectories of achievement gaps associated with parental education and nativity. Drawing on two US education datasets that enable me to follow a cohort of children from kindergarten to high school, I estimate the size and trajectories of standardized test-score gaps associated with parental education, separately for children of native-born and immigrant parents. I find that the test-score gap between children with more and less educated native-born parents stays wide and stable from kindergarten entry to high school. In contrast, the test-score gap between children with more and less educated immigrant parents is narrower in kindergarten because of higher achievement of children with less educated immigrant parents, compared to their counterparts with less educated native-born parents. Moreover, the gap between more and less educated immigrant parents further narrows in their early life course because the achievement of children with less educated immigrant parents improves relative to children with more educated immigrant parents. Differences by parental nativity in the size and trajectories of achievement gaps associated with parental education can be partially explained by the fact that children with less educated immigrant parents have relatively greater resources than their peers with less educated native-born parents from early in life. My findings provide evidence that the “immigrant advantage” in academic achievement, a common finding in the literature on immigrant education in the United States, originates early in the life course.

在美国，从幼儿期开始，父母受教育程度较高的孩子和父母受教育程度较低的孩子之间就存在着巨大的学业成绩差距。然而，我们对与父母教育和出生相关的成就差距的大小和轨迹差异知之甚少。利用两个美国教育数据集，我能够跟踪一群从幼儿园到高中的孩子，我分别估算了与父母教育相关的标准化考试成绩差距的大小和轨迹，分别针对本土出生的孩子和移民父母的孩子。我发现，从幼儿园到高中，本地出生的父母受教育程度较高和较低的孩子之间的考试成绩差距一直很大且稳定。相比之下，移民父母受教育程度较高和较低的孩子在幼儿园的考试成绩差距较小，因为与父母受教育程度较低的本土出生的孩子相比，移民父母受教育程度较低的孩子成绩更高。此外，受教育程度较高的移民父母与受教育程度较低的移民父母之间的差距在其早期生命历程中进一步缩小，因为与受教育程度较高的移民父母的孩子相比，受教育程度较低的移民父母的孩子的成就有所提高。与父母教育相关的成就差距的大小和轨迹因父母出生而存在差异，部分原因是移民父母受教育程度较低的孩子从小就比父母受教育程度较低的本土出生的同龄人拥有相对更多的资源。我的研究结果证明，学术成就方面的“移民优势”是美国移民教育文献中的一个常见发现，它起源于生命历程的早期。