Many second-generation immigrant (SGI) students are heritage-bilinguals whose mother tongue is not their school's instructional language. Adopting sociological and psycholinguistic perspectives, we examined the differences in achievement in various school subjects between SGI heritage-bilingual students and their non-immigrant background (NIB) heritage-monolingual peers in Israel. Most of the SGI students were from highly educated families. Based on Israel's national matriculation database, the study revealed that compared to NIB students, SGI students achieved lower scores in heavy-verbal subjects and Mathematics. However, controlling for academic proficiency in the instructional language reduced or eliminated these differences. Conversely, in a foreign language, SGI students achieved higher scores. These findings have practical implications for educational policy. First, even SGI students from educated families have linguistic disadvantages requiring intervention. Second, their advantage in foreign languages suggests that SGI students develop better meta-linguistic competence, highlighting the benefits of preserving their heritage language.

许多第二代移民 (SGI) 学生是双语双语者，他们的母语是不是他们学校的教学语言。我们采用社会学和心理语言学的观点，研究了以色列 SGI 传统双语学生与其非移民背景 (NIB) 传统单语同龄人在不同学校科目的成绩差异。大多数SGI学生来自受过高等教育的家庭。根据以色列的国家预科数据库，该研究显示，与NIB学生相比，SGI学生在重口语科目和数学方面的成绩较低。然而，控制教学语言的学术能力减少或消除了这些差异。相反，在外语方面，SGI 学生取得了更高的分数。这些发现对教育政策具有实际意义。第一的，即使是来自受过教育家庭的 SGI 学生也有语言上的劣势，需要干预。其次，他们在外语方面的优势表明 SGI 学生发展了更好的元语言能力，突出了保护他们的传统语言的好处。