School Context and Individual Acculturation: How School Composition Affects Latino Students' Acculturation

Understanding how schoolsa key context for childrenshape students' cultural trajectories is important since these trajectories are tied to youth development and achievement. This study assessed how the size of the school's group of acculturated Latino and non-Latino students influenced the acculturation of 1,720 Latino 5th-grade students from urban public schools in the Southwest United States. A longitudinal secondary data analysis revealed that controlling for wave 1 acculturation, youths in schools with larger proportions of linguistically acculturated students were more acculturated at wave 2 than youths in schools with smaller proportions of such students. This effect was independent of Latino students' baseline acculturation level and was found even in schools with minority proportions of more acculturated students.