Research on the educational enrollment of immigrants has typically asserted that today's immigrant children are educationally disadvantaged and that earlier waves of immigrants were more readily absorbed into the American educational system. This article addresses these assumptions, drawing on traditional assimilationist and status competition approaches to racial and ethnic stratification. Data from the 1920 IPUMS census database are used to analyze the school participation of 15 to 18 year olds who were living in their parents' homes. The findings demonstrate that the process of assimilation was not uniform for all groups. Some groups achieved parity with the native stock by the third generation, and others took at least an additional generation or experienced declines in the proportions who were enrolled in school. In general, the results suggest strong parallels between the educational experiences of white ethnic youths in 1920 and those o today's immigran youths.
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