English Language Learners’ Access to and Attainment in Postsecondary Education YASUKO KANNO AND JENNIFER G. CROMLEY Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Although English language learners (ELLs) are currently the fastest- growing group among the school-age population in the United States, there is surprisingly little information on their participation in postsecondary education. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), a nationally representative sample of eighth graders who were followed for 12 years, we present one of the first national-level examinations of ELLs’ access to and degree of attainment in postsecondary education. Our analyses show that ELLs lag far behind both English-proficient linguistic minority students and monolingual English-speaking students in college access and attainment. Only one in eight ELLs in the NELS:88 study earned a bachelor’s degree, whereas one in four English-proficient linguistic minority students and one in three monolingual English speakers did. In addition, one in five ELLs was a high school dropout. Subse- quent probit regressions reveal that a host of nonlinguistic factors, rather than the ELLs’ linguistic background per se, contributed to ELLs’ limited postsecondary education access and attainment. doi: 10.1002/tesq.49 E nglish language learners (ELLs), students who are in the process of learning English and who need linguistic support in order to learn grade-level academic content, are currently the fastest-growing group among the school-age population in the United States (Wolf, Herman, Bachman, Bailey, & Griffin, 2008). There are now roughly 5.3 million ELLs in K–12 public schools in the United States, repre- senting approximately 10.8% of all students (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, n.d.). The U.S. Department of Education estimates that this figure will increase to 25% of students by 2025 (Spellings, 2005). If ELLs are rapidly increasing in number in K–12 schools, we can expect them to be a growing presence in postsec- ondary education (PSE) as well. Yet little is currently known about ELLs’ college-going patterns. TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 47, No. 1, March 2013 © 2012 TESOL International Association 89