Scholars who study Southeast Asian American (SEAA) communities are in consensus that this group's realities diverge from their Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) counterparts. In fact, nearly four decades after large-scale immigration as political refugees from Southeast Asia (SEA), this population composed of Cambodians, Hmong, Laotians, and Vietnamese people still continues to struggle with academic, social, and economic mobility in the United States. Nonetheless, SEAAs are enveloped in the model minority myth, which positions all AAPIs as successful. As a result, SEAAs are overlooked and consequently, understudied. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the association between language use and the educational attainment levels of SEAA students through disaggregated data for a more accurate representation of their school experiences. This dissertation employs the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS: 1991-2006), which offers access to SEAA student populations in two popular immigrant destinations: San Diego, California and Ft. Lauderdale/Miami, Florida. In an effort to disrupt deficit-based thinking and simultaneously provide numerical data useful for school policy development and implications, this dissertation joins the emerging field referred to as critical quantitative research. Segmented assimilation theory (SAT), Asian critical race theory (CRT), and community cultural wealth (CCW) were selected to guide and interpret the results of the multilevel ordinal logistic regression modeling (MOLRM) conducted in this study. As a selection criterion, the study was limited to students who indicated having at least one parent from Cambodia, Laos, or Vietnam. Data were collected across a three-wave ten-year panel of immigrant children from early adolescence to early adulthood conducted in 1992-1993, 1995-1996, and 2001-2003.The MOLRM analysis confirmed that the English proficiency variable was a significant predictor of overall educational attainment (p = 0.023). However, once added, the student variables gender, socioeconomic status, and experience of in-school discrimination accounted for a greater proportion of statistical power to predict overall educational attainment. The findings can be leveraged to inform the development of suitable school structures and policies that may meet the learning needs and preferences of SEAA students. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]