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Description: Learning a second language in childhood is inherently advantageous for communication. However, parents, educators, and scientists have been interested in determining whether there are additional cognitive advantages. One of the most exciting, yet controversial (1) findings about bilinguals is a reported advantage for executive function. That is, several studies suggest that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals on tasks assessing cognitive abilities that are central to the voluntary control of thoughts and behaviors—the so-called “executive functions” (e.g., attention, inhibitory control, task switching, and resolving conflict). Although a number of small-sample studies have reported a bilingual executive function advantage (2-4; see for review 5-7), there have been some failures to replicate (8-11), and recent meta-analyses have called into question the reliability of the original empirical claims (6,7). Here we show, in a very large demographically representative sample (N = 4524) of 9-10-year-olds across the United States, that there is little evidence for a bilingual advantage for inhibitory control/attention and task switching/cognitive flexibility, which are key aspects of executive functions. We also replicate previously-reported disadvantages in English vocabulary in bilinguals (5,12). However, these are substantially mitigated when we account for individual differences in socioeconomic status or intelligence. In summary, notwithstanding the inherently positive benefits of learning a second language in childhood (13), we found little evidence that it engenders additional benefits to executive function development.