Are students languishing in English learner programs?
Shirin Parsavand | 1-4-2010 | Comments |
| Print this Page
Students who enter school knowing little English often remain in English learner programs for their entire school careers. That students remain in these programs for years without becoming fluent in English has long been known, but there is little agreement on what to do about it.
A recent report looked at the problem in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Nearly 30 percent of students who are in programs for English learners in Los Angeles Unified are not reclassified by eighth grade, according to the report from USC’s Tomas Rivera Policy Institute. Three quarters of those who remain in English learner programs as they enter high school were enrolled in Los Angeles Unified since first grade, the report said.
Those who remain in English learner programs when they enter high school do worse in school and are more likely to drop out than students who are reclassified, even after controlling for past academic performance, according to the study released in October, “Qué Pasa?: Are English Language Learning Students Remaining in English Learning Classes Too Long?”
Los Angeles Unified is not the only district where students remain in English learner programs for many years. Schools have struggled for decades with the best way to teach children from homes where the native language is not English.
The 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols required that schools take action to help non-English speaking children overcome educational barriers. But federal law does not require instruction in students’ primary language and doesn’t spell out exactly how schools should teach these students.
In California, bilingual education was scaled back after the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998. But debate continues over the best methods of helping students learn English.
One answer may be working with students early enough that they don’t have to enter English learner programs in the first place. That’s the goal of the preschool program at Proyecto Pastoral, an organization in Boyle Heights that works with low-income families through education, leadership and service projects.
Designing programs that work
Proyecto Pastoral now has 38 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in its preschool program, which this year became full day, said Rafael Ramirez, the organization’s director of early childhood education centers.
About 80 percent of the children come from families where the parents speak mainly Spanish, he said.
Teachers use both English and Spanish with the children, but focus heavily on building their English skills, Ramirez said.
“We tell the parents you can teach Spanish at home. We’ll teach English here,” he said.
Yazmin Salazar, whose 4-year-old son is enrolled in the preschool program, said she’s noticed an increase in her son’s vocabulary.
“He’s learning so fast,” she said in Spanish, translated by her son’s teacher, Martha Moreno.
At Washington Prep High School in Westmont, adjacent to South Los Angeles, about 20 percent of the students are in English learner programs. Some of these students should have been referred in earlier grades to health services and extra tutoring, but never were, said Victor Partida, the school’s English learner coordinator.
Partida has been Washington’s English learner coordinator for 15 years, and now serves in the job on a full time basis. But many other schools have part-time coordinators, and the job changes hands frequently, he said. More experienced coordinators likely could do a better job of monitoring students, he said.
Once students are in high school and lack reading and writing skills, it’s hard for them to learn.
“When these kids are older it’s a big frustration for them to be in these classes,” Partida said.
Deciding on readiness for regular classes
Under state guidelines, students must score as “advanced” or “early advanced” on the California English Language Development Test – the state test for English learners -- to be considered fluent. They also must score "intermediate" or higher in each of the four skills on the test, which measures listening, speaking, reading and writing.
In Los Angeles Unified, students also must score at the basic level or higher on the California Standards Test in English and earn a C or better in English. That’s a higher standard than in some districts, which don’t require a specific grade to reclassify students. But statewide, only 10 percent of English learners were reclassified in 2007-08, compared to 15 percent of students in Los Angeles Unified.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has called on school districts to reclassify more of the students who test as fluent.
Better outcomes for those reclassified
The Tomas Rivera Policy Institute’s study, which looked at 28,714 English learners who were in sixth grade in 1999, found that students who were reclassified as late as eighth grade were better off than their counterparts who stayed in English learner programs. The reclassified students were two-thirds as likely to fail ninth grade and half as likely to drop out, compared to those who remained English learners going into high school.
About one third of the approximately 680,000 students in Los Angeles Unified are English learners, while another 27 percent of students were English learners at some point during their time in school. Of the students in the Rivera Institute study who remained in English learner programs through eighth grade, more than half were born in the United States and had been in English learner programs since at least the first grade.
Other research has shown students throughout California who are in English learner classes are more likely to be taught by teachers who are not fully credentialed and to have inferior resources. For instance, UC Santa Barbara education professor Russell Rumberger found that 25 percent of teachers of English learners in California did not have full teacher credentials in 2001-02, compared to 14 percent of teachers statewide.
Still, it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the causes of English learners’ performance, said Edward Flores, one of the researchers who worked on the Rivera Institute report.
Los Angeles Unified itself has begun to focus on why some students remain in English learner programs for long periods, said Kathy Hayes, chief educational research scientist with the district.
“Are they getting the kind of instruction they need to become reclassified?” Hayes said. “If they’re not learning English in six years, then what’s going on?”
For more information:
A policy brief based on the study from the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute “Qué Pasa?: Are English Language Learning Students Remaining in English Learning Classes Too Long?” is at:
http://www.trpi.org/PDFs/LAUSD%20Policy%20Brief.pdf
The full report is available under the publications section of the institute’s Web page at: http://www.trpi.org/update/education.html
Tags: boyle heights english language learners los angeles unified school district proyecto pastoral tomas rivera policy institute