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Today, Ali and Rothstein discuss ways to educate students who aren't fluent in English. Previously, they debated devoting resources to closing the achievement gap, the No Child Left Behind Act and reasons for lagging minority performance. Tomorrow, they'll discuss policies to boost students' achievement.
Richard,
Since the last census, the Los Angeles Unified School District has reclassified as English proficient 13% of its formerly English language-learning students. In truth, that number compares favorably with a 9% reclassification rate for California public schools as a whole.
That said, nobody should be happy with reclassification rates that low or with the huge achievement gaps between L.A. Unified's English learners and their English-speaking counterparts in reading and math. On the 2007 fourth-grade California Standards Tests, L.A. Unified's English learners were 41 points behind their English-speaking peers in English language arts and 30 points behind in math.
Mind you, L.A. Unified isn't doing very well for its African American students either — only 38% of its African American students are proficient or advanced in fourth-grade math, compared with 34% of fourth-grade English-learner students. White students, too, don't perform as well as their counterparts in other urban districts. Yes, the district is improving — faster than the state as a whole. But clearly, L.A. Unified still needs to do far better by all groups of students.
All of my experience tells me that these poor results are not occurring because L.A. Unified's teachers don't care about their students, including their English language learners. Most care a lot. But California public schools educate almost one-third of all English-learning students in the U.S., and we've devoted far too few resources — as a state and as a country — to studying and measuring what works, then helping teachers do more of it.
Teachers of English-learning students are hungry for tools that will help them succeed. But it's not even clear how long such students who enter school at different ages typically should take to become proficient in English. And evaluations on the effectiveness of alternative approaches are spotty at best.
Last year, however, California took an important step forward by releasing school-level Academic Performance Index scores for English learners. With these new data, we can start identifying the schools throughout the state that are doing a better job of educating English-learning students to high levels, and we can learn more about their strategies for success. Despite the challenges such students bring with them, success is possible.
Emerging analyses (PDF) provide some helpful hints (PDF). It turns out that schools that work well for English-learning students look quite similar to schools that work well for other groups. They have strong teachers who are well equipped to teach English-learning students, and they have high expectations for their students to master academic English and work hard not just to meet but to exceed state and federal accountability goals for student achievement.
Schools that do best with English learners consistently measure student performance, not just on assessments designed to measure mastery of English but in core academic subjects. Principals and teachers use that data to drive instructional change, develop strategies to help their students and themselves succeed, and better inform and engage parents. These higher-performing schools provide their English learners with strong supports, including extra instructional time and quick interventions for students who start to slip.
Schools that work for English language learners deliver strong, standards-aligned curricula. They include a framework for building academic vocabulary, including — as wonderful work by Phil Daro and Uri Treisman has shown — specific advice on the words in each content domain that English learners typically don't know. These schools give their teachers the support and professional development they need. Most important, they don't see English learners as impossible to teach.
This last point is especially important. Many people believe that most English-learning students are new immigrants who "can't possibly be expected to speak the language and catch up quickly." This is a destructive stereotype, and it is wrong. The majority of students enrolled in our state's English-learner programs are not immigrants, let alone new immigrants.
More than 1.5 million students in California K-12 school system are classified as English learners. Yet according to the Migration Policy Institute, only about 637,000 children in California between the ages of 5 and 17 are foreign-born. That means that more than half of the students enrolled in English-learning programs were born and raised in the U.S. This isn't about whether we can educate new immigrants to higher levels; this is about whether we can educate all students, new immigrants included, to higher levels.
Even when English learners are in our schools for a long time, we don't teach them what they need to know. Indeed, in L.A. Unified's graduating class of 2006, two-thirds of English learners who didn't pass the California High School Exit Exam had been languishing in English-learning programs for more than 10 years.
We can do better. For our state's future, we must do better.
Russlynn Ali is the executive director of The Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based think tank focused on closing the achievement gaps separating low-income students and students of color from other young Californians.
If it works for all students, it can work for English learners
Richard,
Since the last census, the Los Angeles Unified School District has reclassified as English proficient 13% of its formerly English language-learning students. In truth, that number compares favorably with a 9% reclassification rate for California public schools as a whole.
That said, nobody should be happy with reclassification rates that low or with the huge achievement gaps between L.A. Unified's English learners and their English-speaking counterparts in reading and math. On the 2007 fourth-grade California Standards Tests, L.A. Unified's English learners were 41 points behind their English-speaking peers in English language arts and 30 points behind in math.
Mind you, L.A. Unified isn't doing very well for its African American students either — only 38% of its African American students are proficient or advanced in fourth-grade math, compared with 34% of fourth-grade English-learner students. White students, too, don't perform as well as their counterparts in other urban districts. Yes, the district is improving — faster than the state as a whole. But clearly, L.A. Unified still needs to do far better by all groups of students.
All of my experience tells me that these poor results are not occurring because L.A. Unified's teachers don't care about their students, including their English language learners. Most care a lot. But California public schools educate almost one-third of all English-learning students in the U.S., and we've devoted far too few resources — as a state and as a country — to studying and measuring what works, then helping teachers do more of it.
Teachers of English-learning students are hungry for tools that will help them succeed. But it's not even clear how long such students who enter school at different ages typically should take to become proficient in English. And evaluations on the effectiveness of alternative approaches are spotty at best.
Last year, however, California took an important step forward by releasing school-level Academic Performance Index scores for English learners. With these new data, we can start identifying the schools throughout the state that are doing a better job of educating English-learning students to high levels, and we can learn more about their strategies for success. Despite the challenges such students bring with them, success is possible.
Emerging analyses (PDF) provide some helpful hints (PDF). It turns out that schools that work well for English-learning students look quite similar to schools that work well for other groups. They have strong teachers who are well equipped to teach English-learning students, and they have high expectations for their students to master academic English and work hard not just to meet but to exceed state and federal accountability goals for student achievement.
Schools that do best with English learners consistently measure student performance, not just on assessments designed to measure mastery of English but in core academic subjects. Principals and teachers use that data to drive instructional change, develop strategies to help their students and themselves succeed, and better inform and engage parents. These higher-performing schools provide their English learners with strong supports, including extra instructional time and quick interventions for students who start to slip.
Schools that work for English language learners deliver strong, standards-aligned curricula. They include a framework for building academic vocabulary, including — as wonderful work by Phil Daro and Uri Treisman has shown — specific advice on the words in each content domain that English learners typically don't know. These schools give their teachers the support and professional development they need. Most important, they don't see English learners as impossible to teach.
This last point is especially important. Many people believe that most English-learning students are new immigrants who "can't possibly be expected to speak the language and catch up quickly." This is a destructive stereotype, and it is wrong. The majority of students enrolled in our state's English-learner programs are not immigrants, let alone new immigrants.
More than 1.5 million students in California K-12 school system are classified as English learners. Yet according to the Migration Policy Institute, only about 637,000 children in California between the ages of 5 and 17 are foreign-born. That means that more than half of the students enrolled in English-learning programs were born and raised in the U.S. This isn't about whether we can educate new immigrants to higher levels; this is about whether we can educate all students, new immigrants included, to higher levels.
Even when English learners are in our schools for a long time, we don't teach them what they need to know. Indeed, in L.A. Unified's graduating class of 2006, two-thirds of English learners who didn't pass the California High School Exit Exam had been languishing in English-learning programs for more than 10 years.
We can do better. For our state's future, we must do better.
Russlynn Ali is the executive director of The Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based think tank focused on closing the achievement gaps separating low-income students and students of color from other young Californians.
The politics of reclassification
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