I have uploaded a short video (just over one minute) of an alphabet song set to a cumbia beat. Enjoy!
Author: Micheal Palmer
How does Dual Language Education Work?
Listen to Diane August, managing researcher at American Institutes for Research, explain some of the key distinguishing elements of dual language programs as well as some of the challenges faced by school districts in implementing them.
The report referenced in this video was published in 2015 and presented an analysis of related research and the data related to dual language education policies and practices at that time. The report was a joint production of the U.S. Department of Education with the American Institutes for Research.
The full report referenced is available here at ESLHighway.com. Click the title below to read the report here, or click the download button to save your own copy as a PDF file.
Dual Language Success in North Carolina
Episode 42 of the America the Bilingual podcast addresses the rapid growth of dual language education in North Carolina and the benefits that growth is bringing. This brief episode only takes 15 minutes. I encourage you to listen!
Assessing English Language Proficiency and Program Effectiveness
It’s that time of year again when English Language Learners all across the country are being assessed to determine their level of proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing. In North Carolina we use the ACCESS test for this purpose. The name of the test is an acronym for “Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State”).
Every year teachers around the country wonder about the effectiveness of such tests. We have all had the experience of seeing a student exit ESL services only to flounder in the regular classroom for reasons that we all understand: the student was not ready to function like a native speaker, yet is expected to do so because of having exited ESL services.
While this problem is present in every state, regardless of the test used, it is particularly acute in North Carolina because our state does not follow the recommendation of the designers of the test regarding exit criteria. WIDA (World-class Instructional Design and Assessment) recommends that the test be used as one criterion among several, and that a student not be exited with a composite score of less than 5 out of 6 on the ACCESS test. North Carolina uses the test as the only criterion and exists students with a composite score of 4.8.
What is the the effect of this decision on students? Denying students the support they need before they have an adequate grasp of academic English sets them up for failure. A student who can carry on a perfectly sensible conversation with teachers and sound fluent, often still lacks the academic vocabulary essential to success in school. Teachers are well aware of this and frequently lament a student exiting the ESL program when it is clear the student is not ready.
Financial Incentives to Underserve Language Learners
Why would any state decide not to follow the recommendations of the designers of the test in terms of exiting children from ESL services?
Meeting the needs of second language learners is expensive. It requires additional training for classroom teachers, hiring language acquisition specialists in every school district—sometimes several per school—and purchasing expensive curricular materials. By lowering the bar for exiting its ESL program, a state can “save” a massive amount of money.
Intentionally underfunding services to language learners, however, would show a blatant disregard for what federal courts have determined to be the rights of these students. So the question in the case of North Carolina becomes whether the State is aware of the damage its early exit decision is creating. This should not be a difficult question to answer, given that regular evaluation of the program is mandated by the courts and North Carolina’s own data show quite conclusively that its approach to meeting the needs of language learners is weak at best.
Mandate for Ongoing Evaluation of Programs
Court cases related to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act have established precedents to guide the way districts address the needs of ESL students. In Castañeda v. Pickard (1981) the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit outlined a three-point test to evaluate ESL programs:
- The program a district selects must be recognized by relevant experts as a legitimate approach to language access. (It must be “based on sound educational theory”).
- The district must provide adequate resources to implement the approach it has selected. (The program must be “implemented effectively with resources for personnel, instructional materials, and space.”)
- The program must be evaluated on an ongoing basis. If students are failing to make adequate progress, the program must be improved until it can be proven effective.
The U.S. Department of Education has provided further guidance in a document entitled “The Provision of an Equal Education Opportunity to Limited-English Proficient Students“. In its effort to comply with these guidelines, North Carolina has been conducting the required evaluations for many years now, yet the graduation rate of English Language Learners still lags far behind the average for other groups of students. In 2016 North Carolina’s overall high school graduation rate was 85.8%. The graduation rate for students who had qualified as English Language Learners at some point in their school experience, though, was much lower: 57.1%. (See NC’s own publication of its graduation rate data.)
How can we consider this a program that has been “proven effective”?
Recommended Further Reading
- “Test Review: WIDA ACCESS TEST“, by Lydia Gruber, 2016
- “Thousands of English-Learners Fall Short on Test of Language Skills“, by Corey Mitchell, 2017
- Allocating Federal Funds for State Programs for English Language Learners (2011), Chapter: 3 “Quality and Comparability of State Tests of English Language Proficiency“
- “Why Carlos can’t graduate: Setting up ESOL students to fail with a too-easy test“, by Valerie Strauss, 2015
Function over Form in English Language Instruction
Experiences that require active use of the language are essential for successful language acquisition. Studying the grammar of a language without using that language in meaningful contexts never leads to real fluency.
In the following TED talk Roberto Guzmán highlights the essential nature of creating opportunities for language use in the classroom that mimic use of the language outside the classroom. This is nothing new. What sets the talk apart is the level to which Guzmán incorporates critical thinking (logic) into his work with students. Real-world language activities coupled with high levels of critical thinking can and does lead to dramatic improvement in language use.
After you listen to the talk, feel free to leave a comment below.
Scaffolding Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners
The following video from EL Education examines a co-taught literacy lesson at King Middle School in Porland, Maine. The lesson includes scaffolding to insure that the English Language Learners in the classroom succeed. Language Arts teacher, Karen MacDonald and Social Studies teacher Caitlin LeClair put together and implemented an engaging lesson that elicited the success of a diverse population of students.
Diagnosing English Language Learners with Learning Disabilities
In the following webcast bilingual speech-language pathologist Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan discusses effective assessment and instruction strategies for ELLS with learning disabilities and presents ways to help encourage their parents to be actively involved in their education.
Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is director of Valley Speech Language and Learning Center in Brownsville, TX, and author of the Esperanza Program, a Spanish multi-sensory reading, writing, and spelling program. She was one of the two principal investigators of a longitudinal study examining oral skills and literacy development of Spanish-speaking children in both English and Spanish. This research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Institute of Education Sciences.
Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Leadership Texas. She has served on the Texas State Board of Examiners for Speech Language Pathology and Audiology and is a member of the American Speech Language and Hearing Association and the International Dyslexia Society.
Hard Words and the Science of Reading
Teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) requires creativity as well as a solid grounding in research-based methods for teaching all four language domains: listening, speaking, reading and writing. With increased focus on reading mandated from Washington and carried out at the state-level through standardized testing regimes, those of us in this profession have to find ever more ingenious ways to incorporate the other three domains into our work with reading. Every second spent with students matters.
If the methods we are using to teach reading are not maximally effective, we are forced to spend more time on reading, and less time is left for other important aspects of language instruction. Emily Hanford published an article entitled “Hard Words” at APMReports.org on September 10 that addresses the effectiveness of reading instruction and argues that much of what is being done in American schools is ineffective. She has a solid grasp of the relevant research and deserves a hearing. APMReports has produced an hour-long audio program on this topic. You can read Hanford’s article and listen to the podcast correlated with it at APMReports.org, or you can click the audio button below to just hear the audio.
Building Background for English Learners
I’d like to recommend a recent article by Jana Echevarria, one of the authors of the SIOP Model books. Her treatment of the importance of building background for our English Language Learners would make good reading for any teacher, but especially for those with students who have limited English proficiency.
You can read the article here.
How is your state doing with English Language Learners?
In November of 2017 NPR publish an analysis of the academic performance and graduation rates of English Language Learners (ELLs) by state entitled, “English Language Learners: How Your State Is Doing“. The article, accompanied by excellent graphics, discusses a variety of programs for ELLs and their apparent effectiveness. Packed with excellent data, it is well worth reading.