English language learners at American schools

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English language learners at American schools

By The World ⋅ September 7, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

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The fastest growing segment of the public school population in the U.S. is English Language Learners. Since the mid ’90s the population has almost doubled. These students, the majority of whom are born in America, sit side by side their native English-speaking classmates, but their test scores lag far behind. Just this past week a hearing began in Tucson Arizona over the effectiveness of the states English Language Learner or ELL program. Arizona is not the only state under scrutiny. The U.S. Department of Education has launched a civil rights investigation of the ELL program in Los Angeles. Officials say only 3% of ELL students at LA schools are proficient at Math and English by the time they reach high school. But some public schools doing far better than others. Nina Porzucki reports from one of them in Downey, California. Download MP3

Downey Unified School District
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. The fastest growing segment of the US public school population is English Language Learners. These are kids who don’t have a firm grasp of the English language. Their numbers have almost doubled in our public schools since the mid ‘90s. These students sit side by side with English-speaking classmates, but their test scores lag far behind. Just this past week, a court hearing began in Arizona over the effectiveness of the state’s English Language Learner or ELL programs. And the US Department of Education has launched a civil rights investigation of the ELL program in Los Angeles. Officials say only 3% of ELL students in LA schools are proficient in Math and English by the time they reach high school. Still, some public schools are doing far better than others. Nina Porzucki reports from one of them in Downey, California, right next door to Los Angeles.

STEPHANIE BLANCO: Put your right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag…

NINA PORZUCKI: It’s the beginning of the day at Gauldin Elementary School. Stephanie Blanco’s fourth graders file to their seats as she announces the first subject of the day. A math test.

BLANCO: Your job today right now is to analyze and find the median, mode and range of data. Those are three big words. Median. Mode. And range.

PORZUCKI: On the outside, Gauldin looks like any typical Southern California elementary school. Squat beige classrooms surround the playground. On the inside, Gauldin is also typical of many Californian schools. Just over a third of the students enrolled here are English Language Learners. For Mrs. Blanco the challenge of teaching content courses like math or social studies and language acquisition to a mixed group of English Learners, former English Learners and English Only students can be somewhat overwhelming.

BLANCO: You’re sitting down to plan your social studies lesson and I’m going to teach about the gold rush and I have to teach this beginner about miners coming to California, their struggles, their strifes, their successes, and I have to teach that advanced kid, and even my English Only kiddos the same content standard and make it comprehensible for that beginner? It’s out of control. It almost seems unbearable.

PORZUCKI: In the United States today more than five million children are English Language Learners. The majority are not foreign born according to Patricia Gandara, Professor of Education at UCLA.

PATRICIA GANDARA: Upwards of about 85% of kids nationally who are English Learners are native-born children. They are home grown kids who are growing up in communities, oftentimes linguistically isolated communities where they arrive at school speaking a language other than English. And so yes these are our kids. Our American kids.

PORZUCKI: To understand how English as a Second Language is being taught today, you have to go back to 1998. That was when California voters passed Proposition 227 becoming the first state to officially end bilingual education. Several other states were quick to follow. After the passage of Proposition 227, Gauldin Elementary School switched from a bilingual model to English Immersion. Meaning just English. Only English. Gisela Mendez, a former bilingual teacher who is now in charge of the English Language program at Gauldin remembers when Proposition 227 passed.

GISELA MENDEZ: I thought the kids were just going to sink or swim, and you know, sink. But that wasn’t the case at all.

PROZUCKI: In fact, according to Mendez, the students adapted much better than she expected. Today while English Acquisition is foremost on her mind Mendez says she can’t help but worry about students losing their first language.

MENDEZ: Because once they lose it, it’s going to be difficult for them to get it back. And sometimes I do get parents asking me, Ms. Mendez what should I reinforce at home because I want my child to only know English so I’ve taken away all of the Spanish books, I’ve taken away all of Spanish TV and I try to speak to them only English because I want them to be strong in English. And then I kind of reiterate and say, well it’s important that you retain your native tongue. Keep the Spanish at home, they will pick up the English here at school.

PORZUCKI: According to most research it takes between five and seven years to become proficient in English. Though many learners may speak fluent conversational English, this is different than the English needed to succeed in school known as Academic English. That is the language that students find in their textbooks. Even the very basics of mathematics, like the median, mode, and range, rely on this language.

BLANCO: Median sounds like, medium. Median means the middle. Alright, think about how you’re going to figure out the median or the middle number. How do you do that? Talk quickly at your tables, go!

FEMALE SPEAKER: First I counted one, two, three on the first side and then, one, two, three on the second side, so…

PORZUCKI: Blanco says a lot of kids may sound completely at ease with the language, but they’re not.

BLANCO: You have that range of levels, but you have a lot of kids, especially in fourth grade that are stuck at that intermediate level. Intermediate is level three. Another [INDISCERNIBLE] is level three. It’s the middle of the road kiddos. They’re fluent, they can speak to you, you think oh man this kid doesn’t know any other language and then you get them into reading and writing and your going whoa, okay here’s our hold up, there is where that language level comes into play and this is why they’re stuck at the intermediate level.

PORZUCKI: So why are these kids, many of whom have been in public school since kindergarten, why are they getting stuck? The answer is complicated. The difficulties in language acquisition according to UCLA’s Professor Gandara, is a smaller symptom of something much greater. About two thirds of English Language Learners live below the poverty line.

GANDARA: Poverty has tremendously negative effects on academic achievement. I mean, we really have to sort out how much of this is about language and how much of it is about all the things that are attendant with poverty including the least well-resourced schools and I mean that in terms of human resources.

PORZUCKI: Meaning teachers. Imagine a doctor who leaves medical school and receives only spotty continuing education, learning about one drug one day and another drug the next but never how the drugs may interact. Well that’s how Stephanie Blanco feels when it comes to the training she gets when teaching English Language Learners.

BLANCO: We as teachers feel like we get bombarded, oh here’s a new program, try it out, here’s a new program, your kids aren’t reading try this program, throw this in there. And we get bogged down because it’s like we’re trying to juggle 15 programs and get these kids moving when we have to familiarize ourselves with the programs, the ins and the outs, how does this work with the kids, and it takes a few years to gain mastery of the program and that’s a couple years of kiddos, of classes, that are going through that aren’t getting solid instruction from you because you’re not comfortable with the program itself.

PORZUCKI: But seven years ago things started improving at Gauldin. The school instituted a teaching model that stuck. All the teachers were trained in this model. And English Learner test scores have climbed each year since. Blanco feels it’s really paid off. In her class, the students are discussing their last math term before the test. Range. Blanco walks from table to table monitoring the discussion.

MALE SPEAKER: [INDISCERNIBLE] least to greatest and you get the first and last number and you subtract them.

PORZUCKI: After a few minutes the class falls silent. The test begins. I follow Blanco outside of the room and ask her quite simply is this model the solution to teaching English to non-native speakers?

BLANCO: I don’t know. This is what I live and breathe, the English Only instruction. So my heart is here. But I have seen bilingual education work wonders. There is nothing simple. It’s just like everything else in life, there are so many shades of gray.

PORZUCKI: But, there are at least two black and white facts. American schools are enrolling a greater number of English Learners every year. And many of these children are in danger of falling further behind native speakers. The methods most effective in teaching these children? Well that continues to be researched and debated. For The World, I’m Nina Porzucki in Downey, California.

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Discussion

9 comments for “English language learners at American schools”

http://google.com Ray

I know this is radio and this leaves me to imagine what the presenter looks like. The presentation is excellent, but I was only wondering if there I could see images rather than having to create them on or of my own?
Doni

I was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the U.S. in 1970. At that time there was no bilingual education. I was emerced into the school system and learned english like all other kids. English is my first language. I do speak spanish with limitations on vocabulary. I believe that if I had had bilingual education it would have taken longer for me to learn english and probably may not have had the command of the language and may have had an accent. Many persons that I knew that had been in bilingual programs I found did not have the same command of the language and many still had strong accents after many years in bilingual education in the U.S. school system. This is a complex issue, but as long as English is deemed the official language I believe that emersion is better for non-english speakers and that native language be learned at home or through other extra-curricular activities.

Carmen Danies

Immersed in the English only curriculum allowed you to rise to the needed level understandably. However, when you say you “may have had an accent” that has more to do with your age than surroundings or language of program. Linguistically you’re an adult at 11. Of course accents vary individually, but for the most part holds true for the masses, already determined from research. If you can’t hear the sound, won’t be able to emulate it.
The remaining issue is most Spanish speaking households do not teach their children reading and writing in Spanish. Which begs the question: What kind of Spanish, from what country?
Depends on the educational background of parents and familial/educational goals for the children in that family. One reason first language literacy is promoted is supporting the conduit whereby most information may still be absorbed. That is if Spanish is continually spoken, read and written at home.
I agree second language acquisition is a long story with many varibles and conditions, not easily reduced to a cookie cutter model. Therein lies a continuous seduction. Globalizing parameters aimed to explain only one scenario.
Karen

Research, however, shows that students learn better English when they are proficient in their original language. First teach them their own language, then teach them English (Goldenberg, Pappamihiel, Hubbard & Shorey, et al). While I value your experience, the truth of the matter is that had you received bilingual education you would be a better speaker, reader and writer in English and in Spanish.

Tara Larsen

In Tuesday’s segment, “English Language Learners at American Schools” you stated that there is still much debate about the best way to teach English to ELLs. There is much debate, but that debate is political, not academic. Study after study on the topic has shown bilingual education to be the best method of teaching ELLs English and other academic content.
Elizabeth R. Vann, Ph.d.

“Officials say only 3% of ELL students at LA schools are proficient at Math and English by the time they reach high school.” Here’s a view from Massachusetts. My intermediate ESL classes lose 9 instructional days a year to the administration of standardized tests in English Language Arts. The point of the test is to determine whether my high school ELL’s are proficient in English. Well duh, they’re not proficient in English, that’s why we call them “English Language Learners”! We figured out that they weren’t proficient in English when they came in to register. Your introduction followed the bad misuse of the term “English Language Learner.” Your story shows that the underlying issue in L.A. is poverty in long-standing immigrant communities, and the linguistic isolation and illiteracy that result from it. It’s different here. We need to stop using a sledgehammer on a nail, and face up to the complexities: we not only have hundreds of languages in the U.S.: we have many kinds of English Language Learners, with different needs. Mine do NOT need to lose 9 days a year to demonstrate the obvious.

Dr. Elizabeth Vann
Brockton High School
Brockton, Massachusetts
DIF

This is an essential topic to ensure the future of our children living in the U.S. Siendo y entendiendo la labor de un trabajo extenso with our Linguistic and Cultural Diverse Learners no a single factor can be considered. Veo el adquirir un segundo lenguaje connected and related to what I call “context”. And, are these context what is use to build, create, promote, and develop learning opportunities to support our Linguistic and Cultural Diverse children learning their minority and majority language.

Additive instead of subtractive models promote and celebrate similarities and differences (diversity), empower those who are disenfranchised, and provide much, much more learning impact to support our children FAMILIES.

Gracias!
Stephanie

Despite the fact that there are so many different views on what best practices truly meet our English Learners’ needs, many of the views have something in common. Most EL instructional programs/ideals follow the same basic structure of incorporating realia, visuals, connections to real-life and the students’ experiences, pacing, vocabulary… the list goes on.

These students deserve the best of instruction from us and it requires a lot more work than just opening up the textbooks and teaching. It takes careful planning, preparation, explicit teaching, the whole nine. Instead of focusing on what the students are lacking and “looking out the window” at factors that are out of our control, our district has really started looking “in the mirror” at things we can do to start managing these situations that are not going away, like low socioeconomic status, lack of a print-rich environment, linguistic isolation, etc.

For Downey, The SIOP model has really helped us to focus our instruction for our EL students, as well as our English Only students.

If we are truly implementing all these proven strategies and things are still not heading in the right direction, we need to look again at what else we can do or how we can refine our processes. Everyone can benefit from professional development and I know that even our most experienced and knowledgeable teachers are always seeking out new approaches to making content more comprehensible for their students. Clearly, teaching English Learners is an area of need across the nation… Anyone have anything in their toolbox that they know works?
Pedro

To you all………I am an ELL Coordinator…….after many years and reading your comments…..this process of help ELLS’s has never been about PROGRAMS……..it is all about the PEOPLE…YES, YOU, the teacher and Parents….The teacher is a researcher and it is your job to collect data, and come up with the best way to TEACH…..but for sure, the most important thing you can do…..is LEARN about your students……..talk to them, find out what they like, what they do after school…etc. Make connections….

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