June 2010 Archives

Most Native American and Alaska Native students receive their instruction entirely in English, says a report released today by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. The study found that at least 87 percent of such students in grades 4 and 8 received instruction in core subjects only in English.

But at Bureau of Indian Education schools, run by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Native American students are less likely to be taught only in English. At those schools, attended by about 10 percent of the country's Native American students, 46 percent of Native American 4th graders and 49 percent of 8th graders reported receiving instruction only in English.

Although not much teaching in Native American languages is going on in the schools in Indian country, some children may still hear their native languages spoken by teachers, a principal, or other staff in the school. But the federal study found that's not the case with many Native American or Alaska Native students. Seventy-seven percent of 4th graders and 82 percent of 8th graders said that people at their school "never" or "hardly ever" speak their native languages.

I wrote about the study, which looked at academic achievement of Native American students and cultural aspects of their education, in a story published this morning.

The study found that Native American students' scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress remained flat from 2005 to 2009. In my reporting for that article, I interviewed Charlie Rose, the Education Department's general counsel, who has been participating in consultations with tribes across the country on how to improve education for Native American children.

He said that many tribe members are pushing for the next reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to give a higher priority to the preservation of Native American languages and culture than has been true with the No Child Left Behind Act.

The report had a chart that contained some interesting information about what percentage of Native Americans or Alaska Natives who take the NAEP reading test are English-language learners (on page 23 of Part I of the report). The proportions of Native Americans taking the test who are ELLs vary greatly between states.

For example, on average, 8 percent of Native American 4th graders who took the reading test in 2009 were ELLs. In Washington state, only 1 percent of Native Americans who took that test were ELLs while in New Mexico, 34 percent were. I'm not sure what's behind the wide variance in those statistics between states, but I think it's worth noting.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Update: EdWeek published an obituary on June 30.

Members of the civil rights community are mourning the passing of William L. Taylor, a longtime civil rights lawyer and advocate, who died late yesterday afternoon at age 78. He was the founder and chair of the Washington-based Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights and a vice chair* of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, also based in Washington (*title has been updated from an earlier version). He had recently stepped down as the president of the Leadership Conference Education Fund.

"Bill was one of the very most accomplished desegregation lawyers in the country, and successfully litigated many school desegregation suits, which is not a one-time process," said David J. Goldberg, the senior counsel and senior policy analyst for the Leadership Conference.

Goldberg added: "Even successful suits require years of enforcement. Bill didn't just win suits and go away. He stayed engaged."

"Whether he was in the courtroom, the halls of government, or in a congressional hearing room, Bill Taylor was a consistent voice for equality and justice--a voice that will be deeply missed," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said today in a statement.

As a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Taylor litigated a number of school desegregation cases after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a statement from the Leadership Conference says.

In his post as the general counsel and staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights during the 1960s, Taylor played a critical role in laying the foundation for the civil rights legislation of that decade, the statement also says.

Update: "Bill was relentless on behalf of kids that most people didn't care about," said Amy Wilkins, the vice president for government affairs and communications for the Education Trust, in a phone interview with me today. She said Taylor was "huge-hearted and fearless" on behalf of low-income children and minority children. While she said she sometimes disagreed with him on which policy was the right one, she did not question his moral compass, which was "true."

I had the pleasure of interviewing Taylor on numerous occasions about the civil rights of English-language learners. When I needed someone with an institutional memory about that group of students, I turned to him. I appreciated his direct and knowledgeable answers to my questions.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Obama administration has selected Rosalinda B. Barrera, the dean of the college of education at Texas State University—San Marcos, as the assistant deputy secretary and director of the office of English-language acquisition for the U.S. Department of Education. Richard L. Smith became the acting director in that post in May 2008 and has held the position under both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

Once upon a time, the director of the office of English-language acquisition held the top post for English-language learners in the department. But since a merger in 2008 of the administration of Title III, the section of the No Child Left Behind Act authorizing funds for English-language-acquisition programs, with the office that administers Title I, the section of the law authorizing money for disadvantaged students, it hasn't been clear who calls the shots in the department for ELL policy.

Under the Obama administration, Thelma Melendez, the assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, has been the person that the department designates the most often to speak about ELL issues in public. It will be interesting to see if this responsibility is now taken up by Barrera.

Barrera assumed her current post at Texas State University in June 2005, according to a press release from the university. That press release says that she has specialized in language and literacy instruction for students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She is a co-editor of a book, Multicultural Issues in Literacy Research and Practice, published in 2003 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A comment from a reader prompted me to double-check with the Illinois state board of education whether I'd gotten the news right in Friday's blog post that the Illinois state board of education voted to require public preschools to provide transitional bilingual education. I was right about that, according to Matthew Vanover, a spokesman for the state board of education.

But Vanover did have a few corrections to my blog post.

He said that the new rules adopted by the board do not call for the state superintendent to identify the screening mechanism for preschool students. He wrote in an e-mail message: "In fact, we specifically sought to avoid the state identifying a screener for this group of students since the research is not clear on any particular screening procedures being better than others for such a population. School districts will have the latitude to select their own screening procedures, as long as they meet the qualifications set forth in the definition of 'screening procedures.' "

Second, Vanover said I chose the wrong verb to describe the action that the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules will take on the rules. I had said the joint committee would need to "approve" them to go into effect. Vanover explained that the joint committee can either issue an objection to the rules or not object. If the committee doesn't object, the state board of education will file the rules with the Illinois secretary of state and they go into effect.

Lastly, Vanover said that my post should have pointed out that the Illinois state legislature made a change in state law, effective Jan. 1, 2009, that extended the category of "children of limited-English-speaking ability," or ELLs, in regular public schools to include 3- and 4-year-olds. That's what prompted the state board of education to create rules that clarified how that change in the law should be implemented.

If you'd like to know more about the details of the new rules in Illinois, join the free Web chat that EdWeek is hosting tomorrow afternoon, June 29, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., Eastern time, about the education of preschoolers who speak a language other than English at home. The chat will feature two guests from Illinois: Barbara Bowman, the chief early childhood education officer for Chicago Public Schools and a founder of the Erikson Institute, and Reyna P. Hernandez, the research and policy associate for the Chicago-based Latino Policy Forum. If you can't participate in the chat live, you can read a transcript of it afterward at the same link that I've posted above.

Earlier, I had said that one of the guests would be Margo Gottlieb, the lead developer for the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Consortium, housed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Gottlieb had to bow out. Thus, Hernandez will be the second guest for the chat.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The American Institutes for Research signals in a post for a job opening that the organization plans to increase the attention it is giving to the education of English-language learners. The post, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, says the organization seeks to hire a senior specialist on English-language learners who will have the opportunity to "shape and expand the ELL practice area at AIR and build AIR's leadership in the field."

You can find the section of the AIR's Web site featuring English-language learners here.

Last month, I wrote an article for Education Week about several research briefs released by the AIR that were precursors to a comprehensive evaluation of the implementation of Title III, the section of the No Child Left Behind Act that authorizes funds for language-acquisition programs. The research briefs reported that only 11 states had met their accountability goals for English-language learners under NCLB in the 2007-08 school year.

Also last month, the AIR published a "reference guide" that critiques whether various common assumptions about how English-language learners should be educated match research evidence. For example, the guide says that while some educators assume that learning two or more languages in school will impede a child's fluency in both languages, in fact, "findings from multiple research studies have established that rapid, unsupported English-language acquisition is not a realistic goal for ELL instruction." Rather, the guide says, a curriculum that supports language development and academic learning in both English and students' native language over a sustained period of time is a "more reasonable approach" to closing the achievement gap between ELLs and native speakers of English.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators and the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute are calling for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to include a common definition for English-language learners.

In a report released this week with recommendations on how to close the achievement gap between Latinos and other students, the two organizations say that states should use "identical criteria" to designate who is an English-language learner and determine when such a student becomes fluent in English.

The report doesn't go into any detail about the political opposition that may exist to such a proposal. California education officials, for example, told me recently that they are still resisting giving into federal pressure to standardize the criteria for determining if an English-language learner is fluent in English within the state. But, on the other hand, Illinois gave into the federal pressure to standardize by approving a regulation yesterday that requires all Illinois school districts to use the same cut-off score on the state's English-language-proficiency test to decide if ELLs are fluent.

The report cites a number of problems with the education of English-language learners besides "a lack of interstate and intrastate uniformity in assessment and placement" of such students. It says that programs for ELLs need to be more effective and teachers need to be better prepared to work with them.

The report also focuses on how to improve the education of Latinos in middle school. Two of its recommendations are for states or school districts to introduce college awareness at the middle school level, and promote the value of technical and vocational education.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Update: Matthew Vanover, a spokesman for the Illinois state board of education, has a few corrections on the following blog post. He said that the new rules adopted by the board do not call for the superintendent of Illinois to identify the screening mechanism for preschool students. Rather, school districts will select the screening procedures, as long as they meet certain criteria. Second, Vanover said I chose the wrong verb to describe the action that the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules will take on the rules. I had said the joint committee would need to "approve" them to go into effect. Vanover explained that the joint committee can either issue an objection to the rules or not object. If the committee doesn't object, the state board of education will file the rules with the Illinois secretary of state and they go into effect.

Lastly, Vanover said that my post should have pointed out that the Illinois state legislature made a change in state law, effective Jan. 1, 2009, that extended the category of "children of limited-English-speaking ability," or ELLs, in regular public schools to include 3- and 4-year-olds. That's what prompted the state board of education to create rules that clarified how that change in the law should be implemented.

Orginal blog post:

The Illinois State Board of Education yesterday unanimously adopted regulations that will require all public preschools in the state to identify any children who have limited proficiency in English and provide transitional bilingual education for them. The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules in Illinois will still have to approve the rules for them to go into effect. I wrote about the proposed rules for EdWeek in April.

Should the rules go into effect, and I expect now they likely will, it is believed that Illinois will have the most prescriptive rules in the nation for English-language learners in preschool.

Mary Ann Fergus, a spokeswoman for the board, sent me an e-mail confirming that the rules had been approved. She included an analysis of the rules (on pages 169-201) that were among documents provided for a meeting of the board June 23 and 24. (The actual rules are on pages 202-240.)

The adopted rules say public preschools will have to use a screening test chosen by the state's superintendent to assess whether children have limited English skills. They require that any preschool teachers who teach in a transitional bilingual education program have certification to do so by July 1, 2014. They mandate that any school attendance center with an enrollment of 20 or more English-language learners who speak the same language be provided with a program of transitional bilingual education.

The phrase, "transitional bilingual education," commonly refers to a program in which students are taught some subjects in their native language while also using English. The rules say that under the umbrella of transitional bilingual education, preschools may implement bilingual programs that are often known as two-way immersion programs. In such programs, students who are dominant in English and students who speak another native language learn both languages in the same classroom.

The board also adopted a rule that sets a cut-off score on the state's English-language proficiency test to be the deciding factor for when an English-language learner is determined to no longer need special help to learn the language. Currently, school districts can use a higher cut-off score than recommended by the state as well as additional criteria to decide when an English-language learner should leave special programs. The rule says that districts must use only the state-established cut-off score, which will be determined by the state's superintendent, but doesn't spell out what that score is.

If you're interested in issues about best practices for the education of preschoolers who speak a language other than English at home, join us for a free Web chat on that subject on Tuesday, June 29, between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., Eastern time. Barbara Bowman, the chief early childhood education officer for Chicago Public Schools and a founder of the Erikson Institute, will be the guest. I'll be the moderator.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A long list of professors from Stanford University's school of education have signed a statement condemning the Arizona Department of Education's stance that teachers with strong accents shouldn't be teaching English-language learners. "Not only is Arizona's policy based on uninformed linguistic and educational assumptions, but such a policy also has the potential to unfairly target Latina/o teachers and their students by removing the very teachers who may be best qualified to teach them," the statement says.

Let me pause here to say Arizona education officials weren't clear in explaining to me what their policy is when I pressed them about it after the Wall Street Journal reported on April 30 that Arizona education officials had been telling school districts that they had to remove teachers who had "heavily accented or ungrammatical" English from classrooms with English-language learners.

Adela Santa Cruz, the deputy associate superintendent for the Arizona Department of Education, told me in late May that Wall Street Journal reporter Miriam Jordan "misinterpreted" and "misquoted" what she and other state education officials said about the English fluency of teachers in the state. I asked Jordan in an e-mail message to respond to that charge, and I haven't gotten a reply from her.

"At no time did we say, you have to remove [teachers] and put them somewhere else," Santa Cruz told me in a phone interview then. "We did have the authority to say to the administrators at the local level that they needed to look at the fluency of the teachers and assist them."

But at the same time, Arizona's superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne, went on the air with CNN in late May saying that state officials are concerned about teachers with "faulty English."

Interestingly, the Arizona education department has provided a link to the blog post I wrote on its Web site under the category "articles of interest."

Education department officials didn't give me anything in writing about their policy, if it is that. But I was sent a protocol in writing that state officials use when observing teachers that includes a section on whether the teacher uses correct pronunciation and grammar in English.

The signers of the statement by Stanford professors include well-known experts in second-language acquisition such as Kenji Hakuta and Guadalupe Valdez.

The department of linguistics at the University of Arizona and the National Council of Teachers of English have also condemned the so-called policy. Update: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages Inc. and its Arizona affiliate issued a joint statement opposing it as well.

I'm on Horne's list to receive any press releases, and he hasn't put out any statements further clarifying the issue.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Aventa Learning, one of the companies or nonprofits often tapped by schools to provide online courses for credit recovery, has tailored its credit-recovery line for English-language learners, a representative of the company told me last week.

I spoke with Gregg Levin, the vice president of sales for Aventa Learning, while reporting on how several large urban school systems have rolled out or will soon roll out online credit-recovery programs.

He said that the company found that a majority of students needing credit recovery, who must make up classes they failed in high school, are non-native speakers of English or English-language learners. He said the company found a majority of such students were reading below grade level.

Levin said Aventa has tried to lessen the reading demands in the courses and infuse them with "good sound ELL strategies." The company has applied "specially designed academic instruction in English," or SDAIE, which is language used typically in California for instruction in modified English.

Course design for ELLs includes a pre-teaching of vocabulary before every course unit that is available in English and Spanish. The courses also include more graphical tools and organizers than the company's regular line of online courses, Levin said. An audio function permits students to have vocabulary read to them in English or Spanish.

If any of you have used these courses for English-language learners, tell the rest of us how they have panned out.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In an opinion piece published by GothamSchools, Arthur Goldstein, an English-as-a-second-language teacher at Francis Lewis High School in New York City, explains how he was successful in teaching ELLs so they could pass the English Regents exam. But he thinks his writing lessons were meaningless for students for the long-term. "I showed them how to write highly formulaic four-paragraph essays that minimally met the requirements," he said.

By contrast, Goldstein believes his lessons to beginning ELLs on the basics of communication in English are very useful for students. He stresses that it's the communicative aspects of language that will best serve students in the long run.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Identifying English-language learners who have disabilities is not just about giving students the right test, said a keynote speaker recently at a conference in New York state for educators interested in improving how their school districts determine if ELLs need special education services. "We don't have the right test," she said, according to EdEvidence, a newsletter published by the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands.

The speaker was Janette Klinger, a professor of education specializing in bilingual special education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She stressed the need to make sure that first of all, ELLs are receiving appropriate instruction. And before any ELLs are referred to special education, educators should analyze their rate of progress and compare it with students who are "true peers."

The newsletter doesn't say what Klinger considers to be "true peers." From what I've learned reporting on the subject, I infer that a true peer might be another ELL student in the same grade who has similar characteristics, such as a similar level of schooling before coming to the United States. Researchers have also told me that it can be helpful for educators to talk with parents about whether an ELL who is struggling in school has developed native-language skills at the same rate as his or her siblings.

The conference was a follow-up to a report published by the laboratory at the request of the New York state department of education. That report looked at how three school districts identify English-language learners with disabilities.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A significant number of states now identify English-language learners in preschool, even though their state laws for providing services to ELLs apply only to students in K-12.

Preschool Matters ... Today!, the new blog of the National Institute for Early Education Research, at Rutgers University, reports that 24 out of 38 states with state-funded prekindergarten initiatives reported how many ELLs they had in their programs during the 2008-09 school year. States reported a variety of initiatives for bilingual preschoolers, including bilingual education and presenting information to parents in their primary language.

A recent post on the blog about preschool issues calls for more research on how ELLs can best be served in preschool and pitches a book, Developing the Research Agenda for Young English Language Learners, that is expected to be released by Teachers College Press this month. Ellen Frede, the co-director of the early education research center at Rutgers and a co-author of that book, recommends in her blog post that preschools provide bilingual education and offer pre-service and in-service education on how to work with preschool English-language learners.

Education Week will soon offer an opportunity for discussion about how best to educate preschool children who speak a language other than English at home. We're hosting a live chat on June 29 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. on the subject. Guests will be Barbara Bowman, the chief early childhood education officer for Chicago Public Schools and a co-founder of the Erikson Institute in Chicago, and Margo Gottlieb, the lead developer for the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Consortium, housed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The chat is a spin-off of the debate in Illinois about how educators should implement a state law that took effect Jan. 1, 2009, that extends the category of "children of limited-English-speaking ability," or ELLs, in regular public schools to include 3- and 4-year-olds.

The Illinois state board of education is scheduled to vote on proposed rules to carry out the change in the law at meetings on June 23 and 24.

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Four undocumented college students who walked 1,500 miles from Miami to Washington to draw attention to immigration issues say the Obama administration has declined to issue an executive order that would halt deportations of such youths who have come to the United States illegally as children.

ABC News reports that the students met twice with Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House adviser, to talk about immigration reform, and they report the administration has rejected their request for an executive order.

The article also says the Obama administration has not yet responded to a letter written in April by U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Richard Lugar to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano seeking a halt to deportations of undocumented immigrant youths. The senators asked Napolitano to stop deportations of any students who would be eligible for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or "DREAM" Act. The legislation would provide a path to legalization for undocumented students who meet certain criteria.

Critics of the DREAM Act, which has been introduced in Congress several times but never passed, contend it would provide "amnesty" for people who have broken the country's laws.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Freshmen enrollment of Hispanics at postsecondary institutions grew by 15 percent from 2007 to 2008, according to a report released today by the Washington-based Pew Research Center. In the same time period, freshmen enrollment for blacks increased by 8 percent, for Asians by 6 percent, and for whites by 3 percent.

Minority postsecondary students tend to be concentrated in community colleges and trade schools more than four-year institutions.

Some of the surge is a result of demographic changes, the report says. The report also characterizes the increase as a "recession-era boom."

Update: EdWeek's College Bound blog has more information about the report.

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Yesterday, I invited you to weigh in with what you'd like to tell funders about the education of English-language learners. Stephen Krashen, a professor emeritus in education at the University of Southern California, was on message (I've observed he has several key messages) in advising funders to support libraries. Larry Ferlazzo, an ELL teacher in Sacramento, Calif., also weighed in over at his blog about how the voices of ELL teachers or grassroots community groups seemed to be missing from the agenda of the funders' briefing about ELLs, scheduled for June 22 and 23, that I mentioned in yesterday's post. Previously Ferlazzo characterized private foundations as paternalistic (Update: See his clarification in comments that he applies that characterization to many but not all private foundations). A couple of others have also provided some advice to funders.

In reporting for a story that has nothing to do with ELLs, I spoke yesterday with Lois Leveen, the communications director for Grantmakers for Education, one of the funders' groups hosting next week's discussion in New York City. I forwarded her a link to my blog post about the meeting, hoping that she might bring it to the attention of funders attending the briefing. (So I really DO invite you to share your thoughts.)

She send me back a link to a blog post she wrote at the Grantmakers for Education Web site in April, in which she observed that "what's most amazed us is how off-the-radar ELL remains for most funders."

June 17 Update: The Huffington Post runs a piece about how funders are looking at ELL issues in education.

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Three groups of funders have joined together to host a meeting in New York City next week about strategies for making English-language learners a high priority among grantmakers and policymakers. The meeting is a two-day briefing on ELL issues for members of Grantmakers for Education, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, and Philanthropy New York. (Hat tip to It's Your World Blog.)

I'm not in the inside circles in philanthropy, but this is the first meeting I've ever heard of convened by grantmakers specifically to discuss how to support the success of English-language learners. The presenters at the meeting will include an advocate of ELLs, Delia Pompa of the National Council of La Raza; a couple of academics, Eugene Garcia of Arizona State University, Pedro Noguera of New York University, and several officials of foundations, including Andres Henriquez, of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, who I know has an interest in the education of ELLs. (@AndresHenriquez publicizes a lot of great information about the education of ELLs/Latinos on Twitter.)

One of the goals of the meeting is for the funders to discover common goals and consider collaborating together in funding "across different areas of interest." I'll be curious to learn if the grantmakers do launch a common initiative to improve the education of ELLs.

Another goal is to "explore the level of interest in an ongoing ELL learning community focused on improving education outcomes and opportunities."

I'm not sure who would be invited to join that "on-going ELL learning community" but let's just imagine for a moment that we are all eligible to join.

What would you most like funders to know about issues affecting ELLs? Tell us in the comment section.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Two researchers who specialize in special education have summarized in a straightforward way what is known about how to apply "response to intervention" to English-language learners in an article posted over at Colorín Colorado, a bilingual resource site for parents and educators. The researchers are Sharon Vaughn and Alba Ortiz. Update: The article was reprinted from the RTI Action Network.

The article focuses on the use of RTI for teaching reading. It spells out some of the ways how ELLs learn to read may differ from how native speakers of English acquire literacy. For example, ELLs may initially quickly attain reading fluency, but that fluency may slow down at a point where understanding word meaning becomes increasingly important. That's because ELLs often have to learn the meanings of words at the same time they're learning to read them, the researchers explain.

They stress the importance of all educators receiving professional development in how to work with ELLs. That's a point that was also made in a study that I blogged about recently that featured an elementary school where researchers reported RTI was implemented badly with ELLs.

The researchers urge educators to monitor carefully the progress of ELLs and use interventions, even if research is scant on how RTI applies specifically to ELLs. They argue that "ELLs will be better served if teachers and school personnel do not expect or accept low performance and if they do not view students as undeserving of effective interventions."

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Correction: An earlier version of this post mischaracterized the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe as barring schools from determining students' immigration status because of a potential "chilling" effect on their right to an education. That interpretation is offered by lawyers, but it is not in the court's opinion.

Post starts here: USA Today has published a story about the lack of clarity regarding how police working in schools in Arizona should carry out Arizona's new immigration-enforcement law, which goes into effect July 28.

EdWeek posted my story yesterday about this same topic. Some observers say the law, which compels police to inquire about the immigration status of people suspected to be illegally in the country during a "lawful stop, detention, or arrest," is in conflict with the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, which gives children a right to a free K-12 education regardless of immigration status. Many lawyers interpret the ruling as directing schools to avoid any attempts to determine the immigration status of a student because it might have a chilling effect on students' right to an education.

But a spokeswoman for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the law on April 23, told me that the governor doesn't believe the immigration-enforcement law is in conflict with Plyler v. Doe.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The leading author of Arizona's controversial immigration-enforcement law is gearing up to introduce a bill that would deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants born in Arizona, according to a story in Time. Ariz. Sen. Russell Pearce, a leading architect of SB 1070, the new immigration-enforcement law, apparently believes that if the children of undocumented immigrants couldn't become citizens, the parents would be less likely to stay in Arizona. Ariz. Republicans supportive of the bill are using the lingo "anchor babies" to refer to the children, who provide an anchor for their parents to settle in this country.

Update: EdWeek published today a story I wrote about the possible repercussions for schools of SB 1070.

Rep. Randy Terrill, a Republican in Oklahoma, is also gearing up to introduce a bill in his state legislature that would do away with citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

The 14th amendment of the U.S. constitution says that anyone born in this country is a U.S. citizen, so if lawmakers in Arizona and Oklahoma passed such a bill, it would likely be blocked by federal courts, the story says. Lawmakers such as Pearce and Terrill argue that the 14th amendment's language was intended to refer to slaves, not illegal immigrants.

It's not new for lawmakers to show an interest in getting rid of citizenship for children of the undocumented. I reported in an article about the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe, that Rep. Leo Berman introduced a bill in 2007 in the Texas legislature that had that goal.

That bill didn't go anywhere. What seems to be new is the very real likelihood that a state legislature might actually approve such a bill.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Los Angeles Unified School District didn't improve its rate for reclassifying English-language learners as fluent in the language this last school year over the previous two school years. I just received data from the school system that shows that on average 14.4 percent of ELLs were reclassified as fluent in the 2009-10 school year, down from 14.6 percent the previous year and 14.7 percent the year before that.

In the 06-07 school year, the reclassification rate was 13.6 percent, so it has budged less than a percentage point upward since then.

A reclassification rate is meaningless, though, unless one knows what the criteria are for ELLs in a school district or state to be considered proficient in English. Right now in LAUSD, students are reclassified if they pass the state's English-language proficiency test, score at least "basic" on the state's English-language arts test, and meet evaluation criteria of their teachers (such as having a "C" average or higher), according to a district spokeswoman. Parent consultation is also a factor, she said. Update: The spokeswoman said the criteria have stayed the same for the last few years.

California has resisted the trend to standardize criteria for reclassifying ELLs within a state. Typically states require that ELLs be reclassified after reaching a certain score on the state's English-proficiency test. California leaves the decision of reclassification up to school districts.

LAUSD has been criticized for the fact that many of its ELLs spend most of their school careers categorized as an ELL. A recent report from Californians Together indicated that across California, many ELLs languish in special programs to learn English without meeting criteria to leave them. And experts on ELLs say this is a nationwide problem.

The office for civil rights of the U.S. Department of Education is investigating the adequacy of programs for ELLs in LAUSD. Maybe that investigation will shed some light on the problem of students' receiving special help to learn English and never testing as fluent.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A Bronx elementary school didn't provide 75 students who hardly knew English with any special help to learn the language for most of this last school year, according to a story in the New York Daily News (hat tip to GothamSchools). In March, the school began language services for them, the article said. In addition, 50 students who knew some English but weren't fluent also didn't get any help until March.

In reading between the lines, I'm guessing that some teachers in that school were ticked off enough about the situation that they tipped off the New York Daily News on the story.

If the story is true, I want to think this is an isolated incident. But I've seen enough audits of school systems finding that ELLs weren't receiving the services that they're entitled to that I wonder if this isn't a problem in quite a few places.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The What Works Clearinghouse of the U.S. Department of Education has found that Read Well, a reading curriculum for kindergartners and 1st graders, has "potentially positive effects" on English-language development for English-language learners. The clearinghouse didn't find the curriculum to have discernible effects on reading for English-language learners.

The clearinghouse has tough criteria for studies to meet its "evidence standards." In the case of Read Well, the Clearinghouse reviewed five studies, but found that only one, an examination of the results of 34 1st grade ELLs in rural Colorado, met its criteria. I previously blogged about how the clearinghouse didn't find any studies of the popular Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol met its criteria and was unable to shed any light on the effectiveness of that method.

I just searched the What Works database to see if the clearinghouse has found any approaches to have "positive effects" for the English-language development of ELLs. Peer tutoring and response groups is the only one that has received such a high rating. In peer tutoring, one student provides coaching to another. In peer response groups, four or five students work together to complete a common task such as answering comprehension questions or editing a piece of writing. Each student in the group has a different job, such as one edits for spelling and another provides feedback on writing clarity.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

School choice programs can help close the achievement gap in the United States between Latinos and all students, argues a paper from the Lexington Institute released this month.

To make that case, the report describes the impact on student achievement of on-line schooling in Florida, Wisconsin's Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (a voucher program), and special needs scholarships, which are available in Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, and Utah.

The report doesn't talk a lot about the education of English-language learners. The Lexington Institute is a conservative think tank and favors English immersion over bilingual education methods for teaching ELLs. The report features a Roman Catholic school that participates in Milwaukee's voucher program that uses an English-immersion approach. After the 8th grade and students have mastered English, they are required to take three years of Spanish at that school.

The gist of the report's message is summed up in the following excerpt:

"Unfortunately, most of the nation's largest Latino constituency and advocacy groups continue to use their considerable political clout in support of liberal political agendas seeking to bolster the public education monopoly and teacher union control of government education spending. As this report details, the advantages of a system that provides real parental choice may represent the best change to close the Latino learning gap in the United States."

And in case some Latinos may not be able to understand that message in English, the report has been translated into Spanish as well.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A Dallas Morning News story published on Sunday suggests that fewer activists are paying attention to whether the Dallas school district does a good job in educating minority students. The article makes the case that with a decline in African-American students in the school district, the community has lost some African-American activists who paid attention to issues affecting minority students in the district.

Meanwhile, the proportion of Hispanic students in the Dallas school system has increased. But some observers say a loss of black leaders is a loss for all minority children, suggesting that the Hispanic community has produced fewer school activists in Dallas than the black community.

Readers, what do you think? Do your communities have Hispanic activists with a strong voice who advocate for the educational needs of minority students, including English-language learners, in your school district?

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Federal reviewers aren't receiving consistent feedback from states on how they include English-language learners in large-scale academic content tests or provide testing accommodations, a report by George Washington University's Center for Equity and Excellence in Education has found. The reason, the report indicates, is because federal peer reviewers and monitors don't ask for consistent information about ELLs and testing across states.

The report recommends that the U.S. Department of Education spell out more clearly the expectations for how each review process will examine states' efforts at including ELLs in testing. It also recommends that federal peer review committees and monitoring teams include experts on ELL assessment.

"There is an issue of the peer reviewers not having a good foundation on how English-language learners are affected by the assessment process," said Charlene Rivera, the executive director for the center and one of three authors of the report.

"Some states are being asked for one thing. Some are asked for others," added Lynn Shafer Willner, who along with Barbara D. Acosta, is also an author of the report.

The Education Department conducts two reviews that are aimed at supporting state education agencies in meeting federal requirements to validly assess all students. The report explains that one review is called "the standards and assessment peer review" and the other is a monitoring review for use of funds from Title I, the section of the No Child Left Behind Act authorizing funds for disadvantaged students.

The researchers characterized feedback that federal reviewers received from states on ELLs and testing as "scattered, and, when given, inconsistent."

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I'm really trying to think up a topic for a blog post that doesn't have to do with education or immigration policies in Arizona, but in the meantime, I'll share with you a piece by a columnist for the Imperial Valley Press in El Centro, Calif., that pokes fun at Arizona education officials.

Tom Horne, the superintendent of public instruction in that state, has expressed an interest in making sure that English-language learners in his state don't have any teachers who speak "faulty English."

Columnist Bret Kofford mentions a number of famous people, such as Sarah Palin and Frank McCourt, who in his view don't speak English in the standard American way who could plausibly be considered unfit for a classroom of English-learners.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As a journalist, I think often in terms of finding answers to questions. For this blog carnival, I've read the blog posts and then come up with a question that each one answers, kind of like what the guests on the T.V. show "Jeopardy" do. I used this same approach to the last English-learning blog carnival that I hosted, but, hey, sometimes it's okay to do something twice, right?

This edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, created by Larry Ferlazzo at Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day, is heavy on lesson ideas. But you'll find some education philosophy woven within and between the posts about lessons.

Introductory Fanfare:

Q: What do the abbreviations in the name of the carnival stand for?
A: ESL stands for English as a second language, EFL stands for English as a foreign language, and ELL stands for English-language learners, the name we give students who speak a language other than English at home and are acquiring English.

Let the carnival begin!

Q: What does an "alphabet book" on VoiceThread look like and how is it useful to students?
A: Teaching Village posts an example of an alphabet book and tells how it helps students to hear English spoken by people with different voices and accents because VoiceThread enables other people to make contributions to the alphabet book.

Q: How can Bingo be used in the foreign-language classroom?
A: The PLN Staff Lounge tells how Bingo can be used to teach irregular verbs and new vocabulary.

Q: How can teachers use "fun and games" to teach English to children ages 7 to 9?
A: TEFL Matters posts a video of a jazz chant and describes other English activities that will prevent lessons from becoming monotonous.

Q: What are some visuals that illustrate the literal or actual meaning of idioms?
A: Janet's Abruzzo Edublog has posted visuals for idioms such as "the cat has got your tongue," and "let sleeping dogs lie."

Q: What's a visual concept that can be used over and over again for interactive language activities?
A: English Raven has posted free cut-outs with roads and shops and other visuals that students can use to build neighborhoods and talk about them. Jason Renshaw, the blogger for English Raven, calls it the "City of CleverKey."

Q: What's another source for visuals to create English-learning activities?
A: Sneaker Teacher reviews Boardmaker, a database of visuals that costs $299, which she has used to create games and "communication boards" for English-learners.

Q: That sounds expensive. What's a resource with an extensive collection of visuals that is free?
A: English Technology in ELT tells how to use the Flickr database to choose visuals to enhance English learning.

Q: How can one teach students to skim and scan a text?
A: English Advantage has created an exercise that simulates what kind of information readers pick up while typically scanning an article in the newspaper, rather than reading every word in it.

Q: What are some questions students could use in an interview?
A: My English Club posts a sample "writing challenge" that can prompt students to conduct an interview and write about it.

Q: What can be the repercussions of educators' implementing "blanket policies" concerning English-learners?
A: The Blog of Ms. Mercer gives examples of a how a couple of English-language learners seemed to have received bad placements either in special education or classes for English-language learners.

Q: How can "sounding out" sounds or letters be useful for older language learners?
A: Language & Literacy for All makes an argument for why pronunciation should be taught explicitly to language learners of all ages, not just children who are learning to read.

Q: How can a popular movie be used to teach students to read using context clues?
A: Sabrina's Weblog uses a trailer from the movie "Avatar" to help students understand that just as they make inferences about Avatar's imaginary world, they can make inferences in their reading.

Q: What's the value of poetry in the classroom?
A: EFL Classroom 2.0—Teacher Talk speaks up for the value of savoring poetry. Poetry is a great way to think about ourselves, the blogger says.

Q: What are Web resources that will help me to avoid reinventing the wheel in getting students engaged in listening and speaking?
A: Teacher Reboot Camp has put together 14 Web resources for getting English-language learners to talk, including "dialog generators" and "language-learning communities."

Q: How might a teacher build a lesson for ELLs about the perceptions of a country, such as the United States, by people who live outside that country?
A: Larry Ferlazzo reflects on how he might adapt a lesson about perceptions of Europe that he used with native speakers of English for a classroom of ELLs.

Q: Are any women really shining in how they use technology with language-learners or is it just men who shine in this area?
A: Nik's Quick Shout features a bunch of women who are stars in using and writing about the use of technology in language learning.

Q: Can something written by committee be useful in a language classroom?
A: Sean Banville's Blog tells about how "communal writing" can help students to learn from each other.

Q: What do reading comprehension strategies look like when cleverly illustrated?
A: Creating Lifelong Learners shares free posters in English and Spanish of reading strategies, such as predicting and clarifying.

Q: How can the use of prepositions be taught with games?
A: My Integrating Technology Journey shares some games for helping students to learn and use prepositions properly.

Q: How can schools let English-learners know where they stand in terms of English proficiency and academics?
A: Learning the Language (that's my blog) tells how the Ventura Unified School District in California has created a brochure that describes English-language-development classes and gives each student an individual profile of where he or she stands in acquiring English and meeting the state's academic standards.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Arizona Republic reports that some school officials in Arizona are expecting an exodus of immigrant families over the summer because of the new immigration-enforcement law passed in that state. The newspaper says that some immigrant parents have been telling school officials they plan to relocate. One elementary school district in Phoenix lost 70 families in 30 days, which educators there characterized as an unprecedented number.

The new law in Arizona requires local police to inquire about the immigration status of people they are interacting with whom they suspect are living illegally in the country.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend