Arizona’s system for educating English Learners has undergone substantial restructuring in the past 12 years, including new funding levels and formulas. While this has resulted in changes to some long-languishing but important indicators of success for many of these students, other crucial indicators have changed only incrementally.
The state’s current system evolved after the “English for the Children” ballot initiative was passed by Arizona voters in 2000, mandating the statewide use of English immersion. A major issue raised by supporters of the plan was the very low reclassification rate for English learners: With fewer than 10 percent of these students successfully transitioning to English proficiency each year, a student entering Arizona public schools in kindergarten with poor English skills was seen as more likely to drop out of school than to learn English.
Such persistently low reclassification rates for English learners result in two serious problems for students who remain in these programs: segregation in separate classrooms with minimal interaction with English-speaking classmates, and reduced access to high-quality learning opportunities consistent with state content standards. For a majority of English learners currently in Arizona schools, these problems continue to characterize their daily school experience.
Today, all Arizona public schools are required to use Structured English Immersion models developed by the state’s ELL Task Force. The approved models require that all English learners receive four daily hours of English language development. They were designed with the goal of moving as many of them as possible to English proficiency, and mainstream classrooms, in one year.
Placement is determined exclusively by a child’s score on the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment proficiency test (AZELLA). The annually-administered test includes verbal, reading and writing sections, cannot be retaken, and is the only data teachers or administrators may use to determine a child’s classroom setting. Those that pass are moved into mainstream classes, aligned with state content standards across different subjects, with varying amounts of targeted remediation and supplemental enrichment.
The rates of reclassification to English proficiency have improved dramatically, and the statewide average of 31 percent for 2009 and 2010 is among the nation’s highest (although states use different tests and standards). But the program’s rigid structure seems to be proving particularly problematic for students who do not reach the program’s goal of proficiency in their first year.
As hearings of the ELL Task Force have documented, the remaining English learners are broadly and uniformly segregated from their English-speaking peers. Often the elementary-level ELLs are effectively separated for the entire school day, as schools lack meaningful opportunities to re-integrate them after their four-hour requirement is completed.
Especially for those at the intermediate level of English, this severely constrains their access to curriculum aligned with state academic content standards (access which is required by federal law). It also deprives them of valuable opportunities to interact verbally with native English-speakers, to which anyone who has studied a second language can attest offers important advantages toward linguistic assimilation.
Making matters worse, a 2011 report by the Arizona Auditor General found that the structured English Immersion models were broadly out of compliance statewide. The major complaints noted were that programs were being incompletely implemented (38 percent did not provide grammar instruction), nearly half fell short of offering four hours of actual English language development daily, and 27 percent of classrooms lacked qualified teachers.
Why not reduce the four-hour model to two hours in the second and subsequent years for all English learners at the intermediate English level? This was the substance of one worthwhile improvement proposed to the task force last year by noted English immersion authority Christine Rossell, the Boston University professor who served as state’s expert in the Horne v. Flores court case over ELL education. Segregationist classroom policies, whatever their stated purpose, are a harmful barrier to learning that should be eradicated everywhere, and especially where early English learning is the main objective.
For the thousands of English learners who remain in their segregated setting year after year, current trends offer little reason for optimism. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 86 percent of Arizona’s fourth-grade English leaners scored at woeful “below basic” levels in English reading, up from 81 percent in 2003. While the rest of the nation has demonstrated progress reducing its rate of English learners at this lowest level of achievement, such gains have eluded Arizona.
There can hardly be a student population more crucial to the state’s future, educationally or economically. It makes sense that the programs to bring them to English proficiency continue to improve accordingly.
Don Soifer is executive vice president of the Lexington Institute in Washington, DC. E-mail him at soifer@lexingtoninstitute.org.
chatmandu002 posted at 9:42 am on Sat, Jun 2, 2012.
Another example of how illegal immigration is costing us so much money.
Leon Ceniceros posted at 9:59 am on Sat, Jun 2, 2012.
More "malarky" from yet another.............Liberal Think-Tank.
In the 1940's and 1950's....non-English speaking students were put in one classroom for 6 months to learn English. They learned English grammer, reading, pronuciation and punctuation. Only after they were tested and judged proficient for their age/grade level were they allowed to go into the normal classes.
THIS WORKED OUT PERFECTLY FOR DECADES AND DECADES UNTIL THE 1960'S WHEN ......SEPARATE BUT EQUAL....NOT ONLY MEANT RACIALLY BUT ENGLISH-PROFICIENCY TOO = THE DISASTER WE NOW SEE IN OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM WHERE A NON-ENGLISH PROFICIENT STUDENT ENTERS THE MAINSTREAM CLASSES AND GRADUATES FROM THE 12TH GRADE WITH THE ENGLISH PROFICIENCE OF A 2ND OR 3RD GRADE STUDENT...................THANK YOU..........LEFT-WING LIBERALS FOR RUINING THE LIVES, THE EDUCATION AND THE WORK POTENTIAL OF MILLIONS OF NON-ENGLISH PROFICIENT STUDENTS.
sockratties posted at 11:36 am on Sat, Jun 2, 2012.
U. S. education has been destined to failure since the federal government got involved under Lyndon Johnson in 1965 as a funded mandate. When the federal government gets involved with an area as diverse from state to state as education the programs become expensive, bloated, and eventually do as much harm as good. George W. Bush continued the plan as No Child Left Behind in 2001. The program has had many patches and changes including attempts to focus on needs but has always missed its mark. It as tweaked by Ronald Reagan in 1981 and again in 1988. In 1994 it was again revised with the Improving America’s Schools Act, under Bill Clinton. These federal attempts to standardize education usually require matching funds and are based on meeting some criterion to receive the funds. The current AIMS tests are an example of this one size fits all thinking. This is really government meddling. The combined budgets for the U. S. Department of Education in 2011 was about $90 Billion and our national educational level has slipped again.
The three-yearly Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics. This shows that government money, organizational meddling and administrative bloat can’t get the job done.
States always want money so they buy into the grant and funding programs. Once in, they can’t get out. The complexity of Mr. Soifer’s letter shows how it is impossible to measure the success or failure of any of these programs. The best guess of its success here in Arizona is that we finally made it to the bottom of the ladder… we’re 50th in education out of the 50 states in a country that is below average globally.
The best way is to get the feds out of education, get state legislature out of the classroom and get schools back to county control. Let them compete against each other and hold that as the criteria. Kids love to compete and they love to learn, if the government will just give them a chance.
tired of polits posted at 6:17 am on Sun, Jun 3, 2012.
I find it interesting that Mr Soifer has not realized that students who do not speak English will not be able to compete and succeed in mainstream classrooms where the expectations are high. Common sense shows that students who cannot speak, read, or write in English will not be able to complete the tasks required in mainstream classrooms, unless the expectations are lowered, which does them or our country any good. I hear time and time again that "English language learners" are not getting the content in classes with non-English speakers. I applaud Arizona for "doing what is right" for these students. These students are not only learning English, but then are becoming successful in mainstream classrooms with the same expectations as native English speakers. Let's take the politics out of this, and give Arizona credit for teaching English language learners.
Arizona Willie posted at 9:54 am on Sun, Jun 3, 2012.
Oh golly, this fella lives in Washington, D.C. he must know best.
I wonder why he is so interested in kids learning English clear out here in the wilds of Aridzona.
Surely he doesn't sell programs to schools or teaching English to non-english speakers.
As the old saying goes ... follow the money.
I bet he has a dog in this hunt. No doubt in my mind.
chuckles3 posted at 11:30 am on Mon, Jun 4, 2012.
The obvious solution here is to require the classes be taught half in Spanish and half in English. Or, better yet, combine these kids with the English speakers and require the class be paced to meet the needs of the slowest learners. All the smarter kids who speak English can show up for an hour each day, do their homework, and leave to go play video games and grow up wondering why education has sucked in the US since the Federal Govmt. go involved.
VofReason posted at 2:27 pm on Mon, Jun 4, 2012.
Have to say that Sock has hit it out of the park on a few of the latest commentaries. Here is an idea, why don't they ensure that newly minted citizens are proficient in English. If the parents are English speakers, it will be much easier for the children to learn. Oops, that would assume that any of their parents are citizens- there in is the rub. Therefore everything from there is an up hill battle.
JMJ posted at 2:15 am on Tue, Jun 5, 2012.
Anyone who knows anything about language acquisition knows that is darn near impossible for a child to become proficient in a second language within one year. The AZELLA was developed to push kids through more quickly, so that they didn't need to be funded after the first year in an ELD program. Wow, we are "miracle workers" with a high rate of 31% achieving "proficiency" in one year. What a bunch of malarky. Then, students who miraculously "pass" are monitored after they leave the initial program for two more years, and the burden of language acquisition and its individual student documentation falls to the classroom teacher, who doesn't have enough to do, already. [That was sarcasm.]
Students who come to the U.S. with some literacy in their home language fare far better than students who are not literate in their home language. The spectrum of where students "are", academically and language-wise, when they enter an ELD classroom, their home language they already hopefully acquired, and their literacy within that home language, the level of education and literacy of their parents--myriad factors--determine how quickly a child becomes "really proficient" vs. what the state of Arizona deems as "proficient". The four hour language model is not a bad idea, per se, but there has to be immersion into English during the school day by being placed, at grade and content level, within "regular" classrooms, because, even if a student is not proficient in English, s/he needs to be exposed to the classwork, in English, at the content level these students are going to be expected to produce "at level", eventually.
There is no silver bullet. It's a very complicated learning curve, and language acquisition takes five to seven yearsfor students to be "really proficient", not the year that Arizona thinks is needed. You'd think we were miracle workers here in Arizona when we produce "proficient" students within a year. Proficient? After one year? My Aunt Fanny. What a joke.
VofReason posted at 4:24 pm on Tue, Jun 5, 2012.
Maybe it is all just a ploy. Democrates push to keep the border open and let through illegals they hope will some day help them into office. As an added bonus, public schools put on a facade of trying to educate "english learners" and need more money every year to do so. The Teachers Unions are all demos and on it goes......
VofReason posted at 1:06 pm on Thu, Jun 7, 2012.
"Anyone who knows anything about language acquisition knows that is darn near impossible for a child to become proficient in a second language within one year." Boy, I thought illegal immigration didn't cost us a cent. Seems like several years of "english" before you can begin to teach ABC or 123 might be a little expensive.