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Exemption for English Language Learners: Not good
February 21, 2004Several edubloggers have mentioned the latest news from D.C. and the No Child Left Behind regulations. Seems the Feds have taken pity on school districts with large immigrant populations, and have exempted English Language Learners from standardized testing, at least for a time.
Number 2 Pencil covers the story, complete with responses from a bevy of folks, and Daryl Cobranchi writes, "Did anyone really think that giving a kid a test in English before he even learned to speak the language was fair, let alone a good idea?"
We may not win any popularity contests for this one, but we heartily disagree.
A valid issue is the whole matter of federal regulations in education, and whether they are "fair" to schools, and this can be discussed elsewhere.
But we feel very strongly that it is a mistake to separate children into classes, and then to treat those classes differently. Although it may seem that it is making the system more fair, really the kids may end up on the short end.
One reason why so many immigrant children have trouble learning English is for the very simple reason that schools don't take the task very seriously. We have a host of ideologically-driven programs which are designed to either embrace the child's home culture or language (or Spanish, even if the kid's Vietnamese!)
These programs are euphemistically titled "bilingual education" and most do little to help a kid learn English.
Teaching English isn't rocket science, all you have to do is talk to the folks that are already successful in teaching immigrant children (you'll find they're quite satisfied with an immersive program, coupled with intensive English instruction, including teaching the rules of grammar, heaven forbid).
Exempting these English Language Learners won't speed up this process any.
From the New York Times story on the new changes to No Child Left Behind (free registration required):
A second change to the law is extremely technical, but important to schools. Schools may now continue counting foreign students in the subgroup of students learning English for two years after they have learned the language. The change comes in response to schools' concern that the subgroup of English learners would, by definition, always ensure a school's failure if students moved out of the subgroup once the school succeeded in teaching them English.Emphasis ours. This supports our criticism of how education experts treat English Language Learners: as a separate class of students.
We don't think this is right, especially now that schools won the right to keep calling a student an "English Language Learner" two years after they learned the language! Doesn't this seem a little counter-productive, just to play games with the statistics?
Keeping the ELL designation for two years after the kid learns English not only skews the data, making it less meaningful, but it also doesn't solve the problem of the "blip" when the kid switches categories from ELL to join the rest of the student body. The average score in the ELL group will still go down, regardless.
What we propose may not seem "fair," but is best for kids: Treat all students equally. If a kid is a new immigrant, then do everything in your power to teach him English, straightaway. It's a win-win situation: the quicker the kid learns English, the better your standardized scores, and the better he'll do in school.
But as long as we classify English Language Learners as a separate class, schools have little motivation to actually teach them English.
We don't test students on material they haven't been taught. So it comes down to a question of time. How much time should an immigrant child be given to be able to perform on NCLB tests? In the past (bilingual ed), there was no time limit. With NCLB, they had only that year before testing. I think it is reasonable to give a little more time before testing them, maybe one year. If the child has been in the states for a year, then they test. If not, then the school gets a year to bring they up to speed. They'll still have to test and the school will still be accountable for them.
These NCLB tests aren't concerned with the passing or failing of a individual child, they take entire schools of students and average all the scores together. To my knowledge, there isn't a single school in the country where even 10% of the kids are in this country less than a year.
Any school worth its salt (meaning any school that uses an effective means of teaching English) should have nothing to fear.
Having said that, I still do not believe in the use of any federally-mandated high-stakes testing. But if you're gonna test, test them all.
chett February 21, 2004 01:13 PMThese NCLB tests aren't concerned with the passing or failing of a individual child, they take entire schools of students and average all the scores together.
Yes, but the law requires that all sub-groups must achieve AYP or the entire school (or school distrcit) "fails." Here in my hometown, a single question on one test was scored incorrectly. That question caused one student to "fail" the test when he should have passed. He was SpEd and the entire school "failed." When his test was re-scored, the school got bumped to "commendable." He wasn't an immigrant but the point is the same. Small numbers of kids who barely miss a cutoff can cause all sorts of headaches under this law. I have no problem giving the schools an extra year to teach English.
Daryl Cobranchi February 21, 2004 06:35 PMDaryl, shouldn't we be asking some questions about methodology? I mean, doesn't it seem odd that one child should be the difference between failure and commendable? It seems the designers of that system had taken either leave of their senses, or had never taken--and passed--a course in basic statistics.
Federal education regulations just plain stink.
chett February 21, 2004 09:07 PMAgreed. It's a crazy system. And one guaranteed to collapse of its own weight sometime before 2014.
Daryl Cobranchi February 22, 2004 02:55 PMSorry Chett, but the Pass/Fail line has to be drawn somewhere. On any test, you know there's a certain number of questions you can miss. If you miss that "one question" more then you fail the test. The fact is that the passing score on the test is placed low to account for students having a "bad day", mis-marking an answer, and possibly knowing the concept but getting that question wrong. Add in that it's a multiple choice test which gives the student a 25% chance of getting the questions he doesn't know correct. Any child close to the line doesn't know his stuff.
Finally, we have the issue of the subgroups. Here in the U.S. we're used to averaging to get grades. This, of course, allows you to get some failing grades if you can balance them with enough passing grades. Now let's talk about students. Schools have been allowed to fail some students as long as enough students pass. When the data is disagregated we start to see which students get the short end of the education stick. This is unacceptable. All students subgroups should be expected to perform adequately and the school should be held responsible to see to it that it happens. If one subgroup fails, then the school has failed to do its job.
Jack February 23, 2004 07:42 AMJack, thanks for your input.
I do believe in having clear standards for measurements, my point in my previous comment was that it's ridiculous to have a school go from failing to commendable with the change in one kid's score. What, are those the only possible categories?
It's kind of like someone gets caught running a red light and we throw the guy in Federal prison for 20 years. "You have to set the pass/fail line somewhere, either you're a criminal, or you're not."
Pass/Fail systems of measurements demonstrate a inherent laziness on the part of the designer.
Imagine taking the SAT test for college, and instead of possible scores in the range of 400 to 1600 (further broken down into math and verbal sub-scores), students were merely given a "pass" or "Fail" score. This would be next to useless!
chett February 23, 2004 03:55 PM