English Language Learners deserve equal treatment at school
It has long been known that the turnover of new teachers is high, especially among Hispanic teachers. But I’ve always wondered if this is because Latino teachers are likelier to teach children who are learning how to speak English.
In my own experience across school districts in urban, suburban and rural communities, I’ve observed bilingual, dual-language and English as a second language (ESL) programs to be the absolute worst.
The kids have never been the problem. The real issues have been everything from systemic racial bias in school districts to pedagogical ignorance among the people who determine curriculum and learning standards.
There has also been an endemic indifference to the challenges of being an English language learner (ELL) by teaching staff.
As a result, such programs are ghettos typified by underinvestment, administrative mismanagement and the framing of English learners as “problems,” resulting in educational malpractice.
Researchers are only just starting to tease out this disparity — which has been known as fact for years among Hispanic community leaders, parents and educators, especially those who teach Latino students.
The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, pro-immigrant think tank, recently published a paper on this topic titled “The Patchy Landscape of State English Learner Policies under ESSA.” The paper details how well the Every Student Succeeds Act — which replaced No Child Left Behind in 2015 — has delivered on the promise to bring new rigor to the education of English learners.
Spoiler alert: There’s a long way to go.
Across the country, implementation of standards remains patchy, but at least there now exists enough consistency in how ELL students are identified in nationwide school systems to tease out what needs improvement — a major upgrade to how things operated five years ago.
The most important takeaway is that better data is needed. Right now, school districts are allowed to combine the academic outcomes of current and former ELL students, with the effect of artificially inflating current ELL scores with those from students who have been reclassified as proficient in English.
And full reclassification of students obscures whether the students maintain their proficiency over time.
Worst of all, most states don’t provide clear data on how many ESL students are excluded from their accountability data. This means that the students who, arguably, struggle the most and need the most help are excluded from school ratings.
This masks school districts’ overall performance and makes it impossible for outside observers to clearly see whether ESL students are making academic gains that are equal to, or at least similar to, their native-English speaking peers. This all lines up neatly with another study— this one of schools in North Carolina.
This study was conducted by researchers from both Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who found what they termed “hidden segregation,” or segregation within schools in a particular area, such as a county or school district.
Hispanic kids tend to be herded into classrooms with lower expectations, fewer resources and the most transient teachers. This is often based on test scores that hinge on the students’ ability to read and understand the nuances of English.
It’s particularly troubling to obfuscate how well integrated schools are around the country.
That’s because it used to be that the academic success of all public school students relied at least partly on Latinx kids (who make up a quarter of all students) getting the resources and support they need to learn.
If they continue to be segregated from their peers and allowed to falter in programs that allow their struggles to remain hidden or downplayed, public schools will only continue creating the inequality that is tearing the country apart.