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Educating English learners in a post-Prop. 227 world

Frenchman Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the Statue of Liberty, but a New York City-born daughter of Portuguese immigrants got in the last word: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Emma Lazarus’ sonnet captures in words what Bartholdi had molded in metal. It’s a feat of artistry comparable to Ginger Rogers matching Fred Astaire move for inspired, choreographed move—and doing it dancing backwards, in high heels.

That’s something like the challenge facing students who are learning English. They must master math, science and other academic subjects, and they must do it in a new language, usually with no help at home, while also dealing with a perplexing new culture, imposing technology and any number of other daunting obstacles. English learners account for a quarter of all the students in California’s public schools, so they are one of the largest groups of students served by the state—and one of the largest subgroups in measurements of academic performance under No Child Left Behind and other assessments. When California’s voters adopted Proposition 227 in 1998, some people thought it was like asking those students—and their teachers—to approach their lessons with one hand tied behind their backs. Toss in tough new academic standards and related laws, regulations and court decisions, and watch those teachers and students juggle.

That wasn’t the intent of any of the changes. Proponents of Proposition 227—the “English for the Children” initiative that passed with more than 61 percent of the vote—saw bilingual education as a trap that segregated English learners in dead-end classes that left the students unprepared for life and work in the United States. Better, they argued, to eliminate the use of any language except English—this country’s lingua franca.

Approaches to English today

That’s now the policy at most of the state’s public schools. The California Department of Education’s DataQuest Web site shows that in the 2005-06 academic year, less than 7 percent of California’s nearly 1.75 million English learners were enrolled in bilingual classes and other multilingual courses of study that are still allowed under Proposition 227’s waiver provisions. The number of traditional bilingual programs has dropped by nearly 50 percent since 2003, according to Veronica Aguila, administrator of CDE’s Language Policy Leadership Office. At nearly the same time, however, the number of dual language immersion programs, which integrate English learners and English speakers in multiyear academic studies in two different languages, has grown—from 95 in 2000 to 197 this year, Aguila reports.

Nearly 47 percent of English learners were in structured English immersion settings in 2005-06. Also called sheltered English immersion, SEI “is an English language acquisition process for young children in which nearly all classroom instruction is in English but with a curriculum and presentation designed for children who are learning the language,” according to the DataQuest glossary.

Another 42 percent of English learners are in English language mainstream classes “where English learners have met local criteria for having achieved a ‘good working knowledge’ (also defined as ‘reasonable fluency’) of English” and are provided with additional and appropriate services.” Two percent of those students have transferred—at their parents’ request, again under Proposition 227’s waiver provisions—from structured English immersion to English language mainstream programs. A variety of other instructional settings authorized under the state Education Code account for the remaining 4 percent or so of students, Aguila says.

Structured immersion

Aliso Elementary School, in the Carpinteria Unified School District south of Santa Barbara, is one of those schools where no bilingual instruction is offered, and many English learners are thriving under the structured immersion approach. “Our subgroups continually make gains, and we’re making good gains in closing the achievement gap,” Principal Tricia T. Price says proudly. The school’s 2005 base Academic Performance Index was 787, tantalizingly close to the state goal of 800. Aliso was singled out as a high-achieving school by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell earlier this year—as was Summerland School, another of Carpinteria USD’s schools where Price is principal.

With an enrollment of 411 students in grades K-6, 56 percent are English learners; of those, 240 speak Spanish and one speaks Portuguese—the native tongue of Emma Lazarus’ parents. Forty-four percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, a poverty indicator that many argue is at least as important as primary language to a student’s academic performance. “The population of our school directly reflects the population of our community,” Price says, countering popular perceptions of  the Santa Barbara area’s tony affluence. “What we have are the haves and the have-nots.”

Even though it doesn’t have bilingual instruction, Aliso does offer primary language support to its English learners—especially at the start of the school year, when new students may have no English skills. Spanish speakers are also available in the office to make phone calls to parents, translate school documents and attend parent conferences. “We have enough bilingual staff so that we can provide translators at every conference,” Price says.

English learners can get assistance in their primary language during an after-school program, when more than half of Aliso’s teachers provide tutoring assistance in math and language arts. In a partnership with Santa Barbara Community College, Aliso also has a very active Community Based English Tutoring program, funded through a provision of Proposition 227 to provide free or subsidized English instruction to parents and other community members. An English as a Second Language instructor works with adults under the program, and child care is provided four days a week to encourage attendance. In turn, participants agree to help children with their English at home or to tutor in the school.

Price also stresses professional development for her staff, coordination with neighboring districts and other methods of ensuring the success of her English learners. All of Carpinteria USD’s students and their families can also take advantage of the Computers For Families program, an innovative partnership with the Santa Barbara County Office of Education that makes laptop computers and Internet services available. “There’s a real focus on technology,” Price says. A Bilingual Advisory Committee raises money to support the program and help English learners’ parents understand results of the California English Language Development Test.

Aliso’s results might seem to support the contention of Proposition 227’s backers that bilingual classroom instruction was derailing English learners. However, a landmark analysis of the state’s programs for English learners points to another culprit in their academic performance: poverty. In “Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the Education of English Learners, K-12,” released in January, the American Institutes for Research and WestEd report that English learners “are more likely to live in poverty, which appears to be the strongest predictor of academic underperformance, than their native English-speaking peers.” They also note some observers’ contention that “removing bilingual education had adversely affected schools by limiting their ability to use primary language instruction to clarify academic content.” The researchers’ own conclusion from five years of studying the issue: “After controlling for the socioeconomic status of the school populations served, the results of these analyses do not clearly favor one EL instructional model over another.”

Bilingualism, biliteracy and dual immersion

In a gang-infested stretch of some of the most densely developed cityscape in Los Angeles, where 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, lies “a ghetto, but in a good sense,” in the words of Lloyd Houske, the principal of Cahuenga Elementary School for the past 20 years. “My people are fresh from another country, full of optimism and realizing the value of an education,” says Houske.

Cahuenga was among six “exemplar schools” profiled in the AIR/WestEd study whose administrators agreed to waive the confidentiality promised by the researchers. Roughly nine in 10 of the students at the K-5 school are English learners; two-thirds of those students speak Spanish, the other third Korean. Despite all of that, Cahuenga’s 2005 API was 793, up from 2004’s 778 base and just shy of the statewide goal of 800; Hispanic students’ API scores have risen 261 points in the past six years.

Most of Cahuenga’s English learners pursue a biliterate education; beginning in kindergarten, children learn to read in two languages—either English and Spanish or English and Korean. The biliterate approach combines language development with core curriculum content, giving students the academic vocabulary they need to understand the lessons. Other students are in structured immersion classes with some primary-language support.

Some students are in a dual-immersion program where children who speak only Korean are combined with Spanish-speaking students; most of those Spanish speakers learned English as a second language and now will be learning their third language—Korean. Unlike the biliterate classes, the dual immersion classes also include students proficient in English who act as peer models of English usage. Instruction is provided in both languages, but English may be used from as little as 10 percent of the time to as much as 50 percent, often giving students oral proficiency in the two languages. At the end of a five- to- seven-year program, truly biliterate students have academic proficiency in both languages, according to a state description of dual immersion’s goals. And, since many dual immersion students speak another language than those they study in the immersion program, they end up with some degree of proficiency in three different languages.

“It becomes a prestige program,” with the Los Angeles Unified School District’s middle and high schools vying to attract Cahuenga students, Houske boasts of his school’s dual immersion instruction. “They want to attract kids who are bringing high scores to their school.”

Houske meets with the parents of each new K-5 class at the start of each session of the year-round school’s calendar. He explains his goal—to have every student graduate prepared to attend college—and the procedures. Most of his staff is bilingual.
“I’m a struggling Spanish speaker myself,” he says enthusiastically. “I have to remember: How do I learn? And then I’ve got to remember that when I teach kids.”

Cahuenga stands out, not just in the AIR/WestEd research, but also in a study of successful bilingual schools to be published later this year by the San Diego County Office of Education. Oscar Medina, the county office’s bilingual education project specialist, says Cahuenga is one of six schools that will be featured in results from a two-year study that began with data from some 150 elementary schools throughout the state.

“What was needed was a belief from the educators that they could implement a high-quality bilingual program,” concludes Medina. “Probably the single strongest element that they had in common was a really strong belief in biliteracy.” Other keys include parental involvement, professional development and classroom coaching. “All of that really boils down to the principal,” Medina says, and to fostering “a schoolwide climate of collegiality, accountability, of always wanting to improve. … None of that happens in isolation.”

English learners in the upper grades

Some two-thirds of California’s English learners are in the elementary grades—not all, unfortunately, in schools like Aliso and Cahuenga. But the challenges don’t get any easier as students advance into the upper grades. If they’re lucky, they may attend a school like Valley High School, in Sacramento County’s Elk Grove Unified School District. It was the only high school of the six schools profiled in the AIR/WestEd study as models of successful instructional programs for English learners.

Working with adolescent students poses different challenges, acknowledges Valerie Chun, administrator of the school’s English Language Support Services.

“How can we assist them in giving them the skills they need while also helping them navigate the teenage territory of high school?” asks Chun. “How can we help them access the content they need to graduate from high school with the necessary language skills and the curriculum content they need in order to become successful, contributing members of society?”

The Proposition 227 study answers Chun’s rhetorical questions in its school profile: “Valley High offers a tiered ‘EL partnership’ program with three levels of instruction: one for newcomer students; another set of ‘transitional’ core courses for those ELs who have not yet attained the level of English fluency necessary to access college-level textbooks; and ‘SDAIE’ [specially designed academic instruction in English] core classes, all of which are approved by the University of California system as meeting college entrance requirements,” the researchers wrote.

Chun explains: “EL teachers provide ongoing professional learning opportunities to the content-area teachers. The school teams work together by setting up special learning sessions where they meet and study [and] discuss strategies that support ELs. The EL teachers demonstrate how to best help ELs read and write.”

At 26 percent, Valley High’s English learners account for a smaller slice of the student population than at other schools, but they also are more varied. One in eight ELs speaks Spanish, one in 20 speaks Hmong, one in 50 Hindi, one in 70 Vietnamese, one in 75 Punjabi, and another 3.6 percent speak some other language.

Every one of those languages might come in handy in San Francisco, arguably the West coast’s most cosmopolitan city. Mary Ellen Gallegos, executive director of Multilingual Programs for the San Francisco Unified School District, says the city’s multiethnic mosaic strengthens the district’s students’ standing in the job market and in life. SFUSD offers English-only classes, bilingual instruction in Tagalog, Spanish, Cantonese and English and dual-language immersion programs pairing English with Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Spanish. A program in Russian may be next.

“There’s a lot of pressure to increase our numbers and languages,” says Gallegos. “We have long, long waiting lists.” However, she adds, it takes time to develop a quality program.

Valuing diversity

Poised on the Pacific Rim, with more than 50 different languages spoken by its students, according to the state Department of Education, California is a major player in that global economy, and it will profit in more ways than one from embracing its English learners.

“The label hides an incredible variety of students,” says Aida Walqui, director of the Teacher Development Program at WestEd. “They already come with assets that are not [always] recognized by the teachers.”

In large part, that’s because teachers aren’t adequately prepared to work with English learners. Walqui, who is also on the board of directors of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, asserts that the reason half of all new teachers quit within five years is because they don’t receive the school site support they need.

“All teachers across a district need to approach teaching and language in similar ways,” urges Walqui. “Get teachers to develop their expertise and use similar academic tools as they teach.”

Jill Kemper Mora, an associate professor of teacher education at San Diego State University and a member of the executive board of the California Association of Bilingual Professionals, agrees that teacher training is vital and adds, “That’s one place where California has really done better than a number of other states.” The state established the Cross-cultural, Language and Academic Development credential in 1992 and folded it into the regular credential in 1998; all new teachers now must be prepared to teach English learners. The state also issues the Bilingual Cross-cultural, Language and Academic Development credential, with six tests making a teacher eligible for a BCLAD certificate in Armenian, Cantonese, Pilipino, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Mandarin, Punjabi, Spanish or Vietnamese.

“If I had my chance to talk to every school board in the state,” Mora continues, “the first thing I would do is explain second-language acquisition, which is a gradual process.” It generally takes five to seven years to acquire full mastery of a new language, she explains, pointing out the importance of focusing on the progression of students throughout the K-12 system. Linguists distinguish the ability to generate language as a higher order than the ability to understand it; the ability to listen develops before the ability to speak, and the ability to read before the ability to write.

To nurture that, Mora recommends that schools provide sheltered immersion and accelerated reading instruction—not just in the elementary grades, but throughout the curriculum. “They need to look at having reading specialists in the middle schools and high schools,” Mora says, and to provide more professional development related to English learners in those grades, with materials adapted for each content area. “Basically, the way the curriculum has been approached is one-size-fits-all.”

Other advice for boards

The practitioners in the field offered their own advice for governing boards. Price, the principal at Aliso Elementary in the Santa Barbara USD, notes that district Superintendent Paul A. Cordeiro is a staunch advocate of site visits by trustees. “It’s just a snapshot, of course, but it also gives them a sense of what teachers are dealing with on a daily basis,” Price says. Unvarnished reports from administrators are also important. “Let them know what the challenges are,” from adequate funding and qualified personnel to the student’s home environments, Price adds. “You can never communicate too much.”

Houske, the biliteracy proponent in Los Angeles, says English learners “really need instruction in their primary language along with English.” Borrowing a strategy from Todd Whitaker, an education professor at Indiana State University, Houske says he works most intensively with the top 2 percent of his instructional staff. “They’re the movers and shakers,” Houske says. “The middle group will follow along,” and maybe the lower group, too. He also has strong praise for his own trustees in the embattled LAUSD and outgoing Superintendent Roy Romer. “The district is a real ally for us. They support us and encourage us and allow me to do the things that I do,” says the K-5 principal.

Chun, the English learners administrator at Valley High School near Sacramento, calls for districts to provide a psychologically safe environment by becoming more “culturally competent, so that we are accepting of cultural differences.” She also recommends that “teachers differentiate their instruction to meet the language needs of students operating at various levels of fluency and comprehension.”

That’s very much the practice in San Francisco, with its multilingual strands of academics. “I’ve never worked with a board like this one in terms of their understanding of English learners,” says Gallegos, who has worked in the U.S. Department of Education, at Georgetown University and other institutions of higher education, and in public school systems in Washington, D.C., and Albuquerque, N.M. “English learners are viewed as children who come with many strengths, and not at having something wrong with them.” The students are held to high expectations, and Gallegos believes the district’s flexible language programs help English learners meet those goals.

“Children learn more effectively if they are taught in their primary language in some sort of bilingual program,” she insists. “I just think that they’re amazing, amazing kids, and they are the future of our country.”

Quality counts

But if primary language instruction is working in districts like Los Angeles and San Francisco, English immersion classes in Carpinteria, Elk Grove and elsewhere are also posting positive results. In the end, the evidence shows that there is more than one path to academic achievement for English learners. The key, everyone seems to agree, is the quality of the programs.

“I would hope that the debate over immersion and bilingual is put to rest” as a result of the Proposition 227 study, says Tom Parrish, principal investigator for WestEd. “One size doesn’t fit all. … The English learner population in schools is just so diverse.”

On the far side of the continent, there’s a tall, tall lady from France who would agree.

Brian Taylor (btaylor@csba.org) is managing editor of California Schools.