Dilemma over English learners
Weighted formula's potential incentives
English language learners currently get about 8 percent per student in extra funding, says the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That amount would more than quadruple in six years, to 37 percent, if the Legislature adopts Gov. Brown’s weighted student formula, phasing in substantially more money for every poor student and each English learner.
That potential bonanza has advocates for English learners ecstatic and anxious. They see it as a long-overdue opportunity to help struggling students. But many also agree that without better ways to measure English learners’ progress and to make sure districts actually spend the money on English learners, there will be incentives to label too many children as English learners and then to keep them in that status for too long – doing more harm than good.
“Just to give money based on characteristics of one type or to an ambiguous program with little or no program goals is to court disaster because (the money) will just go on and on and on forever,” Sen. Jean Fuller, a Republican who was a superintendent of the Bakersfield City School District, testified at a hearing on the potential impact on English learners of a weighted student formula. “And the kids lose. They don’t get the proficiency they need fast enough.”
There appears to be a consensus that some English learners are already stuck in the system, although there’s disagreement as to why. Nearly one in four students in the state are English learners, with 70 percent in elementary school. In some districts, like Santa Ana, more than 80 percent of English learners were born in the United States. If parents, filling out a four-question survey, responded that they most often speak to their children in a language other than English, their children were required to take the California English Language Development Test, or CELDT, often as kindergartners.
In a study issued last year, the Center for Latino Policy Research at UC Berkeley concluded that CELDT is prone to misidentification, with only 6 percent of kindergarten students taking it in 2009-10 being classified as English language proficient. Since CELDT has never been administered to English-only kindergartners for comparison, it’s hard to know if the test is an accurate language measure or is a proxy for poverty and other deficits at home. The language survey is not able to distinguish students who are truly bilingual, says Associate Professor Lisa Garcia Bedolla, co-chairwoman of the Center for Latino Policy Research.
Inconsistent approaches to redesignation
But once identified as an English learner, a student is likely to stay an EL for years; an average of only 11 percent are redesignated annually as fluent in English and no longer needing extra help, which can include pulling a child from regular class for extra English support.
Robert Linquanti, project director for English Learner Evaluation and Accountability Support and senior researcher for the California Comprehensive Center at WestEd, said that a reasonable target for reclassification should be about 20 percent each year, or one in five.
The state auditor a few years back concluded that there were financial incentives for retaining students as English learners, but Linquanti said that districts with low reclassification rates tend to have poor procedures for monitoring, and administrators don’t make reclassification a priority.
State Sen. Alex Padilla agrees. “There’s no smoking gun memorandum” that he’s seen discouraging teachers to reclassify English learners as proficient. The problem, he says, is that every district has its own redesignation criteria; they’re all over the map. That’s why Padilla, a Democrat from Los Angeles, is sponsoring two bills dealing with English learners, both of which passed the Senate Education Committee last week.
SB 1109 is a broad bill; it would establish a master plan for English learners, looking at issues of initial classification, best practices and techniques for instruction, parent involvement, and the long-term learning needs of English learners.
SB 1108 deals with redesignation specifically. It would require districts and county offices to report the redesignation criteria they use to the state Department of Education, which would analyze them and report back to the Legislature which methods are the most effective for determining fluency in English.
“There needs to be uniformity and consistency,” Padilla said in an interview. The Legislature would determine whether the criteria would be mandatory for local districts after it sees the results, he said.
The State Board of Education guidelines recommend using a combination of factors for determining redesignation: English proficiency scores on CELDT; scores on the California Standardized Tests, which students take in English; grades; teacher evaluations; and parental views. Students are considered proficient in English if they score early advanced or advanced on CELDT, but only 38 percent of students who test that high are actually redesignated. Districts come up with their own weights and throw in grades in science and math and district benchmark tests. Some teachers, it’s been said, consider absenteeism and other subjective factors.
Financial incentives can cut both ways, said Chuck Weis, Santa Clara County superintendent, in testifying at the hearing, organized by Padilla, on a weighted student formula and English learners. Middle schools and high schools tend to push English learners through the pipeline too soon, he said, because they don’t have enough bilingual teachers, and the amount of state aid isn’t enough to cover needs of English learners in upper grades.
Funding beyond redesignation
Assemblymember Chris Norby, a Republican from Northern Orange County, sides with those who believe too many children are classified as English learners (he cites his own daughter as one) and then become “stuck in English language learning and cannot get out.” His bill, AB 1767, would consider scoring proficient or advanced on California Standardized Tests and a B average “prima facie evidence” for redesignation. Those students – only a few thousand per year by one estimate – clearly have academic fluency to succeed in regular English classes, he said.
Norby’s bill so far has failed to get out of the Assembly Education Committee, but it includes an idea that Linquanti and other experts in English learners like: It would extend funding for English learners two years after they were reclassified as fully English proficient. This is critical, advocates say, because redesignation is a minimal standard; it doesn’t prepare students for rigorous academic English found in middle and high school courses. The money could also be used for monitoring students’ progress after redesignation– something that’s not done now.
Gov. Schwarzenegger’s Committee on Education Excellence anticipated possible perverse incentives with extra funding for English learners. The committee suggested gradually cutting back funding over time, and then eliminating it for an English learner after seven or so years.
Some of the concern about the disincentive to redesignate may be overstated, because the Department of Finance estimates that 74 percent of English learners also come from low-income households. Even if these students are redesignated as fully English proficient, without extra funding, they would receive an extra 37 percent for poverty – same dollars, different label.
Flexibility without accountability?
Brown is proposing to fund the weighted student formula by ending nearly all categorical programs, the specially protected programs for restricted purposes. Districts would have near total flexibility to spend money as they see fit. The governor is calling for full flexibility immediately, with weighted student funding phased in over six years. That worries advocates for English learners, because Economic Impact Aid, the biggest source of state aid for English learners, would be one of the eliminated categoricals. Thus, there’d be no guarantee that districts would continue to spend the extra money on English learners – now or when the weighted formula is ratcheted up.
Padilla agrees that is a problem and says he will present accountability requirements if Brown doesn’t include them in the budget revision next month. “I want to ensure that gaining flexibility in how to use funds does not relieve districts of the obligation to improve on English language instruction and to demonstrate progress in moving students toward proficiency.”
The debate over funding and classification coincides with other major changes. By summer’s end, the State Department of Education will finish recommendations for a new set of standards for English learners that aligns with the Common Core standards. New standards, in turn, will require a new assessment to replace CELDT. California must decide whether to join with other states in creating the test or go it alone.
These are a lot of moving parts, not all of them in sync. All the more important, Padilla argues, to create a master plan for dealing with changes and to include uniform standards for tracking English learners’ progress.
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Is the accountability for poverty desigmation without complications?
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There seems to be a misunderstanding how the proposed weighted pupil formula would work. The only English Learners that are counted separately are those who are not in poverty. This is about10 to 15 % of English learners. There is no dual count of English Learners who also come from low income families. Consequently, the potential disincentive for classification as English fluent is not as big an issue as this blog suggests.
This seems to be a trend in the dialog about weighted pupils – a distortion of the details of the proposal.
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The Department of Finance is basing its calculations on estimates that 24 percent of English learners are not low-income, not 10-15 percent, which had been the assumption. Whether non-indigent English learners should get the same aid – 37 percent per student – as low-income students and especially low-income English learners is not at all clear (or supported by research).
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“In a study issued last year, the Center for Latino Policy Research at UC Berkeleyconcluded that CELDT is prone to misidentification, with only 6 percent of kindergarten students taking it in 2009-10 being classified as English language proficient. Since CELDT has never been administered to English-only kindergartners for comparison…”
You have got to be kidding me. It never occurred to anyone over all this time that kindergarteners might score low on a test for reasons other than english proficiency, and that they should do a control?
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@John – as far as the support level for low income versus english learners …. I doubt the 37 percent is supported by any research. I assume it’s just a number someone backed out by coming up with the minimal per student amount and taking the “leftover” money that is currently in categoricals, and then dividing by the number of low income and ELL students in the state.
None of this is supported by research. As far as I can tell, no one has done any serious analysis on it yet either, to even predict how it changes funding for different schools and populations.
Maybe it is a good strategy. But the idea that the first fiscally convenient strategy suggested also happens to be the fairest/best one we could get – or even for sure better than what we have now – invites skepticism.
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Heh. Obviously the new strategy would be to administer the CELDT to all incoming students, to maximize ELL. You might pick up quite a few new ones for that extra 37%.
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Does anyone know how the governor’s trigger cuts will impact his weighted student formula?
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@El, hahah..
you’re right about that… and its probably one reason its not given to everyone. In the ELL case (are you related? ;-) ), we can at least blame, um attribute it to something else specific, but when native ’speakers’ cant pass it, what should we then call it and what should do about it? whoops?
I also think we need to be much more clear with our terminology. Some people use the term ‘english learner’ to mean everyone that ever took the CEDLT. Others only for those who haven’t yet ‘tested out’.
I dont think raising the requirement to proficient or above on CST only (I believe it’s currently both basic above on CST and CELDT passage) would really change anything, or is there proof that is the CELDT that is the barrier? In upper grades, ELL proficiency rates pretty low (extremely so in high-ELL districts).
And lastly, John, where did you get the 11% test-out rate number? Does this differ by district and/or grade? I have seen districts with stats that imply much higher numbers, especially in the lower grades. Would that mean some districts are doing exceedingly better at this than others? If so, that seems crucial to know.
And since the context is provided, I’ll also mention the long term ell students (this should always be included in any ELL discussion, imho). Some of the proposed funding mechanisms talked about limiting the duration of funding for an english learner to some number of years. Not because they might not still need the intervention at that point but because the issue is very likely no longer one of a 2nd language. That fact likely not only depresses interest in the interventions designed for non-english speakers, but also excludes a number of native speakers who likely need the same kind of intervention at that point.
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There are lots of tales here in the San Francisco Unified School District about families who write on a form that a second language is spoken in their homes and then the kid, who is perfectly fluent in English, is required to take the CELDT and is sometimes classified as ELL. There was one anecdote about a child who was administered the CELDT by an SFUSD staffer who had such a heavy foreign accent that the child couldn’t understand anything the tester was saying. This was many years ago, but I’m certain it was the actual parent who was telling me about it, so it wasn’t apocryphal.
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I would also guess that the rate at which children are reclassified would depend heavily on the parents’ English fluency and education level. And that would be likely to vary based on the different demographics from school district to school district, so that playing field is very unlevel.
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Caroline, I also know of parents who avoid indicating a 2nd language at home specifically to avoid that happening. :-P
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I recall a shocking number of EL students who fail the high school exit exam have been ELs and in the system since kindergarten. Clearly the system has failed these students. Just like special education, the goal should be to mainstream students as soon as possible. The current system has both fiscal incentives (discussed in the post) and accountability incentives for never reclassifying students. The accountability incentives are twofold. First, when determining the percentage of students proficient on the STAR test, a district will not want to reclassify the EL students when they are proficient on STAR because then the percent of EL proficient will always be low and they will fail AYP. This is one of the problems with the federal accountability system that the state could fix through the NCLB waiver process to get the incentives right.
Second, in Title III accountability, schools are also rewarded for not reclassifying students. As the state begins conversations around redesigning its accountability system, ensuring that ELs are reclassified in a timely fashion should be part of a new school accountability system.
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Hi Rob, good points. However, I believe in California the EL classification used in AYP includes RFEP scores for at least three years of proficient or above performance. So while its possible after 3 years that that might have a depressive impact on scores, its not like they are removed immediately from that pool as your comment seemed to imply (apologies if that was not your intent). Note that 3 years would generally put the student at another school at that point as well, which, while it might impact the district’s AYP, would likely never impact a school’s AYP.
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I’m not going to provide links to prove my argument, but I do know for a fact that many native English speakers cannot pass the ELA CST at the same level as English Learners, yet we, as a state, do nothing about it. Ebonics, anyone?
I also know for a fact that, in LAUSD at least, most ELs won’t be reclassified because they have to pass all three components of the test (must be the CELDT) at level 3 (or is it 4?)and must also score above “basic” in the ELA CST. These are very formidable barriers to kids in the elementary level and teachers have no monetary incentive whatsoever to pass these kids on (nope, no more bilingual differentials!). Teachers are also under pressure to prove that they can be passed on while simultaneously being pressed by administrators to move them on. So I doubt that the idea of “let’s make some money off these kids” is that strong.
And, yes, the system is too dumb because it places too much emphasis on the “language spoken at home.” I was lucky I was dealing with a principal who was not too rigid in his management. In fact, he was the one who asked me and made sure that my kids were not forced to take the test or be classified as ELs because of a stupid survey answer.
I see that “research” is being bandied about in the posts above to justify the money spent. Back in the run-up to Unz getting Prop 227 passed, research that demonstrated that fluency in academic English was not gained in a couple of years was throughly discounted. Why should research be given credence now?
Lastly, I heard a report from KPCC this morning (and, no, I can’t find it in their web site) about a conference on bilingual education issues down in the OC. The interviewees were bemoaning the fact that education is substractive: it supplants the native tongue with English and any bilingualism is stamped out and the child ends up with a poor understanding of both languages, let alone their use in an academic setting.
(Then again, I could have told you this would happen back when I tangled with Unz et al. But, hey, their dream was to not have no non-English-speaking children in California within ten years of 227 passing. Did it happen as they intendend? You tell me.)
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Again, my friends who teach in schools with a high (and varied) number of kids whose home language is not English say the students’ academic success and mastery of English correlate directly with the education level (and generally social class) of the parents.
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Hi Manuel, sorry to push this, but I am interested in these numbers.
Almost 45% of the LAUSD enrollment is RFEP at 11th grade. That rate rises pretty steadily starting at 2nd grade. If no one was getting reclassified, its not clear how that would be possible unless that many RFEP were coming into the district, which seems clearly wrong. (granted it should be happening earlier than 11th grade, but it doesnt seem right that its not happening at all). In contrast, the EL is about 15% of enrollment in 11th grade, compared to about 45% in 2nd. (note, Im just looking at one year, which is not perfectly accurate, but the pattern is similar if you try to look at cohorts across years).
I dont disagree with you that some english speakers cant test higher than EL students. The real question is how many. EL proficiency rates are extremely low in the upper grades (not surprisingly), while AA rates tend to remain rather constant across grades. So maybe you mean confined to certain grades? That said, I have seen schools in which EL has outperformed all english only kids, though this is relatively rare, and when it happens, it’s generally only in 2nd grade (maybe before the higher performing ELs end up as RFEPs the next year).
To be honest, Im not clear our state’s data system allows this kind of analysis because ELs are not separated by ethnicity, and ethnicities are not separated by the metric you referenced.
That said, I do agree with you that we are missing a lot of kids and dont seem willing to accept that. How do we fix this?
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There is a strong argument for administering the CELDT, or a CELDT-like instrument, to all incoming public school students. Even in households where English is the main language, dialect is common. Black Vernacular English, for example, features a distinct grammar, a distinct vocabulary, and distinct rules of pronunciation. For native speakers of dialect, standard English is truly a second language. Once we recognize the features of the dialect, we can tailor reading instruction, spelling instruction and vocabulary development, and address pronunciation differences.
As speakers of dialect advance to middle- and high school, they face additional challenges. Dialect is usually not consistent with the academic language (see “Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency”) now deemed so important.
Some speakers of dialect have multiple linguistic registers and can context-switch, adopting the standard language (or some part of it) when necessary. On the other hand, the high school math students I currently teach do not have command of the standard language. When we were discussing polynomials the other day (after appropriate front-loading and prior practice, and with several vocabulary tools available to students), one student asked “Why you use big words? [sic.]” The “big words” complaint is telling, but so is the non-standard grammar, which is normal for this student. My students are mystified by words like “whose”, which appear regularly in math definitions in our textbook’s glossary. The students’ ability to read a textbook is limited to identifying key words, and they can only discuss academic concepts with sympathetic English speakers who make the effort to decipher.
Side note: The linguist in me is descriptive, not normative. There is no value judgment about dialect, only a desire to help students master the standard language as well.
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A Reading Method and Ms. Pecci’s Pre-Primers May Help in Kindergarten
For years I have tried to get some group to do a pilot study on Mary Pecci’s method and her Pre-Primers.
At this time, I can only report the following from an email sent to me by Ms. Pecci in January 2009.
“For the record, a teacher is using
my readers in Mexico with Spanish
kids and he’s delighted that they are
learning to read and speak English
simultaneously with my readers.”
I do not know how old these Mexican students were.
Please check out: http://www.OnlineReadingTeacher.com
Ms. Pecci’s method is described on four screens. Her Pre-Primers start in kindergarten.
Marian Devincenzi
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My son was assigned as an EL student in Kindergarten even though he speaks English only. This was based on our answer to the language survey where we indicated that we spoke both english and spanish at home. I have been trying to get him out of the program but both the school he attends and the school district keep saying this is the law and he has to stay in the program until he tests out. He has a learnign disability so he may never test out. I feel this is very unfair and plain discriminatory based on our ethnicity. By the way, when our second child went to to school we got smart and have ensured we do not write the word “Spanish” on anything. In fact I do not answer the sections that request information on the child’s/family’s ethnicity to spare him from the discrimination his brother has gone through. Many of my family and frinds have figured this out and do the same. My older son (assgined to EL) started middle school and he has been placed in a classroom with children that are truly english learners and the school will not reassign him to a regular english class. I also talke to the school district again and they jus say it’s state and federal law and that can’t do anything about it, so I am so fed up I am willing to sue the school district if necessary. Does anyone have an idea where I can start? Thank you
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Any parent can deny services. Just because your child is eligible for services does not mean he has to receive them. Yes, he will still be tested until he passes, but he does not have to be in an ESL class. There is a form in every district to sign.
Good Luck
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