Failure Guaranteed
Children classified in kindergarten will be ELs through third grade — or longer. Even if they test as fluent on CELDT in higher grades, they’ll find it hard to exit the program. Some school districts won’t reclassify ELs as proficient in English unless they outperform their English-only classmates, earn above-average grades, get teachers’ recommendations, or other criteria.
They argue ELs must prove they’re able to handle mainstream classes without extra “services.”
ELs who leave the program in elementary school usually do fine. Those who remain ELs into middle school — about half of the total — are likely to fail.
Bilingual families can raise children who are proficient in English and ready for school, says García Bedolla. (In fact, researchers say learning two languages as a child is good for the brain, making it more agile.)
To evaluate readiness, the professor suggests asking parents how often they read to their child or whether they have books at home. In addition, parents should be asked whether they think their child needs help with English and teachers should be asked how the child’s doing after a few weeks of school.
Years ago, I asked a San Jose kindergarten teacher how long it takes for English Learners to start speaking English. Many students had told me their English clicked in at the Christmas break.
“A few days,” the teacher said. Shyness — not lack of English — was responsible for kindergartners’ designation as ELs. And that was pre-CELDT when the test took less than 30 minutes. (CELDT was the reform!)
I know a bilingual toddler who’s very bright and somewhat shy. Note to self: Warn Francesca’s parents to lie on the home survey.
Why are schools so eager to classify children as English Learners and so reluctant to reclassify them as proficient?
Follow the money: Schools get federal funding for English Learners.
García Bedolla agrees that the incentives are wrong. She adds that schools get kudos if ELs test as English proficient in third grade, even if they were fluent to begin with. It’s an easy way to look good.
If ELs don’t do well, their failure can be blamed on their lack of English skills.
Typical California educrap! I taught both in CA in public schools & in a private school for foreign kids in Sofia, Bulgaria. In CA,they loved to throw kids into ESL classes & cripple them educationally for yrs. What did we do in Sofia? Our ESL teacher ONLY spoke English to several kids from 5 or 6 different nations w/ 5 or 6 different languages. By Christmas, they were doing the regular classwork of native English speakers & there were only minor differences in their English speaking abilities. ESL in CA is total BS! Again & again, research has shown that non-English speakers learn best from teachers that ONLY speak English.
For example, both in language training in Chicago by a linguist & here in Bulgaria, only English was spoken. The result was that we learned Bulgarian MUCH quicker than other people.
Facts are facts. ESL usually just cripples kids. Dump it!
One interesting angle on this that rarely comes up is that the typical way schools teach native-English speakers a foreign language is lots of native language support. It would be almost unthinkable to suggest in the US to use an immersion foreign-language only pedagogy to teach Russian to native-English speakers, for example. I find this different approach depending on where you are and who you are rather mystifying since it’s the same mechanism regardless of the language, the only difference is in the linguistic details for any given language. Some do take longer than others, and some government and NSA studies suggest an amazing number of study hours required depending on the language. The NSA figures agents require 10 years to become fluent culturally and linguistically, and that does need to be taken into consideration even at the school level for children. For some reason, no one ever synthesizes the fields, and perhaps these ESL teachers are looking more at domestic foreign language teaching styles for guidance rather than immersion.
One of the schools in my kids district does a Spanish-language immersion program, beginning in grade 1 and goes through 6th grade. It’s for non-Spanish speaking kids and is apparently very successful.
French-immersion has been all the rage here in Canada for some time, probably 20 years at least. Liberals have made parents who don’t speak French, our other official language, feel guilty for their linguistic shortcomings and that guilt has driven an embrace for French-immersion since previous approaches didn’t seem to work very well.
According to some news stories I’ve read, the French-immersion programs have not been very successful. Apparently, students don’t really know much French by the end of it, even if the vast majority of their education from Kindergarten through high school, has been in French. Of course that assessment has to be taken with a large grain of salt since it is some reporter’s take on a report, not the report itself.
Of course the report was written by the education establishment itself, which has a vested interest in making that program look good since if it fails, they look like they were unwise in proposing it.
Personally, I’d love to see a “field test” of these programs. It wouldn’t have to be elaborate. Just put a half-dozen randomly selected students from a French-immersion program in a room with a half-dozen randomly selected students from Quebec or France and see if they can understand one another in French. Or give them a task to do that requires co-operation and forbids the use of any other language but French and see if they can jointly complete the project. If they just stare at each other helplessly, we can be pretty sure that they don’t understand one another. If they successfully build a model of a bridge or whatever, we’ll know that they understood each other.
Frankly, I’m almost certain that our French-immersion students couldn’t help but fail if they were put in a room with children in Quebec since all French language programs in this country, immersion and non-immersion alike, persist in teaching Parisian French, not the dialect spoken in Quebec. So much for promoting national unity….
I took French throughout middle and high school. I learned the accents and dialects of Normandy and Paris. But I had a heckuva time understanding the French spoken on the Canadian radio stations!
Back in 1978, the Air Force tried to train me to be a Hebrew linguist (bad mistake). Our instructor told us that Israel has immigrants from over 100 countries and lacks the resources to establish Hebrew as a Second Language programs for all of them. Instead, they use the immersion method to teach all immigrants Hebrew. It seems to work quite well.
I had the same type experience in Germany. Going to adult night classes in Munich, the class was comprised of at least 6 or 7 nationalities seeking to learn conversational German, as well as the written text. Having so many different nationalities in the class, the instructor couldn’t correct in the student’s native tongue, even if she wanted to – which she didn’t!
If you made a mistake, she always corrected you in German … or, if you still didn’t understand she would start with the hands, then body language and finally with pantomime – anything beyond that was a lost cause, but usually explained to the student by another countryman in their own language.
I was fully understanding German within 3 months, although speaking it successfully took appreciatively longer.
When you live in another country, you also have the advantage of hearing he language on TV, browsing catalogues and magazines, and seeing signs and labels in stores and supermarkets. When you have to get along in a new land, there is plenty of incentive to learn.
The best incentive I had to learn Japanese was usually between 5′ and 5’4″.
I learned Mandarin quickly while living in China. If you need to speak the language to find the restroom, you learn it awfully quickly.
November,2012 is a do or die date for our Republic and our culture. If we can’t disband and close the idiocy of the over reach of programs like this and end the strangle hold the public sector unions have on our Government spending we deserve the totalitarian state the Democrats have planned for us.
This doesn’t just happen in California. In school districts around the country Federal Grant money is awarded based on the number of students enrolled in ESL (English as Second Language) programs.
Remember “Federal” dollars are DEBT dollars…
Local schools are all about getting as much “debt” money as they can, so they can divert as much “real” local money into salaries and bennies that are otherwise NOT affordable to the local taxpayers.
In my district (Council Rock, PA) the AVERAGE teacher salary is 100k, when the AVERAGE private sector salary in our area is 53K.
Thats a million bucks (1.3 mill counting bennies) for every ten of them.
Simply unsustainable salaries for us locals to provide, without a huge infusion of Debt Laden Federal Dollars to them every year.
Teachers Salary = Federal Debt.
Why else do they donate millions (of your money!) to Democrats.
“Schools get federal funding for English Learners.”
I wonder how anxious the states would be if they had to pay the whole bill for “English Learners?” Seems that whenever you have free Federal money, there is in incentive by bureaucratic organizations, like public schools, to take it. But if those funds are not available, I wonder how much faster these kids would pick up the language, especially when they are immersed in English in school? Kids are fast learners, especially when the only option available to them is to either speak the language or be left behind and repeat a year. Good local teachers would probably make the difference in that situation, rather than more Federal cash.
1&2. CA educational system knows english immersion is better for the kids. My sister taught at a school that did a pilot english immersion system as a trial for the district which did the english as a second language. The pilot english immerison had a far higher success rate at mainstreaming kid earlier with better performance. They scrapped the pilot program, less money for the teachers and union, less influence for the administration than ESL.
My grandmother came from Russia at the age of eight, speaking only Yiddish. She went to the public school in her district without ESL or any other help – and did fine. She learned English quickly, and she loved her teachers. I myself only knew French when I went to public school, and learned English quickly. Children learn languages easily and need only to be exposed to them. That is why the children of American immigrants from all over the world learned English easily, and those who are bilingual have an additional advantage, since they can learn other languages more easily.
Agreed! I was born in Canada but my parents were from Europe and had only a sketchy knowledge of English at the time and didn’t speak it at home, at least within the family. (Obviously, they had to speak English when talking to other Canadians.) I am told that I was initially shy at school, but was soon fluent in English. (I assume the shyness was because I didn’t know that much English when I started kindergarten. I could converse in English with neighbourhood kids and we’d just gotten our first TV so I wasn’t completely without English when I started school.)
English is still the only language in which I’m fluent. I read, write and THINK in English. I can understand my parent’s dialect but can’t speak it to save my life.
My younger brother had a little more trouble. When the teachers spoke to my parents, they reported that he was mixing my parent’s language with English, apparently without even realizing he was doing so. They recommended that we switch to speaking only English at home and we did so immediately. Almost no word of anything but English has ever been heard in my parent’s home ever since, even though we are long out of school.
No one in my family spent a nickel or a minute on extra language courses, tutors or whatnot, the only exception being a brief English course that my parents took, courtesy of the Canadian government, when they first arrived here. My father soon dropped out since he had to work but even his English was fluent enough that he could read lengthy books in English without any apparent difficulty.
I completely fail to see why expensive government programs are touted as being necessary for children to learn English. I can only suspect that it is a big make-work project for the teachers and their unions. So what if a kid is a bit shy for the first few months of kindergarten because he/she is struggling with English? Give them a bit of time and they will catch on. I certainly did.
I heard all of this a decade ago when I was interviewing for a job in California. I wish that it was surprising that it’s still going on, but education bureaucrats seem to be constitutionally incapable of dealing with reality.
I’ve learned a number of language and I absolutely agree with the immersion-style training that many previous posters have discussed. It works, it always has worked, and it’s heartbreaking that we’re even debating it.
The real problem is illegal aliens come here, refuse to learn English, pop out anchor babies, and speak Spanish in the home until they throw the kids into American schools. That’s the problem. The illegals hate the gringo and the gringo’s language. Sad fact.
You’ve had your chance to spew your racist ideas, Dean. Now go away.
Stop your name calling, windy, and try discussing the facts.
Ok, facts. What we are talking about here is immersion training in school vs. ESL classes, and that’s independent of what the parents do at home. What language the parents speak at home can be, and should be, irrelevant.
Why have teachers unions always supported illegal immigration? Follow the money: Late 60s early 70s Baby Boomers grew up, schools were losing enrollment, not as many teachers were needed.
This is nothing new– my wife, who was/is fluent in both English and Spanish, was placed in ESL/Bilingual studies from first through fourth grade, based solely on her LAST NAME. Note: this was over 30 years ago and in HOUSTON.
I have heard of cases where kids with Spanish surnames were placed in bilingual classes even when English was the only language they were fluent in. (This was in California and was before we passed Prop. 227.)
I teach English Language Development in a California high school. I started the year this year with a Hispanic surnamed student who did not speak anything other than English. Over half of my current ELL load was born in the United States. Close to half of my current load is identified as Special Ed. In my experience, the current ELD program works well with recent immigrants, most of whom are motivated to do well. However it fails many of those born here, who are often unwilling, and sometimes unable, to pass the CELDT test. They are comfortable in the ELD ghetto.
In high School we had a boy that had come here from Cuba. I don’t know exactly how old he was when he came here but he spoke English very well. In fact he did better in English class than he did in the Spanish class he took. The problem he had was that the Spanish class taught Castillion Spanish and he spoke Cuban Spanish. About like teaching UK style English to an American Student.
In the service many of our people were on accompanied tours, which meant they brought their families with them for a one or two year tour. This was in Japan. After just a few short months they were complaining they couldn’t understand their children anymore. Seems that just by playing with the Japanese children they were picking up more Japanese than English even though they were going to an English language school. The younger they were the faster they learned the language.
I attended a boarding high school in the mid-60s, with students from all over the world. Everyone worked at some job or other in addition to regular classes (which I still think was a good thing for the students).
We had a Cuban girl working in the cafeteria with us one year, lovely person, if a bit hot-tempered. When she got annoyed, it wasn’t just that I couldn’t understand her (my Spanish was a lot better then, but not *that* good), none of the Mexican kids working with us could understand her, either.( Come to think of it, nor could the Madrid-born Spanish teacher we took classes from that year.) It was bad enough that she was talking about twice as fast as anyone else, the idioms were nothing we’d heard before. Educational, they were.
So we’d just wait for her to cool off, then ask what she’d said. Which sometimes set her off again…
in 1989, when my oldest daughter was entering the second grade in public elementary school in sunnyvale CA, we received a call from the bi-lingual folks at the school wanting to know if they could put her in the ESL classes… they concluded that she was hispanic by looking at our last name, which is italien. we moved to catholic school after the second grade… The $$$ were flowing to ESL and away from other academics. The schools even then, were to stick as many kids as possible into what was then the ESL track. this basic issue – more funding for “problem” students is, i think at the root of the attempts to get as many conditions as possible defined as “disabilities” and to increase the diagnosis of conditions, including autism and ADHD.
Our oldest was born and lived outside of the US and English was the third language he learned. By the time, however, he was five, ready to enter kindergarten, and already living in the US, English was the primary language we spoke at home and was one that our oldest used 99% of the time.
When enrolling him in kindergarten her in CA, I checked the box on the application that stated English was not his first language. That was a mistake as it required me to take time off from work so our oldest could take a test at the local school HQ. Our child spoke English better than the person who administered the test.
“Your child did fine with the English test.”
Yeah, no surprise to us and thank you, bureaucrat, for wasting our time to tell us something that as parents we intimately knew about our own child.
An observation on racial politics…
My wife is not a US citizen by birth and spent much of her life living in Asia and South America. Once married and living in the US, she asked me “why is the US so racist?”
She was referring to the university enrollment form she was filling out and the check box asking about her race. She—as a person of color—wondered why did her race matter.
Honey, it is the liberals and progressives who want you to fill that out.
If it were only in the People’s Republic of California, but alas Washington lunacy is everywhere!
No governmental body at any level should have anything whatsoever to do with education at any level.
Okay, I could make an exception for the service academies. But only for those.
When I came to CA 20 years ago I was in an ESL class in my high school. I tested out of it pretty quick, but the teacher wasn’t too eager to let go of me; I suppose it was the same kind of a situation where they needed warm bodies in ESL classes. I explained that I’m not learning much. And I wasn’t. ESL is basically where non-ambitious students go to spend their time.
Young children can learn languages by immersion much more easily than adults can — it’s how they learned their first language a few years earlier, after all! Their brains are wired for it. For those who have been in the US for several years, they have been exposed to enought English just on TV that they are almost there anyway, even if another language is spoken at home.
Of course it’s about the money. A story my father-in-law likes to tell, from the 1960s in the New York City school wars. He asked a Hispanic activist pushing for bilingual education whether it was really best for the kids. The response was, “It’s not about the kids — it’s about jobs for our people!”
In the New Jersey City where my wife teaches, ESL programs are abused by Latino parents who use them as a kind of secret private school system. It’s a way to avoid American Blacks without paying private school tuition or moving to the suburbs. Children who are quite fluent in English are kept in the foreign language programs for that reason alone. Of course the teachers are in on the scam.
Hi my friend! I want to say that this post is amazing, great written and come with approximately all important infos. I’d like to look extra posts like this .