Rosa D. Noles

ED 502

State of America’s Children

“The Un-Education

of

English Language Learners”

Education

Due to the importance being placed on high

stakes testing, English Language Learner (ELL)

students are not receiving the high quality

instruction needed to gain a full understanding

of the language or the time required to be

successful in communicating in their everyday

lives.

From a Curricular standpoint…

Baseline scores for high stakes tests are normed on a very different sample population than the population that is being tested in rural and inner-city schools.

Funds for schools deemed “low performing” or “exhibiting inadequate progress” are cut, where a lack of funds is already part of the problem for schools in low socioeconomic regions.

Teachers who often times cannot communicate with ELL students in their classes are expected to break those barriers and ready these students to perform at the same level as students who have spoken English since birth.

From a Curricular standpoint…

English Language Learners (ELL) are expected to meet the same standards as native English speaking students.

ELL students struggle to comprehend questions and passages due to time constraints placed on them during high stakes testing. They are often unfamiliar with the terminology used and require extended time.

With ELL students being ill-prepared, the tests are more of a measure of language proficiency than a true method of demonstrating content mastery.

Cultural Inequity

Their home lives and experiences vary greatly from those students that they are being measured against.

Students from low socioeconomic neighborhoods come to school facing problems such as hunger, jailed parents, gunfire, single-parent homes, etc., then we as educators expect them to be ready to achieve the next morning.

Parent(s) are working to provide food, clothing, and shelter, and simply cannot afford the luxury of books at home and museum visits that come so easily to others.

Social Inequity

English Language Learners (ELL) from rural and inner-city schools are affected by poverty in addition to the language barriers they face (Wright, 2002).

Changing names does not create a culturally sound question or passage (Wright, 2002).

A test’s dependability is in question if the student is not adept in English. If a student is not proficient, it would be more feasible to test for content mastery in their native language (Coltrane, 2015).

Understanding through Research

Test items may allude to ideas or experiences that ELL students have no understanding of due to their socioeconomic status (Coltrane, 2015).

Even if parents have the time available to help their children, they are unable due to the absence of English understanding or deficiency of education themselves (Wright, 2002).

Working parents are not capable of taking students on field trips or to the library to build the foundation that many students already possess when they come to school (Wright, 2002).

Understanding through Research

Instead of just preparing students for a test, we as educators must prepare them to be college and career ready using proven strategic teaching strategies. Otherwise, we producing artificial results by teaching to the test. In order to truly measure academic growth, we must test students in the language they are most comfortable with or provide accommodations to equal the playing field. To determine language proficiency, we can administer a language or reading test. In my classes, I have tried to always make sure my tests measure the skill I am seeking to assess. I have made such accommodations as extended time, testing in a smaller setting, and allowing oral testing. I am willing to do all I can to help ensure all students can be successful in my classroom. Teaching in a county where we have a growing Hispanic population, we strive to help our students become fluent at an early age so this barrier does not hinder academic growth in higher grades.

Personal Reflection

Coltrane, B. (2015). English Language Learners and

High-Stakes Tests: An Overview of the Issues. ERIC Digest. Retrieved June 13, 2015, from http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-4/high-stakes.html

Wright, W. E. (2002, June 5). The effects of high stakes

testing in an inner-city elementary school: The

curriculum, the teachers, and the English language learners. Current Issues in Education [On-line], 5(5). Available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number5/

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