What? I have to learn English and go to school?
Imagine you immigrate to the United States of America where you do not know the English language. You are 15 years old and you have never gone to formal school and cannot read or write in English. Your family says that moving from Venezuela to this country will provide you with great opportunities for your future. You are so excited, but nervous too!
What will that student’s experience be like in the US? How will they assimilate to school and be in a new country at the same time?
When enrolling in a school in Palm Beach County School District in Florida, it is most likely that the students will be classified as an English Language Learner (ELL) as they will indicate on the Home Language Survey that they speak another language at home. That student will then need to be assessed within twenty days of enrollment to identify English skills (Florida Department of Education: Rule 6A-6.0902 , 2021). The WIDA consortium program is utilized in Florida, and 40 other states, to assess English proficiency measured by Language Proficiency Standards (WIDA, 2022). The ACCESS for ELLs test is the online test which measures proficiency in reading, writing, oral and speaking in English. If the student qualifies for English Language Learner services, the students’ parents will be notified by the school. The school will advise the parent that their child will receive English Language Learner accommodations in their classes and they will be placed in some classes to help build their English language skills..
According to research, oral proficiency in the new language should take you three to five years and four to seven years for you to be academically proficient in the language (Hakuta, Butler & Witt, 2000). If this is the case, the student will be 18 years old before they are actually able to speak the English language and will be of age to be a senior in high school. In order for this student in that scenario to be on track to graduate high school, they will need to pass all of the standard diploma requirements in the state of Florida. That student will get accommodations during standardized tests, but they are expected to pass all of the same assessments that their mono-lingual peers take in order to obtain the standard high school diploma. For some students, that is a very difficult and an impossible task to complete while only being in the country for three years prior to graduation and still have not mastered oral proficiency, let alone academic proficiency in English. According to the Office of English Language Acquisition, the national average high school graduation rate for English Language Learners lags the national average of all students. The English Language Learner national average graduation rate in the school year 2017-2018 was 68% compared to the national average graduation rate of all students for that same year of 85%.
How can this student whose family gave up everything in their country to come to the United States have an opportunity to graduate from high school? Much of the experience that I have with English Language Learners depends on the students prior knowledge and family emphasis on education. If students have never had formal education and enroll right into High School, they usually will fall behind and take more than the standard four years to graduate from high school. If students’ family emphasis is on earning an income, then perhaps some of those students will not graduate from high school as their family focus is money, and not education.
If the student places strong importance on education, then the support in school will be critical to their success. English Language Learners are not dumb and accommodations are needed so that ELLs receive passing grades in their classes (Ingerson, 2011). Hopefully, the student will be placed in classrooms where accommodations will be made so the student has opportunities to show mastery. An accommodation that has proven to be successful is having students’ tests read to them for better comprehension. Another accommodation is having students’ assignments modified to meet their reading and writing levels (Ingerson, 2011). When cognates are infused into the curriculum, students are given opportunities to write or talk in their first language, and comprehension monitoring is conducted, English Language Learners’ achievement scores increased (Cervetti, Kulikowich & Bravo, 2015).
My hope for all our students that come to this country for a better opportunity have a strong emphasis on education and their family supports their education goals. Having a high school diploma from the United States of America will have, in my opinion, positive generational impacts to that student.
So, will that 15 year old student be proficient in English? In my opinion, much of that will be determined by the student and the support/lack thereof in school and at home.
References
Cervetti, G. N., Kulikowich, J. M., & Bravo, M. A. (2015). The effects of educative curriculum materials on teachers’ use of instructional strategies for English language learners in science and on student learning. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 40, 86-98.
Florida Department of Education. 2021. www.fldoe.org
Hakuta, K., Butler, Y. G., & Witt, D. (2000). How Long Does It Take English Learners To Attain Proficiency?.
Ingerson, T. (2011). Helping English Language Learners (ELLS) Achieve Success (Passing Grades) in the Mainstream Classroom. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED518704.pdf
National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition. (2020). High School Graduation Rates for English Learners. https://ncela.ed.gov/files/fast_facts/20200916-ELGraduationRatesFactSheet-508.pdf
WIDA (2022). https://wida.wisc.edu/