LAW AND RESEARCH IN REGARDS TO STUDENTS WHO ARE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Dr. Criselda Guajardo Alvarado

www.educationeval.com

LAW

Title VI Civil Rights Act of 1964

Sec. 2000d. Prohibition against exclusion from participation in, denial of benefits of, and discrimination under federally assisted programs on ground of race, color, or national origin.

No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974

Title 20, Chapter 39, Subchapter I, Part 2, Section 1703 Denial of equal educational opportunity prohibited

No State shall deny equal educational opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, by -

(a) the deliberate segregation by an educational agency of students on the basis of race, color, or national origin among or within schools;

(b) the failure of an educational agency which has formerly practiced such deliberate segregation to take affirmative steps, consistent with part 4 of this subchapter, to remove the vestiges of a dual school system;

(c) the assignment by an educational agency of a student to a school, other than the one closest to his or her place of residence within the school district in which he or she resides, if the assignment results in a greater degree of segregation of students on the basis of race, color, sex, or national origin among the schools of such agency than would result if such student were assigned to the school closest to his or her place of residence within the school district of such agency providing the appropriate grade level and type of education for such student;

(d) discrimination by an educational agency on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the employment, employment conditions, or assignment to schools of its faculty or staff, except to fulfill the purposes of subsection (f) below;

(e) the transfer by an educational agency, whether voluntary or otherwise, of a student from one school to another if the purpose and effect of such transfer is to increase segregation of students on the basis of race, color, or national origin among the schools of such agency; or (f) the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs.

Guidance to Federal Financial Assistance Recipients Regarding Title VI of the Civil Rights Act Prohibition Against National Origin Discrimination Affecting Limited English Proficient Persons

Office of Civil Rights

Recipients (of Federal financial assistance) are required to take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to their programs and activities by LEP persons.
[Parenthetical information added]

Lau v. Nichols, 1968 Basic English skills are at the very core of what these public schools teach. Imposition of a requirement that, before a child can effectively participate in the educational program, he must already have acquired those basic skills is to make a mockery of public education. We know that those who do not understand English are certain to find their classroom experiences wholly incomprehensible and in no way meaningful.

Where inability to speak and understand the English language excludes national origin-minority group children from effective participation in the educational program offered by a school district, the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional program to these students.

Executive Order 13166

August 11, 2000

The Federal Government provides and funds an array of services that can be made accessible to otherwise eligible persons who are not proficient in the English language. recipients must take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to their programs and activities by LEP persons.

RESEARCH

RESEARCH ON SPECIAL LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING

Special Language Programming

Students who are ELLs immersed in the English mainstream because the parents refused bilingual/ESL services showed large decreases in reading and math achievement by 5th grade. The largest number of dropouts came from this group and those remaining finished 11th grade at the 12th %ile (Thomas & Collier, 2001) Curiel et al in 1986 and Theobald in 2003 also found that ELLs who do not receive assistance from either ESL or bilingual programs have higher dropout rates.

Special Language Programming

Artiles et al. (2002 & 2005) report that ELLs in English immersion classrooms were almost 3 times more likely to be placed in special education as LD than ELLs in bilingual education.

Special Language Programming

Initially, students who were schooled all in English outperform those who were schooled bilingually on English measures. But, the bilingually schooled students reach the same levels of achievement as those schooled all in English by middle school. Then during high school, the bilingually schooled students outperform the monolingually schooled students.
(Thomas & Collier, 2001, National Literacy Panel, 2006).

Special Language Programming

Bilingually schooled students outperform comparable monolingually schooled students in all academic achievement areas after 4 to 7 years of dual language schooling (Thomas & Collier, 2001).

Special Language Programming

Native-language programs of only 1 to 3 years for students with no proficiency in English yield poor results. The minimum length of time it takes to reach grade-level performance in the second language is 4 years (Thomas & Collier, 2001).

RESEARCH ON THE BILINGUAL BRAIN

Cognitive

Learning a second language increases the density of grey matter in the left inferior parietal cortex, and the degree of structural reorganization is modulated by the proficiency attained and the age of acquisition (Mechelli et al., 2004).

Cognitive

The process of language acquisition during childhood differs for certain languages. Valaki et al. (2004) investigated the cortical organization of Chinese, English, and Spanish speakers. English and Spanish speakers showed a strong laterization to the left hemisphere, while Chinese speakers presented bilateral symmetry.

Cognitive

In alphabetic languages such as Spanish, phonological awareness in the native language facilitates understanding of the relationship between sounds and symbols in the second language (Snow et al., 1998, August et al., 2002, Dickinson et al., 2004).

Cognitive

Research of Korean (Kim & Davis, 2004), Arabic (Abu-Rabia, Share, & Mansour, 2003), Latvian (Sprugevica & Hoien, 2003), and Chinese (McBride-Chang & Kail, 2002) students revealed a strong relation between phonological processing and reading performance.

Cognitive

The research conducted by Tan et al. (2003) suggested that Chinese-English bilingual subjects were applying the system of their native language (Chinese) to reading in English, that is, that second language reading is shaped by the first language of the bilingual.

Cognitive

The lack of letter-to-sound conversion rules in Chinese appears to lead Chinese readers to be less capable of processing English by the analytic reading system on which English monolinguals rely.

RESEARCH ON ORAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Students whose first language has many cognates with English, such as Spanish & Italian, have an advantage in English vocabulary recognition, but often do not fully use this advantage without targeted instruction (Cunningham & Graham, 2000, August et al., 2002).
Oral Language Proficiency

For example, a bilingual Spanish/English or Italian/English speaker, using cognate knowledge, can easily understand the English term, campanology as the study of bells (campanas).

Oral Language Proficiency

Basic interpersonal communication skills or conversational language acquired in one language do not appear to transfer to a second language, whereas skills that are academically mediated such as academic oral language or reading, do appear to transfer (Royer & Carlo, 1991).
Oral Language Proficiency

In studies of Spanish readers, the level of reading skills in their first language predicted the level of English reading skills.

Oral Language Proficiency

RESEARCH ON DYSLEXIA & THE ENG LANG. LEARNER

Paulesu et al. (2001) found in their research that there is a universal neurobiological basis for dyslexia. Deficits in phonological processing appear to fundamentally characterize dyslexia, regardless of language.
Dyslexia

The differences in the reading performance among individuals from different countries, speaking and reading different languages, who were identified as having dyslexia was found to be due to the level of adherence of the written system of the language to the alphabet principal.
Dyslexia

More reading problems are seen in students in opaque (aka deeper or irregular) orthographies; that is orthographies that are highly irregular such as English, French, Danish, and Portuguese. In opaque orthographies, one grapheme can several phonemes and one phoneme can have several graphemes
Dyslexia

Reading difficulties in transparent orthographies, that is, orthographies that adhere to the alphabetprinciple, (i.e. Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Finish) are more often noticed in the students reading speed and reading comprehension and less noticed in the students reading decoding.
Dyslexia

RESEARCH ON ENGLISH LITERACY OF ELL STUDENTS

Instruction that provides substantial coverage in the key components of readingidentified by the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension has clear benefits for language-minority students (National Literacy Panel, 2006).

English Literacy

Instruction in the key components of reading is necessary but not sufficient for teaching languageminority students to read and write proficiently in English. Oral proficiency in English is critical as well but student performance suggests that it is often overlooked in instruction (National Literacy Panel,
2006).

English Literacy

Individual differences contribute significantly to English literacy development (National Literacy Panel, 2006).

English Literacy

RESEARCH ON CROSS TRANSFER OF SKILLS & ABILITIES

Oral proficiency and literacy in the first language can be used to facilitate literacy development in English. (National Literacy Panel, 2006).

Cross-Transfer

Native-language (if alphabeticbased) phonological awareness training can facilitate students ability to read in English. (Durgunoglu et al., 1993).

Cross-Transfer

Spanish word recognition significantly predicts performance on English word and pseudo word reading tasks (Durgunoglu et al., 1993, August et al., 2002).

Cross-Transfer

Students who have developed good meaning-making strategies in their first language use those strategies in their second language, even when they are not as fluent in that second language (Langer et al., 1990).

Cross-Transfer

A significant positive relationship is found between Spanish passage comprehension at the end of second grade and English passage comprehension at the end of fourth grade (August et al., 2002).

Cross-Transfer

EVIDENCE-BASED BILINGUAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Unfortunately, language policy is highly politicized in the United States and practice and policy sometimes contradicts research.

THANK YOU
Dr. Criselda Guajardo Alvarado
www.educationeval.com

Regarding Assessment

Most assessments do a poor job of gauging individual strengths and weaknesses (National Literacy Panel, 2006).

Regarding Assessment

Figueroa & Newsome (2006) studied 19 psychological reports of English Language Learners in a small urban elementary school district in California. Results indicated that the reports seldom adhered to existing legal and professional guidelines.

Regarding Assessment

The examiners unfamiliarity with a minority group could also lead to bias in testing. Fuchs and Fuchs (1986) found that examiner unfamiliarity with the students culture had a significant impact on standardized test performance. This effect was even greater when the students were of low socioeconomic status.

Regarding Assessment

Klingner et al. (2003) conducted an ethnographic study of the special education identification processes of ELLs in 12 schools. They found that the child study teams and the ARD/IEP committees paid little attention to information related to language acquisition.

Regarding Assessment

Ochoa et al (1997) conducted a survey of 859 psychologists who had conducted psychoeducational assessment of bilingual students. Only 1% attempted to determine whether a learning disability also occurred in the students native language.

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

There is surprisingly little research on the impact of sociocultural variables on literacy achievement or development. However, home language experiences can have a positive impact on literacy achievement (National Literacy Panel, 2006).

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

Poverty has significant effects on childrens cognitive and verbal skills (Koreman et al., 1995; Liaw & BrooksGunn, 1993; & Smith et al., 1997).

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

Brooks-Gunn et al, 1994 found that five year olds living in chronic poverty had adjusted mean IQs about of a standard deviation lower than children who were considered nonpoor.

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

Studies have shown that the negative life events and adverse conditions faced by poor and lowSES children can place demands on them that exceed their coping resources resulting in conduct problems (Carothers, et al., 2006; Pryor-Brown et al., 1986; & Wadsworth et al., 2005).

Effects of poverty on cognitive development and academic achievement appear to be particularly strong in the earlier years (birth through 5), but continue to be strong for the first two decades of life (Axinn et al, 1993 & Brooks-Gunn et al, 1999).

Poverty has significant effects on childrens cognitive and verbal skills (Koreman et al., 1995; Liaw & BrooksGunn, 1993; & Smith et al., 1997).

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

Studies have found that children in poverty have a higher prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems than children who are considered middleclass (Koreman et al, 1995 and Liaw & Brooks-Gunn, 1993).

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

Sherman (1994) and Zill et al. (1995) found that the chance of being retained in a grade level or placed in special education classes increases by 2-3% for each year a child lives in poverty.

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

Research has shown that teachers expectations of poor children are lower than that of affluent children (McLoyd, 1998). These lowered expectations appear to be caused mostly by noncognitive considerations, such as speech patterns and dress.

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

Skiba (2005) found that in 259 school districts, disproportionality was greater in the judgment disability categories (LD, MR, & ED) than in the biologically based hard disability categories (such as visual impairment, etc.).

Regarding Impact of Sociocultural and Socioeconomic

They also found that students living in a high poverty school district were:

More than twice as likely to be identified as Mildly Mentally Retarded; Nearly twice as likely to be identified as Moderately Mentally Retarded; and Twice as likely to be identified as Emotionally Disturbed as students who reside in wealthier school districts.

RtI and The ELL

Research: RtI and the ELL

A handful of researchers have conducted RtI studies specifically with bilingual students and/or ELLs. Most of this research, however, ignores the issue of language of intervention. Consequently, these studies end up being of bilingual and limited English proficient students receiving English only language RtI.

RtI and The ELL

The results are generally favorable towards RtI, but it still leaves the question unanswered, regarding how the student would have responded if the intervention had been in a language the student could have more meaningfully accessed.

Additionally, many researchers of these studies do not control for the English language proficiency levels of the students in their study, leaving educators uncertain on how to implement RtI appropriately for the myriad of variations in their linguistically diverse student populations.

Moore-Brown et al (2005) report on a Tier 3 RtI program of 123 fourth and fifth grade students at high-risk for special education referral in an urban school district which had a 96% minority (mostly Hispanic) student population.

RtI and The ELL

Out of the 123 students in the study, 79 students were identified as ELLs. The Tier 3 RtI was conducted in English only by speech-language pathologists and resource teachers.

RtI and The ELL

Students were given a 45 hour intensive instructional program based on the National Reading Panels five building blocks of reading. The program was systematic, intense, and given every day over a 9 week period.

RtI and The ELL

Significant gains in overall reading scores were documented. Only 8 students required special education services within the two year follow-up of the study.

RtI and The ELL

Since the subjects of the study were 4th and 5th grade students, the ELLs in the study are assumed to have had at least 5 to 6 years of English language exposure in a Tier 1 setting.

RtI and The ELL

The students level of English may have been sufficient to meaningfully access the Tier 3 RtI, but the researchers did not evaluate English language proficiency, only reporting the school districts ELL classification.

RtI and The ELL

The researchers recommendations included: At the end of the day, all students who successfully participated in this Tier 3 RtI program, although not requiring special education, still continued to have learning needs that needed to be addressed by general education.

RtI and The ELL

That the students made dramatic progress in a short period of time in a non-prescriptive program indicated that general education had to make some changes.

RtI and The ELL

Interdisciplinary teams composed of Resource Specialists and Speech & Language Pathologists can provide Tier 3 intensive services.

RtI and The ELL

System structures will need to change. Resource Specialists and Speech & Language Pathologists cannot be reasonably expected to carry maximum caseloads of identified special education students and also provide prevention activities as well.

RtI and The ELL

RtI is not an individualized intervention specific to the students being served. All students received the exact intervention protocol that targeted all fives building blocks of reading.

RtI and The ELL

Administrative support of RtI is critical. It is the responsibility of administrators to create an environment supportive of changing roles and developing understanding of the joint responsibility of general education teachers and special education interventionists.

RtI and The ELL

As part of a larger program project investigating biliteracy and bioracy, Linan-Thompson et al (2006) conducted a series of studies in the state of Texas on the effectiveness of RtI for ELLs identified as at-risk in first grade.

RtI and The ELL

Of the 103 total students, 53 ELLs with reading difficulties were randomly assigned to receive the intervention in the Fall of their first grade (31 received Spanish-language RtI and 22 received English-language RtI);

RtI and The ELL

50 ELLs also with reading difficulties were randomly assigned to serve as the comparison group (33 received Spanish-language instruction and 17 received English-language instruction).

RtI and The ELL

Students in the intervention program received supplemental reading intervention daily for 50 minutes from October to April; while students in the comparison group received the existing school districts instructional program for students with reading difficulties.

RtI and The ELL

The results (see Table 1) indicated that students receiving Englishlanguage RtI overwhelmingly met the success criteria (91%) as did the students receiving Spanishlanguage RtI (97%).

RtI and The ELL

A year later, 94% of the students who had received English-language RtI and 100% of the students who had received Spanish-language RtI still met the criteria. However, only 40% of the students in the comparison group who received English-language instruction met the criteria at the end of the first year;

RtI and The ELL

while 70% of the students receiving Spanish-language instruction met the criteria. Interestingly, at the one year follow-up, an incredible 92% of the at-risk students who had received Spanish-language instruction (not RtI),

RtI and The ELL

now met the success criteria (going from 70% to 92%), while students who had received English-language instruction still showed a low success rate of 44% (going from 42% to 44%). Thus, the results appear to yield three conclusions.

RtI and The ELL

First, RtI appears to generally outperform traditional remedial reading programs. Second, native language instruction & RtI outperforms English only instruction & RtI for ELLs. Third, native language instruction, in the long run, may be the sole intervention that is needed for ELLs at-risk for reading difficulties.