WASHINGTON— The results of a major national education assessment released earlier this month are often misinterpreted in ways that may add to the academic disadvantages of students whose first language is not English.
The recent release of the biannual National Assessment of Educational Progress showed a persistent achievement gap between white students and Latino students, particularly those classified as English language learners.
Educators critical of the results say that, while many of these students lag behind their English-proficient peers academically, the test doesn’t give a true picture of academic ability.
As a result, English learners who score more poorly on math or science assessments written in English are often placed in remedial classes – and under low expectations—even though they understand the subject material but struggle with the language.
“We have no idea if they’re underperforming,” said Leo Gomez, a professor of bilingual and bicultural education at the University of Texas-Pan American. “The only measurement NAEP can provide us is their English proficiency or their English development.”
Gomez, who is on the board of the National Association of Bilingual Education, said the primary problem with assessments given to English learners is that the students’ inability to comprehend the test—regardless of their understanding of the material tested—invalidates the results.
NAEP, which is often touted as “the nation’s report card”, is administered to a only sample of students and is regularly used to measure progress and affect educational policy. But scores on national exams as well as state assessments often play a critical role in determining a student’s status as an English learner early in their education, and in many cases, it becomes very difficult to ever shed that status.
“Once you check that box off, you have to jump through four hoops to stop being an EL,” said Arun Ramanathan, the executive director of the Education Trust-West, in California. “Every year that students remain English learners, the district and school gets money.”
Ramanthan said English learner status often has a tremendous impact on students’ academic paths. Schools track the students into lower-level and remedial coursework.
“It becomes a life sentence,” he said.
Margarita Pinkos, former director of the office of English language acquisition at the Department of Education, and president-elect of a Florida association of bilingual educators, said she cites Albert Einstein to demonstrate how tests can fail these students.
“If we gave Albert Einstein, who didn’t speak English when he came here, a test in English in math, he’s not going to do well,” Pinkos said. “Not because he doesn’t know math, but because he doesn’t speak English and the test is in English.”
Still, the NAEP report illuminates the issue that the public schools system in the U.S. is often at a loss for how best to serve students with low English proficiency. Almost 40 percent of Latino fourth-graders nationwide are classified as English Language Learners, as are 20 percent of Latino eighth-graders.
A 1991 study for the Department of Education comparing English immersion programs to bilingual programs showed that between grades 1 and 6, low proficiency students who received instruction in their native language and gradually mixed in English to their learning saw greater sustained achievement in all subjects.
Gomez said that teaching a student in a native language ensures that English learners aren’t abandoning their studies in core subjects as they gain English skills. But what happens too often, he said, is that, students are placed in what Gomez calls “sink or swim” classroom environments, where they fall behind in their math or science classes because they can’t comprehend the instruction.
California, which the NAEP report shows has one of the worst achievement gaps in the nation, requires all primary instruction to be in English, and English learners go through a rapid one-year structured immersion program.
According to a 2009 publication comparing the methods of teaching low-English proficiency students in California and Texas, California English learners are more than three times as likely to remain low proficiency through grade 12.
The study by education professors from the Universities of California at Los Angeles and Santa Barbara found students in Texas were not only more likely to gain fluency in English, but also perform well in core subjects. A Texas law that mandates elementary schools with a certain number of English leaners to provide voluntary bilingual programs, the study said, was at the heart of this success.
“They can get to the same rigor as anyone else, but they just need more time,” Pinkos said.