Action Research for Esl Students

The No Child Left Behind Act requires English language learners (ELL) to be held to the same academic standards as English speaking students. Schools must provide specialized instruction that enable students to receive meaning education. Federal mandates attempt to create educational opportunities that help ELL students in reaching their full potential. To ensure equal access to an education is achieved, states are required to assess students with tools aligned with state content standards. The results from the

California public schools are where a majority of English learners are concentrated. Therefore, by implementing these policies at public schools and charter schools the policies would resolve specific problems for ELL students. This educational approach of education will produce students who are culturally and academically capable in two languages and who also value cultural diversity. All students regardless of primary language will be held to the same high academic standards. The program should include elementary, middle and high school level students. Rather than having ELL students separated, they will be able to remain in the same classes as non-English learners, to develop their academic growth in both

When inferring why ESL/ELL students are at a major disadvantage in our schools, it is apparent that language and cultural barriers hinder their progress. Because so much of the current American curricula is taught based on cultural norms, knowledge, mores, and standards, our ESL/ELL students lack this prior knowledge, context, and background to expand their skills and scaffold in many areas. Since their parents often cannot practice with them or reinforce some essential skills, such as literacy, when many ELL/ESL parents themselves lack basic English and often not even GEDs or high school diplomas in the case of refugee and illegal immigrants, these students enter our schools at a major disadvantage cognitively, academically, socially, emotionally,

English language learners enrollment in the Council member districts has remained relatively stable over the past several years. In 2007-08, 1.1 million ELLs were enrolled in urban schools, accounting for 16.5 percent of total district enrollment. In 2009–10, 1.2 million ELLs were enrolled, accounting for 17.5 percent of total district enrollment (Uro & Barrio, p. 26, 2013). The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 required students in grades three through eight to be tested every year in reading and math. While NCLB now holds educators more accountable with student learning, it now also tests English language learners (ELLs) in content areas (Coltrane, 2002, p.1). This denotes a question of validity and reliability with assessment. The

The fact that ELL student’s are given the exact same educational services provided to native English speaker, seem to be very unfair for the ELL student’s and instead of helping the ELL students to succeed academically we are preventing them from succeeding in their classes. When I was reading this section I couldn’t stop thinking about the video that we saw in class, the student was very smart but the fact that he couldn’t understand the material being taught, this was preventing him from showing how brilliant and smart he is. Just imagine how many brilliant ELL students can’t succeed in class because they don’t understand the language of the instruction.

• Test scores comparing ELL students and native speakers of English as well as number of ELL students identified as requiring special education services

The school system do not take in consideration that ELL students not only have a language barrier that prevent them from performing on the standardized tests, but that they are transitioning from a completely different learning environment. ELL students are also classified as poor academic performers because of their language barrier. This language barrier explain the academic achievement gaps between ELL students and native english-speaking students. The test scores are not sufficient proof to argue that ELL students have a gap in academic achievement. This is questionable to the validity of the standardized tests on ELL students.(Youth)

School board members across the country want to better serve the students who are English language learners. Because countless English language learner students spend part of their academic day in a regular classroom, the general education teachers need to be trained to understand instructional strategies and techniques to aid in advancing this population of students (Stover, 2015). Consequently, it would also be beneficial for school board members to support the bilingual and English Language Learner Specialist in training all teachers in the district on ways to better serve this population.

It has been estimated that by the year 2025, approximately one out of every public school student will be identified as an ESL/ELL student in the United States. ESL stands for English as a Second Language and ELL stands for English Language Learner. An ESL/ELL student can be defined as a student whose predominant language or languages at home, is other than English, and would require additional English language support to develop reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. The difference between an ESL student and ELL student is minor; An ESL student participates in programs that are customarily specialized while an ELL student partakes in a traditional educational classroom. English Language Learners have surpassed other subgroups in becoming the fastest growing of the public school population. Despite the common misjudgement of some people towards the ESL/ELL population, 76% of the ESL/ELL students in elementary schools and 56% of the ESL/ELL students in secondary schools are native-born. The highest percentages of ELL/ESL students in public schools are found in the west of the United States. Taking the average of both bigger and smaller cities, ELL students make an average of 14% of the total public school enrollment and in suburban areas, ELL students make up an average of 8.5% of public school enrollment. The ESL/ELL population has more than doubled over the past 15 years and more than half of those students struggle with their academic performance. An ESL/ELL

The Florida Department of Education will continually strive to develop a system that evaluates equal access and program effectiveness. This ensures that all LEP students receive adequate English language skills to use when interacting with non-LEP students. The Florida Department of Education shall establish a system for minimum review of program effectiveness, which shall include review data such as: students are acquiring English language skills sufficient for parity of participation with non LEP students within a reasonable period of time; students are learning and progressing toward completion of requirements specified in the district's pupil progression plan as evidence by a comparison of LEP and non LEP students. A comparison of LEP and non LEP students by race/ethnic origins on:

Nichols ruling mandated public school systems to address language barriers that prevent their students from accessing the curriculum. As a result, schools now identify students with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), provide them with bilingual education or English as a Second Language (ESL) services, and monitor their programming and progress through beginning, middle, and end of year Language Proficiency Assessment Committee (LPAC) meetings. In response to the current demographics and continual increase in diversity, there exists a greater need for educators to be culturally proficient, value differences, and foster caring relationships in order to meet the individual needs of all students, provide them with equal educational opportunities, and reduce the gap in their educational outcomes. The use of multicultural teaching strategies also empowers students and teachers, improving education

According to the NCLEA (2010), as of 2007-2008 school year, Georgia schools were home to more than 72, 600 English Language Learners (ELL). This was a 406% increase from the 1997-1998 school year. Kayne (2013), states that in the next five years, minorities will make up more than half of the children under the age of eighteen. As these numbers continue to increase, parental involvement will become a crucial part of the success of many ESL/ELL programs. Research shows that schools with high numbers of ELL students that have parental involvement also have higher level of student achievements, larger enrollment into post-secondary education, and higher graduation rates (August & Hakuta, 1997). Yet, Schools with higher numbers of ELL students

The article, New York Schools Struggle With New Rules to Help Students Learning English, by Elizabeth A. Harris from the New York Times, documents the current struggle of New York state public school ESL programs to fully accommodate the immigrant students’ needs. Overall, the ESL program is not effective in helping second language students catch up in subjects taught in English. In addition, the supply and demand is heavily unbalanced. More immigrant students are enrolling in public schools yet there is a lack of trained ESL teachers available even if the school wanted to hire more or establish more ESL programs. “Take Bengali, for example. It is the fourth most common language among pupils learning English in the city’s public schools. But there are only three bilingual Bengali programs in the schools.”

During the 1990s the immigrant population expanded quickly and by a large amount. According to Eggen and Kauchak (2007) “experts estimate that by the year 2020 two thirds of the school population will be African American, Asian, Hispanic, or Native American. This means there will be great cultural diversity in our society and in our schools.” Educators will need to be educated on how to teach in a diverse classroom. Teachers will need to have an understanding for English-language learning children and the way they learn. All educators must be able to teach ELL students while encouraging them to continue to use their native language while learning to speak English. Teachers must also remember to try to keep all families

“According to the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, from the 1997-98 school year to the 2008-09 school year, the amount of ESL learners enrolled in U.S. public schools increased from 3.5 million to 5.3 million, a 51% increase” (WeAreTeachers Staff). The number of international students is very hide in that country “the percentage of students ages 5-12 who speak a language other than English at home has doubled since 1980” (Shi, Steen 64). In our days, around 200 dialect are be spoken in America (WeAreTeachers). “According to the 2013 American Community Survey (ACS), Spanish was the most common home or first language, spoken by 71 % of ELL students, Chinese was second with 4%, followed by Vietnamese 3%, and French/Haitian Creole 2% ” ( Top Language 1).