English Language Learners

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

In 2001, NCLB established legislation in a sweeping overhaul of federal effort to support elementary and secondary education. The legislation (Section 11: Title III) holds school districts accountable for English proficiency and is based upon improved student achievement and accountability for results with an emphasis on doing what works based on scientific research (Boward County Public Schools, 2010). With NCLB accountability, districts much describe how they will hold elementary and secondary schools accountable for meeting the goals and objectives for increasing the English proficiency of current ELL’s (Boward County Public Schools, 2010). Districts must also hold elementary and secondary schools accountable for meeting the goals and objectives for increasing academic achievement for all current and former ELL’s (Boward County Public Schools, 2010). Further required is an improvement plan that outlines interventions and procedures implemented if districts fail to meet the Annual Measureable Achievement Objectives (AMAO). Procedures and implementation are monitored by SALA (Bureau of Student Achievement through Language Acquisition) (Florida Department of Education).

Within the past ten years, the number of English Language Learners (ELLs) has doubled. An increase of more than 2 million ELL students in the U.S schools, left professionals within the field of education with no choice but to face the challenge of understanding cultural differences. In addition to this, educators must understand how these differences affect students’ language development, learning style, academic achievement and most importantly, his or her performance on standardized tests. These differences must be understood, valued and respected by all service providers, especially those who are involved in the decision making process concerning the placement of students in special educational programs. (Roseberry-McKibbin, 2014).

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

A never-ending issue has loomed over the head of our nation-- education. According to the Institute of Education Sciences, 63.7% of American students are below proficient in reading and 65.7% in math. In order to improve educational standards and increase student achievement, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act (also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) in 2002. Designed to increase the role of the federal government in education, it holds schools accountable based on how students perform on standardized tests. Statistics show that the average student completes about 110-115 mandatory, standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and end of twelfth grade (an average of eight tests per year). Standardized testing utilizes

Since the No Child Left Behind Act, also known as NCLB, has come into effect, it has caused some concerns with teachers and parents alike on how well it is working for the students. There have been issues that have arisen that needed to be addressed and instead been overlooked when a child does not meet with the school’s standardized testing and is pushed onto the next grade level.

"Making Sure That Schools Measure Up." Education Week, vol. 36, no. 16, 4 Jan. 2017, pp. 18-20. EBSCOhost. PDF. In this periodical article, Alyson Klein, reporter for Education Week, reflects on Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), an update to the K-12 education law, in the one year since it was passed in 2016. Klein discusses how the ESSA was designed to improve shortcomings of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the previous version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Klein also examines concerns over greater flexibility given to states and districts regarding issues such as standardized test, school choice, marginalized students. The Obama administration wrote how the accountability portion of the law would work, allowing states to pick their own goals, both a long term goal and short term goals. These goals must address students’ proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, and graduation

NCLB, the most recent version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was preceded by the Improving America’s Schools Act. Under that law, high-quality teaching and learning were not prevalent in all schools, and achievement gaps persisted, leading to agreement that a greater federal role for accountability was necessary—from which NCLB was born. NCLB authorized 45 programs in 10 different areas, but public debate tended to focus on the law’s testing, accountability, and teacher-quality requirements. NCLB required that students be tested in the subjects of English language arts (ELA) and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, and for states to use the results to assess how well schools were meeting “adequate yearly progress” goals for student proficiency in these subjects. Schools that consistently did not meet these goals overall, or for subgroups of students, were targeted for interventions, and eventually for sanctions.

These standarized tests were not created to measure students’language proficiency .With the No child Left Behind Act(NCLB), states have to use standarized testing to measure students’ adequate yearly progress(AYP). According to Paige , one of the proponents of the NCLB, standardized tests deliver a valid and reliable means of measuring student learning, and this method expands on teacher-made assessments(Hulsh 2005). Test results alone should not be reliable and valid to measure students’learning. Acombination of assessments and projects can be more reliable and valid to show students’ yearly progress. Because English learners students lack the language proficiency to read and comprehend the questions, the results shoould be considered worthless. The invalid results don’t speak to the students’abilities. Fry mentioned that 46% of 4th grade students in the English language learner (ELL) category scored “below basic” in mathematics in 2005 and that that about 51% of 8th grade ELL students are behind whites in reading and math (Fry 2007). It is nearly impossible for half of ELL to receive a low score in the test. These numbers don’t always mean that the students don’t know the answer, but maybe the numers tell us that the english learners lack the reading comprehension needed to unsderstand the questions. According to Haladyna, students stop taking the test or mark answers aimlessly not because they didn’t learn but because they can not read and nonresponse and omitted responses are more prevalent with English language learners (Haladyna, 2006). When taking the math test, students migh know the answers , but can interpret the question wrong therefore giving a wrong answer.

“The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 wasn’t signed into law by President Bush until Jan. 8, 2002, was reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the central federal law in pre-collegiate education” (No Child 1). Since 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was established and made the ‘Title I’ programs in schools to aid students who needed extra help on a day to day basis. When the act needed to be reauthorized for 2001, they changed the name of the act to “No Child Left Behind” or NCLB (No Child 1-2). Annual testing shows the federal governments if every student in every public school nation wide are meeting their state’s standards in mathematics and reading.

Many schools statewide are facing the contradictory topic of the exemption of standardized testing amongst their students. This format of assessing with American Education began in the middle 1800’s and grew when the NO Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandated testing in the US in 2002. These actions taken were said to mainly have been put in place to keep teachers and schools accountable for the assurance of those paying taxes and what government money is being spent on. Despite these comments, the vast majority of people would say that the proficiency level aligned with the state’s reading and math, find it to be an impossible goal to aim for. And throughout the course of time, multiple days in the school year have been eradicated with test

“After No Child Left Behind (NCLB) passed in 2002, the US slipped from 18th in the world in math on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to 31st place in 2009” (Standardized Tests). They are a tool used to measure the comprehension of students within certain academic areas. These tests also hold schools and teachers accountable for educating our children with high quality education. However, many students are labeled failing because they do not pass these tests. Our country has placed too much importance on test and not on our students as individuals. Every student learns and tests in different ways. What may work for one student may not work for another student. We cannot expect the same outcome from each student because they are all different. Our government made efforts to change these tests when they passed the Every Student Succeeds Act 2015, which reformed the No Child Left Behind Act from 2001; however, there are still issues regarding the accuracy of these

In 2001, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act launching America’s education system into an era of standardized testing as a method of holding states and schools accountable for student achievement. With this recent surge of high-stakes standardized testing, teachers are held to increasingly higher expectations of quality instruction and meeting these standards. However, schools are unprepared in achieving the goals of NCLB resulting in years of struggle to improve student success in testing due to flaws in the traditional grading system. Current schools and teachers lack proper grading practices that are inadequate of accurately representing student achievement. With the increased focus on standards, it is imperative that schools begin to implement an effective grading system so that all students and parents are provided accurate feedback of students’ abilities.

After the Introduction of NCLB, test driven accountability has become the norm in public schools. Other stakeholders in the education sector have raised concerns that reliance on test as a measure of educational achievement may be misleading a move that NCLB has defended saying that theirs has been to direct attention to low achieving students with a view to improving their performances (Dee & Jacob, 2010). Analyses that have been conducted by stakeholder organizations have shown that NCLB impacts particular schools and districts differently.

Knowing that most of the students come from low income families, I can sympathize, and will not burden the families with excessive purchases of materials outside of what the school can provide, but I will not lower my expectations of my students. From the standpoint of working with student from diverse backgrounds, I believe prior years of travel outside of the United States have given me an appreciation of other cultures and their an understanding of their contributions to the world. It would be also mindful to observe if some of the students are struggling with English. Once the English Language Learners (ELL’s) are identified, appropriate instruction can be given to assist the student(s) with slower instruction that is not packed with excessive