The No Child Left Behind Act Requires English Language Learners

3). Some ELL students may start school without any English language skills, while others may have “limited language proficiency or dual language deficiency in both their native language and English” (p. 3). Just as native English speakers, ELL students also have different levels of intellectual abilities; however, their struggle with school in English may be related to background knowledge and not solely on intellectual abilities (Short & Echevarria, 2004). Samson and Collins (2012), purposes if school districts, administrations, and teachers want to see improvements in achievement for ELLs, “greater continuity in how general education teachers are prepared by teacher-education programs, certified by states and evaluated by local education agencies, or LEAs, is essential. By making sure that the special needs of ELLs are addressed at multiple stages of the teacher preparation process, schools may gain higher quality

ESL is stands for English as a Second Language, which is a program that?s mainly developed to supplement the Bilingual Education in order to give extra help to the immigrants to learn English. ?The profession of teaching English as a second language within the United States began to expand in the 1960s in response to increasing numbers of immigrant and refugee children entering the country, as well as to the growing numbers of international students attending U.S. universities? (Collier and Ovando, 1998). Students in the ESL program receive the instruction of their level of English proficiency, so they can learn the English from the very basic level. Once they get better with their English skills, they will be able to move out the ESL program and be as competitive as the native speakers of English in other subject classes. The first decades of ESL programs fails to help students with academic work in math, science, social studies, and other curricular areas but English. In order to improve this situation, ESL programs started to focus more in helping students with their academic works during the 1950s and 1960s (Collier and Ovando, 1998).

All these strategies gives all students an equal opportunity to practice English, participation and involvement. ELLs students when it’s time to read or participate in class they may be reluctant to speak because of their lack of proficiency in English or feel uncomfortable in an environment where they have to share their ideas. ESL teachers must provide a positive and supportive environment that offers significant influence on student comfort level, success and participation that requiring ELLs to use the language in front of class without force them

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

In many cases there is an assumption that by placing an ELL student into a mainstream English-speaking classroom they will quickly acclimate themselves to English because that is what they are surrounded by during the school-day. Students will hear English being spoken and will quickly pick up on what is being asked of them.

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.

For teachers, I believe they are lacking in having efficient data, practices, and resources. These three categories play an essential role in educating, evaluating, and caring for ELL students. Communication is a huge factor when it comes to instruction in the classroom. In the past research has shown poor communication between teachers, students and families. Schools often lack in providing differentiated methods and tools to teach ELL students. Schools in the past have failed to offer the correct assessments that were needed in order to diagnose each student's needs and measure their individualized learning standards. Educators can easily become frustrated because there is such a wide range of English learners. This means academic levels are different and the educators have not received the proper training or instructions on how to correctly educate ELL students.

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

Educators care more about if the student is learning English than academic training as a whole. This prevents ELL students from getting access to challenging academic materials or/and to academic preparation necessary for higher education. Ell students are enrolled into other

"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

It is essential to understand English language learners’ needs because ELL students face the combined challenge of learning all the academic content as other students, while also learning the language of instruction. With the rapid growth in the size of the ELL student population in the U.S., teachers who are effective recognizes ELL students unique academic needs, unique background experience, culture, language, personality, interests and attitudes toward learning for the purpose to adjust, or differentiate, their instruction to meet students’ needs.

The authors of the article explained how important it is to meet the needs of the students with limited English ability in the education system. One of the main point expresses about how frustrating it could be for these students, especially if they were never expose to this sort of environment or language before. Another point that was made in the article, explains how the educational system was not prepared for changes in this sort of population. In most cases, some of the curriculum that is being offered in school cannot be changed to accommodate English Limited Learners, also known as ELLs. Budget is also another issue, as schools are limited to hiring more ELL teachers.

This is a good starting point to help teachers distinguish between a true learning disability and learning English as a second language. If an ELL has a real learning disability then early detection is essential. However, if an ELL does have a learning disorder and does not receive special education for many years, because teachers were waiting for he or she to learn the language, serious consequences could happen (Haung, Clarke, Milczarski, Raby, 2011). Students could be grade levels behind their peers and could suffer emotionally and socially in and out of school. Some ELLs may be able to speak in their native language, but they may not be able to read and write in it. Finally, teachers also have to pay very close attention to ELLs. Each ELL has had a different set of experiences and ranges of educational exposure (Haung, Clarke, Milczarski, Raby, 2011). Teachers must push for appropriate professional development for teachers working with ELLs. Teachers are more prepared to deliver appropriate assessment and instructional modifications to ELLs with disabilities when they have been given appropriate professional development (Haung, Clarke, Milczarski, Raby, 2011).

After perusing through multiple databases in search of an interesting article, I finally came across one that discusses the issue of No Child Left Behind or NCLB and its flaws. The article is entitled, “The No Child Left Behind Act and English Language Learners: Assessment and Accountability Issues” by Jamal Abedi. The title itself practically says it all about the main purpose of the article. Abedi questions the credibility and points out the flaws of the NCLB Act, which I would agree with him on those flaws. This article analysis will be discussing the main idea of Abedi’s article and my thoughts and opinions about the article and idea itself.

ESL students are students that speak English as a second language. Presently, there is many different system to characterize this type of students (qtd in Shi, Steen 63). For example, they can be seen as “English Language Learners (ELL), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English Language Development (ELD), English Language Service (ELS), and