Lori Wheeler

4 July 2014

Immigrants and Their Children: English Language Learners

          As a teacher in a suburb of Houston, Texas's largest and most metropolitan city, I encounter many children of immigrants who have recently come to America.  Most of these students speak Spanish as their first language, but in my district, we serve students whose home languages encompass over twenty languages and dialects.  The majority of teachers on my campus and in my district have been trained to accommodate these students and learned strategies to provide the most effective instruction possible, but even with all that training, the English Language Learners (ELLs) are one of the two poorest performing groups on standardized testing.  This is even more so the case since Texas has implemented a new testing system (STAAR) that no longer includes an option for testing beginning ELLs in their first language, as had been the case under the old testing system (TAKS).  From a teacher's perspective, this change only makes it more difficult to reach and teach immigrants and children of immigrants.   Not only are students now having to show their academic achievement, but students are also being tested on their language proficiency by taking these tests in English.  When lackluster scores seem to show little progress because of language barriers, teachers and students become frustrated even though both may be doing their jobs well.  In an educational system that increasingly relies on standardized testing to measure success, something must be done for these students. 

          When immigrants come to America, one of the greatest gatekeepers to success and assimilation is education.  Unfortunately for so many new immigrants, that means language acquisition is a gatekeeper as well.  So many agencies collect data related to immigration, language acquisition, and education, and the implications are staggering, for both immigrants and educators.  In The Condition of Education, Aud et al. report that the number of students who speak a language other than English at home has risen from 3.8 million in 1979 to 10.9 million in 2008, an increase of 12% of the US population.  America is experiencing an incredible influx of immigrants, and they are bringing their children.  As we speak, the US is experiencing record numbers of child immigration. The Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas has been overwhelmed, says CNN, by some of the 52,000 unaccompanied minors who have been entering the US alone. Instead of turning these children away, authorities are transporting them all over the country where the immigration courts can process them more quickly, or turning them over to the foster care system.  While we see the numbers of children of immigrants rising, the number of children having difficulty speaking English is decreasing.  Many factors can account for this decrease, but one significant factor is increased support from federal and state agencies, financially and systematically.  The US government has defined what it is to be an English Language Learner (ELL), to be a student with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), and has required schools across America to show improved success in test results of these students with the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).  According to the most recent Census and the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) conducted by the US Department of Education reported in Cosentino de Cohen et al., children of immigrants now account for one in five of every child enrolled in K-12 schools.  The stakes are high for these students because NCLB attaches detrimental consequences to schools not showing consistent adequate yearly progress in protected classes of students like LEP, says Capps et al.  In fact, entire schools have been closed and students sent to other campuses because NCLB provisions close them instead of providing those campuses the additional resources to improve student success. 

          Quite frankly, the issue of immigrant education opens a huge can of worms because it is not just about education.  It is about language.  It is about parental involvement.  It is about socio-economic status.  In "The New Demography of America's Schools," Capps et al. prove a high correlation between LEP students and low socio-economic status (25).  More than their native peers, ELL students are enrolled in free and reduced lunch programs.  Educators regard the correlation between poverty and low-achieving students as common knowledge.  We know that poverty is a factor in a student's success.  A student living in poverty must spend his time and energy on pursuits other than advancing his education, or he may underestimate the value of education based on his current circumstances.  It only follows that if many of our ELLs are living in poverty, it would translate to limited performance in school.  But poverty is not the only factor limiting ELLs' success in the academic setting.  Many of the students from newly immigrated families are still struggling to find a place to settle, and in finding a place, these families continue to migrate across the country until finding a home.  This immigrant pattern is observed frequently enough and has shown to have a big enough impact on students that educators have given these students a label: Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFEs).  The more a student's education is interrupted, the greater chance there is for that student to forego a college education, show limited academic achievement, and even drop out of school.  Unfortunately for ELLs, they may also be dealing with insufficient support at home.  Data shows ELLs more likely to have parents with limited formal education than their English-proficient peers.  In fact, Capps et al. shows that 32% of primary students of immigrants have parents who did not complete high school, whereas only 9% of primary students of natives have parents who did not complete high school.  Furthermore, a parent's lack of education hinders the communication between home and school, so that even if a parent desperately wanted to support the student, learning deficiencies and/or language barriers make it difficult to do so.  In the worst cases, a family's immigration status can make parents overly cautious of schools as institutions of the dominant culture.  This distrust can transfer from parents to children so that "undocumented children may also be fearful of schools and other [public] institutions" (9).  The factors that complicate the education of ELLs, immigrants and children of immigrants, do not end with these mentioned above.

          Sadly, for immigrants and their children, they do not receive equal opportunities in America's public schools.  By no means should one infer that teachers are not doing their jobs to accommodate these students in the classroom, but instead one should realize the difficulty these students face compared to native English speakers.  Some of the problems of African Americans identified and fought against during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s are faced now by ELLs.  Just like African Americans of the Great Migration, immigrants typically seek homes and jobs in urban centers, where they are most likely to find them.  This means that in America's largest cities are the highest concentrations of immigrants. In fact, the states with the largest numbers of immigrants are the states that are home to America's largest cities: New York, Illinois, California, Texas, and Florida.  These states have long been havens for immigrants, and so therefore have had time to provide support within their educational systems for immigrants and the children of immigrants.  The best ELL programs are run in these states, but there is still great inequality.  Much like racially segregated schools of the past, ELLs now face disadvantages academically.  According to Cosentino de Cohen et al., schools are now linguistically segregated.  A minority of the schools in the country are serving the majority of the ELL population.  By having concentrated populations of ELLs, it does tend to allow these schools to apply for Title I status quicker since a larger proportion of ELLs are economically disadvantaged than fluent English speakers.  Title I is a program that provides additional funding to schools with large populations of economically disadvantaged students based on enrollment in free and reduced lunch programs.  The money from Title I allows a range of programs that serve ELLs and their families as well as the rest of their campus.  However, the data also shows a higher convergence of at-risk factors for students other than low socio-economic status.  Due to these factors, the resources available to students differ, the greatest difference being the quality and experience of school personnel.  Cosentino de Cohen et al. argue that schools with high ELL populations typically have younger, less qualified, and less experienced teachers than do schools with lower populations of ELLs.  In fact, the greatest populations of uncertified and probationary teachers are found in high-LEP schools, and the teachers who have the certification and training to most effectively reach and teach these at-risk ELL students are most often found in low-LEP schools.  Again in the US, we see schools that are separate but not equal despite the fact that organizations are striving to balance the scales.  When the disparities came to light, universities began offering degree programs that prepared teachers to serve ELLs; federal, state, and local entities earmarked money for ELL services and programs; and organizations like the National Council of Teachers of English and the College Board began lobbying for increased access to advanced curricula.  By subsidizing test fees for qualifying students and bringing more AP classes to schools, Texas saw a 40% increase in high school participation of the AP program.  However, according to Klopfenstein, high poverty schools still had limited access to AP courses, and even with access, economically disadvantaged students, including ELLs, were less likely to participate in AP, a program designed to prepare them for postsecondary education and possibly even earn them credit toward a postsecondary degree.  The case of AP enrollment is just one illustration of how public schools are not reaching the ELL population. 

          It is no secret in the Great Recession our generation is living through, that to be successful one has to have an education.  There are former CEOs with advanced degrees who are unable to find jobs, and there is an increase in the number of jobs in our country now requiring postsecondary education.  Even in my suburb, which was once primarily blue-collar, more education is required.  To work at one of the chemical plants, you need at least an associate's degree, and our police force now requires a bachelor's degree.  If it is increasingly difficult for the native-born to find jobs, it must be even more difficult for immigrants with language barriers to find jobs.  This is why ELLs need to be provided with an education as good as that provided for native-born students.  While I disagree with the methods our leaders use to judge the educational progress of ELLs, I do agree that the achievement of ELLs in our country is not what it could be.  ELLs not only have to face the difficulty of being an immigrant, but they have to face the difficulty of being an immigrant student.   Being a student should not increase the difficulty in your life, but instead it should increase your opportunity.

Bibliography

      Aud, S., et al. (2010). The Condition of Education 2010 (NCES 2010-028). National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC.

      Capps, Randy, et al. 2005. "The New Demography of America's Schools: Immigration and the No Child Left Behind Act." Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.

      Cosentino de Cohen, et al. 2005. "Who's Left Behind? Immigrant Children in High- and Low-LEP Schools." Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.

       Klopfenstein, K. (2004, December 12). The advanced placement expansion of the 1990s: How did traditionally underserved students fare? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 12(68). Retrieved 29 June 2014 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v12n68/.

       http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/20/politics/us-central-american-immigration/index.html