{"id":18560,"date":"2023-08-26T22:15:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-27T04:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=18560"},"modified":"2023-08-26T22:15:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-27T04:15:00","slug":"news-from-the-world-of-english-language-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2023\/08\/news-from-the-world-of-english-language-learning.html","title":{"rendered":"News from the world of English Language Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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school bus, https:\/\/www.maxpixel.net\/Bus-Vehicle-Education-Transport-School-Bus-School-4406479<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In Illinois, and Chicago in particular, along with various other declared \u201csanctuary states,\u201d there have a multitude of news reports about migrants crowding into shelters, migrant children overwhelming schools, and so on (though, of course, one presumes that in Texas the situation is far more chaotic as they have had to bear the brunt of the large growth in new arrivals).\u00a0 And in that context came a report at WBEZ, the public radio station in Chicago, \u201cIllinois immigrants need more language help to thrive and partake in civic life<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 The report headlined the worrisome statistic that 8% of the Illinois population speaks English \u201cless than very well,\u201d according to Census Bureau statistics.\u00a0 In Chicago, the report says, 1\/3 of individuals age 5 and older speak a language other than English at home (which is not the same as speaking English \u201cless than very well\u201d but one presumes that the figure for Chicago is nonetheless significantly higher than 8%) \u2014 but the \u201clanguage help\u201d the article describes in detail does not consist of English classes, but of ways in which community agencies and others accommodate non-English speakers by helping people get government services by communicating in their own language, and profiling advocacy groups\u2019 call for more interpreters and more service providers with foreign language knowledge.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I listened to a presentation at a recent board of education meeting describing the skyrocketing numbers of ELLs (English language learners) in the district, who, a mandated by state law, are taught in their native language rather than through immersion into English, with the goal to gradually transition to English, with the optimistic name of \u201cTransitional Bilingual Education.\u201d\u00a0 But it turns out, the \u201ctransition\u201d never actually happens.\u00a0 The majority of the students entering the high school district with ELL status were born in the US.<\/p>\n

In fact, the conventional wisdom about immigrant families, that first generation immigrants struggle with English, the second generation kids can understand their parents but prefer to speak English and ultimate become poor home-language speakers, and the third generation loses the home-country language entirely \u2014 that\u2019s no longer true.<\/p>\n

The most recent data on the subject that I was able<\/a> to find is fairly old but nonetheless:<\/p>\n

[T]he number of U.S. ELLs born in the United States has increased from approximately one third of the Limited Engish Proficient (LEP) population in 1991-1992 (Fleischman & Hopstock, 1993) to 64 percent of all LEPs in 2006 (Batalova, 2006). Today, more than 75% of elementary school ELLs were U.S.-born (Capps, Fix, Murray, Ost, Passel, & Herwantoro, 2005), compared with 41% in 1992 (Fleischman & Hopstock, 1993).<\/p>\n

Further disaggregation of the data reveals an unanticipated pattern of generational language use: twenty seven percent of ELLs in secondary school are second generation, and twenty nine percent are third generation or beyond.2 Among elementary-level ELLs, fifty nine percent are second generation and eighteen percent are third generation or beyond (see Figure 1) (Capps et al., 2005).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

29% of students in high school ELL education are third generation!<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0The particular report (again, it dates to 2007) cites housing segregation as part of the explanation, which doesn\u2019t make much sense to me, since immigrant communities have always been segregated.\u00a0 But the article does identify a stronger desire to maintain the home language, a belief that speaking Spanish (among, of course, immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries) would give their kids opportunities, and a desire to maintain a \u201cLatino identity\u201d as key factors, and it is, of course, easy to see those factors only increasing \u2014 plus, of course, the access to Spanish-language TV, and the access to Spanish-language media in general, with the magic of the internet, has surely expanded as well.<\/p>\n

On top of this, in the state of Illinois in particular, in 2017, the state substantially tightened up its requirements for students to be deemed sufficiently proficient to leave bilingual classes.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the description of the new standard<\/a>:<\/p>\n

WIDA better aligned ACCESS 2.0 with the language demands necessary to meet college and career readiness standards. The alignment required WIDA to engage in standard setting. The results of the this work [sic] requires English learners (ELs) to demonstrate higher language abilities than they have in previous years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given the large number of students who emerge from high school without meeting the benchmarks for \u201ccollege and career ready\u201d based on the state\u2019s own metric of proficiency, this is absurd, since it suggests that native English speakers who are poor students would fail this test!\u00a0 And, in fact, the sample test questions<\/a> for high school students strike me as being deliberately confusing, with students being required to interpret two data tables in ways that are likely to be challenging for struggling students.\u00a0 I have been told that, in my local school district, this new benchmark was the difference between borderline kids moving out of bilingual education after, say, their first year of high school, and kids staying in bilingual education the entire time, and, honestly, I\u2019d love to know how many native English speakers would also fail the test.\u00a0 (And, yes, I am still not sure if this is the state implementation of a federal mandate or a state decision to implement a general requirement in a particularly strict way.)<\/p>\n

And, yes, there are parents who want this for their kids, for whom maintaining the home language is important enough that full English proficiency is of secondary importance.\u00a0 And there are kids who are happy to stay in bilingual classes because that\u2019s where their friends are.\u00a0 But it\u2019s a substantial burden on the community, both in terms of cost of providing these classes and the future of the community, when that next generation which ought to have become fluent, isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Illinois, and Chicago in particular, along with various other declared \u201csanctuary states,\u201d there have a multitude of news reports about migrants crowding into shelters, migrant children overwhelming schools, and so on (though, of course, one presumes that in Texas the situation is far more chaotic as they have had to bear the brunt of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":17375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[613,46],"class_list":["post-18560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-bilingualism","tag-immigration"],"yoast_head":"\nNews from the world of English Language Learning<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Illinois, and Chicago in particular, along with various other declared "sanctuary states," there have a multitude of news reports about 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