A New Protocol For Teaching English Language Learners In Middle And Secondary Schools

Abstract

In the United States, the population of minority students in 2005 increased to 42 percent of public school enrollment (Echevarria & Short, 2010). English learners (ELs) are the fastest growing population of students enrolled in public school across the United States. California alone has 1.5 million ELs attending public schools (Echevarria, 2008). During the 2007-2008 academic year, only 11 states met their accountability goals for ELs under the No Child Left Behind Act (August, and Shanahan, 2006, Zehr, 2011). If an EL speaks English with difficulty, 82 percent will not graduate from high school. A recent Texas study reported that 80 percent of ELs did not graduate from high school (Echevarria, Vogt, and Short, 2008).

The gap in academic achievement between Caucasian students and those from culturally and linguistically diverse groups has widened primarily because many middle and secondary classroom teachers are under prepared to make content comprehensible for ELs or to teach content-area literacy to a forgotten population of middle and secondary ELs (Echevarria and Short, 2010). The result is that ELs enrolled in middle and high schools have become long term ELs, who's specific learning needs for success in school are largely, ignored thus creating a large EL underachieving group (Olsen, 2010). Many middle and secondary schools engage in the common practice of segregating students in what some educators have called the EL ghetto. The ELs middle and secondary school curriculum typically consists of a sequence of courses that keep them together over multiple years in classes that do not enable them to complete prerequisites for higher tracks of college (Darling-Hammond, 2010). The overarching question addressed in this presentation is; what do teachers need to know and be able to do to provide ELs with systematic language development, academic literacy skills, successful experiences in mainstream classes, meet content standards, and pass standardized assessments in their second language?