Many students who are learning English also are taking standardized tests that are used to hold schools and teachers accountable for student learning, which educators say may be unfair. However, some fear ELL students would fare worse under less-stringent requirements and receive less-targeted instruction. Meanwhile, educators are working to ensure non-native English speakers understand lessons by offering visual content, pairing students with English speakers and choosing lessons that students can relate to.
Shuler Pelham spent Wednesday morning trying to explain to a 15-year-old Mexican boy why he should come to school.
The teen arrived in Nashville in March, attended one week at Overton High in August and then disappeared. A truancy court ordered him back to Overton. He told Pelham, the principal, that school is too hard when you don't know any English. Besides, he said, he'll probably move back to Mexico with his family by summer.
But he could be sitting at Overton for spring standardized tests, the ones whose results determine everything from school funding to whether Pelham gets to keep his job. He'll be expected to learn on grade level for his age — in English — and, if he stays here, to graduate from high school in the same four years as any U.S.-born student.
Overton High has hundreds of students facing similar challenges as that boy.
"I don't think any teacher is against accountability," Pelham said. "But is it fair to give a child in this country a year a test in English and say it is going to count?"
Research shows it takes the brightest, most motivated students three years to learn English well enough that they can test in it. But federal law allows newcomers only a one-year pass on testing.
Some lawmakers want to see the rules regarding students designated English Language Learners changed because they are particularly tough, and some say unrealistic, for schools and districts with high numbers of immigrant students. In Metro Nashville, 22 percent of students have a first language other than English, and the district missed testing benchmarks three of the past four years largely because of their standardized test scores.
President Barack Obama has offered a blueprint to modify No Child Left Behind, the federal law that established performance standards for all students. His proposal, however, offered no specific guidance on assessing students who aren't fluent in English. As it stands, they're a subgroup under that law, and if schools can't get those students testing on grade level quickly, they must offer free tutoring and allow transfers outside the attendance zone. Progressive, harsher penalties include removing all teachers and administrators.
'Complex' questions
The assessment of students not proficient in English has been contentious since No Child Left Behind's passage a decade ago. Clara Lee Brown, an associate professor of English as a Second Language education at the University of Tennessee, contends it's pointless to base decisions about school performance on new English speakers' test results.
She cited a third-grade reading question on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program that asked students the best way to make a compound sentence out of these two sentences: "Piki is as thin as a sheet of paper. It crunches when you bite it." The four choices included: "Piki is as thin as a sheet of paper so crunches when you bite it" and "Piki is as thin as a sheet of paper and crunches when you bite it."
"To an English Language Learner, those all sound about right," Brown said. "… The questions can be really, really complex. You can't be really sure whether language caused the result or lack of content knowledge. So why would you make a policy decision based on such inaccurate results? You can't put such confidence on such results."
Shee Yah, 18, is an Overton senior who moved to Nashville four years ago from a refugee camp in Thailand. She wants to go to college and become a nurse, but she admits her limited English skills make test-taking difficult.
"When the teacher is talking, you don't always understand," she said. "Tests are hard for me because I'm not good at reading English."
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ACQUIRING ENGLISH
Dr. Clara Brown, a University of Tennessee associate professor of English as a Second Language, says there are five stages of English acquisition for foreign-language speakers. They’re similar to how babies learn their first language.
• The student is quiet from three months to a year, silently picking up language and content.
• The student learns a few words but uses no prepositions or adjectives. He may compose subject-verb sentences, such as “I run.”
• Sentences get longer, and the student can compose simple questions.
• The student composes negative sentences, such as, “I not like it.”
• The student begins using grammatically correct language. He or she could be proficient in “social English” within two years.
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