A school district in a small town in eastern Illinois has been educating Amish children side by side with children whose parents and grandparents emigrated from Mexico. A second district in a rural area of southwestern Illinois serves two young boys, recently adopted from an orphanage in Eastern Europe.
A third school district in the southern part of the state has enrolled several dozen students from Central America, many of whom speak an indigenous language in addition to Spanish.
Aside from these school districts being within several hours’ drive from Chicago, what similarities could they possibly share?
Small Populations
According to a 2003 report on limited English-proficient students by the Center for Equity and Excellence in Education at George Washington University, each of these districts has something in common with about one-fourth of the nation’s school districts. These districts each educate between one and 99 English language learners, the smallest enrollment range collected at the federal level.
But unlike other rural and small-town districts in Illinois that have tried to implement a one-size-fits-all program, these school districts have embraced their ELLs and responded to their students’ unique needs by forming committees that identify, discuss and implement plans to serve their English language learners.
Typically, at the superintendent’s prompting, these school districts convene committees to address the needs of their limited English-speaking students. The committees evaluate their current language education services (bilingual and English as a second language programs) before modifying their programs to better fit their particular student population. Recommended changes are always rooted in best practices and legal compliance.
The committees usually consist of central-office and building administrators, a school board member and several district teachers (bilingual, ESL, general education and special education). Ideally, a local leader from the language-minority community is invited to join the group, as well as parents of a few ELLs.
The dozen or so members meet throughout the school year. Though the superintendent may not be able to attend each meeting, he or she remains in regular touch with the committee’s work.
A Committee’s Duty
The first activity of the committee involves compiling student data. This includes, but is not limited to, the number of ELLs, their native languages, English language proficiency levels, the amount of schooling they have received, their classroom performance, standardized test scores and previous report cards. District policies for identifying ELLs also merit review at this point.
While federal case law and guidelines from the Office for Civil Rights have required districts to adequately educate ELLs since the 1970s, many rural and small-town school districts have yet to establish uniform screening measures to limited English speakers.
School district personnel often assume only recent immigrants or students with minimal English skills are considered ELLs. In fact, it is common for the first identifiable ELL in a school district to be a recently arrived immigrant with little understanding of the English language. However, as district staff members learn more about the characteristics and needs of ELLs, they often begin to recognize there are other students walking the halls who are still acquiring English.
When one small city in central Illinois reviewed their screening policies, the district discovered its identification procedures were not implemented consistently among the schools. Though it took time to review the district’s 1,500 or more students, the district ultimately discovered 56 unidentified ELLs. This meant their population tripled from 27 to 83 ELLs during the course of one school year.
Once the number of English language learners in a district has been determined, the committee can review and discuss the best type of services to meet the students’ needs. The committee will have myriad programming options to choose from, ranging from self-contained classrooms to daily pullout sessions.
Shared Responsibility
In school districts with small ELL populations, no single option will be optimal. Often two or three different types of service will be used in a district. Certain grade levels or buildings may vary the types of service according to the number of ELLs enrolled and their native languages.
Buildings with 20 students of the same native language may pursue hiring a bilingual teacher who is able to provide content area and literacy instruction in both the native language and English. Conversely buildings with 20 students from multiple native languages may chose to hire an ESL-trained teacher to provide content area and literacy instruction in English. Buildings with fewer than 20 ELLs may hire a part-time teacher. This means the overall success of the district’s ELLs will hinge on more than one teacher.
Each teacher who comes into contact with ELLs shares in the responsibility for educating them, and that includes general education teachers. Yet many of these educators do not have the training to do so.
According to the Center for Equity and Excellence, teachers who were responsible for educating at least three English language learners reported a median of four hours of in-service training over the previous five years. It cannot be assumed that new teachers have the necessary training either as many universities do not yet provide adequate training for general education teachers in ESL methodologies. Therefore the district committee will likely need to spend time increasing its own background knowledge while planning staff development opportunities for teachers and principals.
Tamara Marrah is an education consultant with the Illinois Resource Center in Arlington Heights, Ill., and co-author of a forthcoming book on implementing programs for English language learners. E-mail: tmarrah@thecenterweb.org