Here’s a few interesting bits from a recent discussion about assessment and exit criteria for leaving English language services. It caught my interest because it seems to relate quite a bit to my Master’s Thesis.
From Learning the Language on 11/25/09.
I’ve been hearing the complaint that California administrators keep ELLs in special programs for financial reasons for nearly a decade, as long as I’ve been writing about English-language learners for Education Week. Ron Unz, the businessman who financed a campaign that persuaded voters to pass Prop. 227, which curtailed bilingual education in California, made the same complaint back in the late 1990s.
It’s true that districts get extra funds in California to educate ELLs. Only 10 states—Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia—don’t provide any additional money for ELL students other than what they provide for regular students, according to EPE Research Center data published in Quality Counts 2009.
But that doesn’t mean California administrators are keeping ELLs in programs for years for the extra funding. It could be that they just feel the students need the extra help, and they are worried that such students won’t do well in mainstream classes if they are reclassified before they have really strong English skills.
Learning the Language also posted a followup to the above on 12/01/09.