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English learners likely would have been hit hard during the pandemic and needed more targeted support, experts and advocates say, but some school district leaders are still concerned about the data.
2023 state test scores show English learners are falling more than their 2019 peers than other groups of students, and are having a harder time getting back on trackArray
On state primary tests of English and math, the biggest drop in proficiency between 2019 and this year was among English learners, who also showed slower growth. Among those who took the SAT and PSAT, for example, only academics with disabilities showed lower growth.
Helping English learners recover from the pandemic is a complex factor across the country. And checking scores is the only cautionary sign about where English learners are in Colorado schools: While about one-third of Colorado students were chronically absent last year, for example, 40% of English learners missed enough schools to earn that label. In Colorado, English learners make up 12% of all K-12 students. Some neighborhoods have much higher concentrations than others.
There have been two notable approaches to English in the wake of COVID when it comes to academics.
A handful of school districts where English learners gained more ground than average, or experienced greater expansion than non-English speaking students, said they prioritized co-coaching rather than isolating students into categories to get quick coaching on English progression. At least one district used federal COVID aid to provide tutoring to those scholars. And some district leaders also said they’ve noticed that more teachers are now interested in learning methods that help English learners in particular.
But in other districts, leaders say they haven’t committed resources or express strategies to help English learners. In fact, despite recent data and what state analysts say about it, they deny that the pandemic has had a large impact on those students. Among other factors, the changing composition of English learners stands out.
“Some districts don’t seem to be very involved with new bilingual students,” said Cynthia Trinidad-Sheahan, president of the Colorado Bilingual Education Association.
If those academics will get more resources and will be able to count on Colorado’s policy. After the Colorado Department of Education released the effects of the Colorado School Success Measures (CMAS) in August, Associate Commissioner Floyd Cobb responded to a question about how the company would help. bridge the gap between English learners and their peers by saying, “This will require which the General Assembly will have to respond to. “
When schools instituted remote learning at the beginning of the pandemic, some schools struggled to continue providing English development. Students had no environment in which to practice their new language, and at home, many of their families struggled to help them learn remotely. And when schools returned to in-person instruction, some English learner families were more reluctant than others to immediately send their children back to class.
Disparities in test scores between English learners and local English speakers are new. One explanation is that the vast majority of English learners take exams in English before they have a good command of the language.
A limited number of scholarship holders can take advantage of the Spanish cheque for a few years. But the effects show that those academics performed much worse than their 2019 counterparts, while local English speakers in the same grades almost recovered.
This year’s effects on the ACCESS test, which measures students’ English proficiency, show that a smaller proportion of students are talented in English in 2023 than in 2019. And four years ago, 9. 4% of first-graders earned a Level 1, the lowest. level. But in 2023, 23. 3% of first-graders achieved the lowest grade.
In some cases, the decline in the share of English learners who can acquire English talent is only a few percentage points, but that does not necessarily reflect the effect of the pandemic.
For example, out of 100 fourth-grade English students who took the CMAS language arts test for reading and writing, about 8 met expectations, compared to about 12 in 100 in 2019. For every 100 students who don’t report English. Array, about 49 met expectations this year, compared to 54 out of 100 in 2019.
The competition rates of both teams fell between 4 and 5 percentage points. But 4 fewer English learners who have managed to be talented in English means that their percentage of those who meet expectations has dropped to around a third, much more proportionally than the decline in non-English speakers.
On the other hand, CMAS expansion scores, in which students’ functionality is compared to that of peers who have achieved effects in the past, also show that English learners are not progressing as much as other student teams today, or that English learners are not progressing as much as other student teams today. Students have done so in the past. Lagging academics want an expansion score above 50, on a scale of 0 to 100, to catch up.
When the state published the effects of CMAS in August, state officials said teams of traditionally disadvantaged academics had returned to their pre-pandemic expansion levels, with the exception of multilingual English learners. They said that by accelerating their learning, those academics “will continue to fall further behind. “
“I think we have a credible evidence framework to say that our English learners have been impacted by COVID, and disproportionately,” said Joyce Zurkowski, lead assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education.
Despite what the information tells others like Zurkwoski, some district leaders that information about English learners in 2019 is not comparable to that of English learners in 2023 due to recent waves of immigration from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and South America, which is changing the situation. and composition of those groups.
State officials say that while this has affected many districts, the number of new arrivals is not enough to fully offset the drop in good luck data.
District leaders have had to lay out knowledge from testing for months, but have focused on other knowledge points.
In Cherry Creek, district leaders say they monitor the number of students who are talented in English. In Colorado, to remove a student from the English learner designation, teachers use ACCESS scores and the state verifies knowledge of the scores. But they can also use their own observations and insider knowledge to show that a student no longer desires Express English courses and services.
Holly Porter, director of language support at Cherry Creek, said that overall, about 85 percent of students are proficient in English within three years of entering the district, and 95 percent reach that prestige within five years.
While recent peak numbers are still available, Porter said this trend has remained constant.
When analyzing CMAS scores and other national data, Porter notes that participation has plummeted, including among English learners. One explanation why is that in 2018, the federal government asked states to allow some newcomer students to skip national language tests for the first time. year of registration.
These students tended to show very high growth because they didn’t know English in the first place. Porter said the exclusion of those students worsened English learners’ knowledge.
But this update was already in place before the pandemic hit.
However, for Porter, comparing the pre-pandemic environment to what followed, he says, “It’s the same kids, the same data, the same experiences. For me, there are too many variables to say this is a definite challenge until I can take a look at it for a few years post-COVID.
From 2019 to 2023, the expansion score for Cherry Creek English learners increased from 48 to 45. Growth scores for non-English speaking students increased from 46 to 50 during the same period.
Porter, however, said the expansion scores of scholars who achieved English proficiency remained strong at 53. Students continue to be tracked as former English learners for two years after they are prevented from receiving languageArray. According to Porter, since those academics perform well on state exams and that the percentage of students who drop out remains the highest is an added assurance that students are getting the English instruction they want to succeed in school after avoiding receiving it.
Porter said the district necessarily does something to target English learners’ catch-up, even though 350 newcomer students are receiving tutoring through a grant.
“We found that many academics were falling behind, and only multilingual students,” he said.
In the Harrison School District, leaders are also mildly skeptical of comparing this year’s knowledge to pre-pandemic results. English learners at Harrison showed above-average expansion on ACCESS tests in 2019, with a score of 61, however, that number was temporarily reduced to 51. In 2023. On CMAS language arts and math tests, student expansion scores showed that English learners made less progress than other students.
While Cherry Creek assigns lower grades to newcomer students, Harrison leaders say a large influx of newcomers has contributed to the lower grades. Both claim that the student population has been replaced between 2019 and 2023.
District chiefs say this is because, as of January 2021, they have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of English-speaking refugees from Afghanistan, Guatemala, and Honduras.
Rachel Laufer, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, said the challenging situations with expanding newcomers are that “schools function to meet only the language and educational desires of families, but also the other barriers that exist for families who are new to the country. county. ” This includes assistance with transportation, housing, and other resources.
While they’re not worried about the data, Harrison district leaders said they’ve made some adjustments to how they help English learners and newcomers in particular.
In recent years, the district has tried to increase its staff to ensure that there is at least one qualified ter working with English learners at the school, rather than having to force them to split their time between sites. The district is also gradually looking to expand co-ting.
Laufer said Harrison has prioritized getting teams like English learners and scholars with disabilities back to in-person classes. But when the district used hybrid learning and parents could decide whether or not to send their children to school, English learners were more likely to do so. stay at home.
“That’s a bigger fear for them,” Laufer said. “I think you can relate that to some data. “
There are some districts in Colorado where some knowledge is more positive for English learners.
In Pueblo 60, for example, this year, English learners’ expansion score on the CMAS language arts test is now higher than that of non-English speaking students. At Weld County 3J, his math expansion score advanced from 2019 to 2023. .
Improvement is not uniform across districts. At 3J, for example, despite significant innovations in the expansion of CMAS math tests, expansion scores on ACCESS tests fell from 56 in 2019 to 41. 5 in 2023.
Meanwhile, Adams 14 students showed significant expansion in ACCESS tests of English proficiency among elementary districts, but showed no improvement on other state tests.
In Ueblo, district leaders said they were bidding to revamp education for English learners even before the pandemic.
The best school opened a center for newly arrived students seven years ago. For the past five years, the district has been applying its training philosophy and aligning training with content standards.
Pueblo and 3J have also worked to the extent that students are removed from categories to receive instruction in English, a strategy that was also implemented in other districts such as Harrison and Boulder, where knowledge is less positive.
In Pueblo 60 elementary schools, regressive instruction no longer takes place in math or reading classes. In high school, teachers enter students’ study rooms instead of cutting them down.
It is a replacement advised by the teachers themselves.
“They were on board with what their students needed and so we were inspired by them and said, ‘Well, let’s go ahead and look at this and see if it makes a difference,'” said Lisa Casarez, an English language acquisition specialist at Pueblo. Now, as for colleges, she thinks so.
State knowledge shows that English learners in Pueblo 60 schools had higher expansion scores on the CMAS language arts tests than elementary school students or their middle school peers who are not English learners.
At both 3J and Pueblo, leaders said they have noticed increased enthusiasm from all teachers to be informed about learning English.
3J leaders tracked this change a few years ago, when the district implemented state regulations that required many teachers to obtain a culturally and linguistically varied education when they renewed their licenses.
This meant that learning how to help those students was not just the responsibility of the legal staff member committed to working with English learners.
“We’ve noticed a lot of interest from general education teachers toward multilingual students,” said Jenny Wakeman, assistant superintendent of 3J. “It’s anything they did naturally. “
Additional investment has also helped. Wakeman said his district has used federal pandemic assistance, known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, to provide more interventions, particularly for English learners, adding tutoring before and after school.
In the meantime, she said teachers have an e-book club to be more informed about how to help students learning English. That’s the kind of attitude Zurkowski, of the Colorado Department of Education, says is needed to help those students catch up. .
“We know those gaps existed before the pandemic and they continue to exist after the pandemic,” Zurkowski said. “They require extensive intervention efforts. “
Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at [email protected].
Chalkbeat is a non-profit news story that covers instructional adjustments in public schools.
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