How they got here: Reclassification and the ELL losers

Having grown up in Zeeland, MI, neighboring city to the famous Dutch Dancers of Holland, I was very sheltered from the ELL epidemic when attending grade school. Therefore, when I began to see the number of enrolled ELL students in the past 5 years—since my graduating high school, I was eager to learn how to teach these students English in my future classroom. I kept asking myself the questions, How do I teach them…What techniques will work best…What programs are excelling and which are failing? Not once did my narrow view ponder where these students came from. How did they get into my high school classroom? What separates them from my native speaking students? What classifies them as ELL students?

My naivety was slapped in the face with a recent article in Education Week, entitled, “The Best of Students, The Worse of Students”. Although the article is written by a woman in a Californian school district, I think the issues she attacks are present wherever ELL’s can be found. She talks about the “reclassification test” which separates ELL’s from mainstream English-proficient students. The test in her school was only passed by 9.6% of tested students, regardless that 29% had adequate scores to pass. Educator’s response:

“Our reclassified kids are our best students”.

Although I seriously question why only 29% passed at all, I am focusing my attention to the test in itself as the article presented. Author, Joanne Jacobs, also admits that 40-60% of  ELL’s NEVER reclassify into mainstream education. NEVER! Her proposal to fix this obvious dilemma: lower standards. What?! She’s kidding right? Why would we lower standards to students? What does this test look like?

These 40-60% of failures are treated accordingly; they receive the same English training they have been learning for the past 5 years of grade school through a pull-out program 30 minutes long each day of middle school. They REPEAT the SAME program! How is this helping? Annoyed by educators who treat their students like their dirty dishes, with a rinse and repeat style of teaching, I read on to try and find a reason for all this nonsense.

If the U.S. Dept of Education changes federal guidelines for ELL’s,

                                                                                         

““A single criterion, if it’s adopted, probably would speed reclassification,” even for students who are below average in academic achievement.””

 

Ok, so good point, the kids aren’t thrown back into the sink with the rest of the dirty dishes. However, now we’re sending students with “below average academic achievement” into the mainstream classroom. Thus, I have to say this test is NOT doing it’s job, or possibly it needs a secondary purpose: to expose the academic challenges that these ELL’s are experiencing as:

 

“Most ELL’s are the children of poorly educated, low-income parents. It’s no surprise when disadvantaged students need extra help. But they may not get the right kind of help if the assumption is that it’s all about English.”

 

This test is recycling English-proficient students for issues other than English. They are struggling academically, not with language. Yet, these students are being tossed back into the sudsy water instead of placed on a shelf with the other graduated and excelling students. Their learning is being cut short. No wonder 40-60% of these students never pass this awful test. I would stop caring if someone gave up and sent me back to 1st grade because of one low test score too. Educators are not handling these fragile students in an excelling manor. They have very little if any chance to succeed in academics, go on to college or land a promising job to provide their children. This test is trapping “Jose Average” in the “poorly educated, low-income” society of which he was born.

 

 

Wisconsin Reclassification policy:

http://dpi.wi.gov/esea/pdf/bul_0702.pdf