Broken English immersion
BOSTON SUFFERS from a garbled approach to education for students with limited English - an approach that is widening achievement gaps at all grade levels and driving students to drop out. A change of course is needed to ensure opportunity for the 24,000 Boston students who aren't native speakers of English.
A report released this week by the Gastón Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Boston revealed the system's inability to adjust to changes in state law on how to teach students with limited English ability. The high school drop-out rates for so-called English language learners nearly doubled, to 12 percent, between 2003 and 2006, according to the report. The school district's family resource centers routinely fail to assess students' language skills. And fearing stigma, parents often make matters worse by withholding information about their native tongues.
It would be tempting to blame this entire mess on a 2002 ballot initiative mandating English immersion as the primary means of instruction. Previously, schools offered a broad array of classes for students in their native languages. But the authors of the UMass study wisely chose to focus on ways to improve the current system rather than on reigniting an old political debate. Immersion can work for many students. And for those who struggle with it, the law still offers various waivers and alternatives, including opportunities for students to attend classes in their native languages.
Boston has suffered from a lack of leadership within the school department on how to teach English language learners. The top post in the department has been empty for about a year. That changed yesterday when the school department tapped Eileen de los Reyes, a former education professor at Harvard. She'll have plenty to do, starting with the study's recommendation to hire staffers with enough knowledge and expertise to implement the immersion program.
Much smaller school systems, including Framingham, have managed to recruit on an international level for effective teachers of English learners, according to a 2007 Rennie Center report on best practices in the field. Brockton High School also has found ways to hasten the academic progress of non-native English speakers with the use of English language texts and teachers who use English and a foreign language interchangeably for instruction. Administrators in Boston should take some field trips to these and other smaller districts that do the job better.
There is also a dearth of statewide data on how school systems are progressing - or regressing - since the passage of the English immersion law. Boston is probably not alone in the beginners' category when it comes to teaching its bilingual students. 