Just under two months ago, Gary Lewis, director of student services for the Northfield School District, approached the school board with a dire message: Fix the district’s English as a second language program, or face sanctions under the No Child Left Behind Act.
At the June 11 school board meeting, Lewis returned with a comprehensive plan for the ailing ESL program that revolves around the hiring of two additional ESL instructors. The plan will be implemented this coming school year at all grade levels in the district’s public schools, but both educators and administrators still have concerns about the program and what it could mean for a district with more than 278 students enrolled in the ESL program.
What Happened
Because of budget shortcomings over the past several years, the school district’s concerns about the ESL program went unaddressed until this last summer, when the state and district results for two standardized tests, the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment II Reading exam and the Mathematics Test for English Language Learners, came back.
“While the majority of the students and their overall scores were way above, the academic scores for English Language Learners were way below the state average,” Lewis said.
The scores were so low that the district faces sanctions from the No Child Left Behind Act if it does not improve its English Language Learners’ scores.
“While we were concerned about it for a couple of years,” Lewis said, “it was those scores from last year that were the red flag for us.”
By the Numbers:
Number of students enrolled in the ESL program as of April 24: 278.
Number of English Language Learners categorized as “Non-English Speaking” or “Limited English Speaking” in the Northfield School District: 114.
Average student-to-teacher ratio: 40.29 to 1.
Average percentage of ELLs that scored proficient in reading on the MCA II exam statewide: 30.4
Percentage that scored proficient on the MCA II exam in the Northfield School District: 24.82
Average percentage of ELLs that scored proficient in mathematics on the MTELL exam statewide: 25.37
Percentage that scored proficient on the MTELL exam in the Northfield School District: 12.82
If a school does not meet Adequate Yearly Progress levels under No Child Left Behind, 10 percent of the district’s Title I allocation can no longer be spent on services to kids and has to be spent on staff development, Lewis said. In addition, a portion of the school’s budget has to be set aside for parents who want to enroll their children in a school that has met AYP standards.
The sanctions are roughly the same if an entire district falls short, according to Superintendent Chris Richardson, though children in the district’s schools do not have the option to re-enroll elsewhere. The district must also make annual district-wide “improvement plans.”
Richardson and Lewis believe these sanctions ultimately hurt the students.
“You’re taking money away from the direct instruction of kids,” Richardson said.
The Plan
To reduce the achievement gap between the majority of students and the English Language Learners in Northfield schools, the school district approved a proposal in April to hire two full-time, bilingual ESL instructors, Ruben Alvarez Jr. and Michelle Morales. The two new instructors, as well as a third ESL instructor who was recently hired to fill a vacancy in Bridgewater Elementary’s program, will allow the administration to pursue a “push-in” model of ESL education in the elementary levels, rather than the district’s previous “pull-out” program, according to a proposal Lewis made to the school board on June 11.
Pushing in emphasizes keeping ELL students in the classroom setting with their peers, rather than pulling them out for language instruction, as happens now. The district also plans to concentrate ELL students into one or two classrooms at each grade level in the schools.
“By grouping ELL students into one classroom, we benefit by having language peers or models, students that speak their own language, in the same classroom,” Lewis said. “It really allows us new opportunities for ESL services.”
These push-in services were made possible by the addition of two new staff members.
According to Lewis, the pull-out model will remain partly intact at the middle school and high school levels, since there are comparatively few ESL students in those schools and their daily schedule makes it difficult to implement push-in services.
“Our hope is that by doing this, and putting increased efforts into the lower grades, some of these kids may no longer need ESL services when they get to the upper grades,” Lewis said.
Lewis added that all changes made to the ESL services were at some point recommended by administrative officials and ESL staff and were supported by much of the available research on the subject.
Concerns about the push-in program
Part of the push-in plan relies on co-teaching, where two teachers — an ESL instructor and a regular, contemporary, content-based teacher — share the same classroom.
Push-in instruction combines the content expertise of a regular teacher and the linguistic expertise of an ESL teacher, according to Lewis.
Brenda Hand, an ESL instructor at Bridgewater Elementary for the past seven years, hopes the district gives teachers involved sufficient time and resources to help them adapt to team teaching.
“My biggest concern is laying the groundwork before the program starts,” she said. “They just need to make sure teachers have the resources they need to make this work for the kids.”
Hand feels training will be helpful, but worries that teachers won’t receive enough of it as the school board hurries to implement the changes to the ESL program.
Lewis is aware of the concerns, but says financial constraints and the need to implement the ESL changes before the next school year have limited the amount of training the district can make available to teachers.
“No doubt there will be a paradigm shift,” Lewis said. “But the other option is that we don’t do it at all.”
Still, Lewis, Richardson and Hand are cautiously optimistic about the changes.
“We need to move in this direction,” Richardson said. “We’re at a point where we really can’t wait any longer.
“Only time will tell as to whether what we’re doing will really have an impact.”
— David Henke can be reached at dhenke@northfieldnews.com or 645-1100.
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