Spellings vs. Crawford on ELL statistics

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Spellings vs. Crawford on Use of ELL Statistics

It's not surprising that James Crawford, a long-time writer about language
policy and a critic of the effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on
English-language learners, has taken a close look at the statistics U.S.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings cited in a letter regarding the
actions of Virginia education officials. Ms. Spellings used statistics
about English-language learners to make the point that the No Child Left
Behind Act is working for ELLs.

Ms. Spellings' Feb. 4 letter was sent to the Washington Post and addressed
the testing showdown between Virginia and the federal government regarding
ELLs. In it, Ms. Spellings said that test scores in reading of
English-language learners who were 4th graders on the National Assessment
of Educational Progress "increased by 20 points from 2000 to 2005, more
than three times better than their peers."

What Ms. Spellings failed to say, Mr. Crawford notes, is that the test
scores for ELL 4th graders dropped 7 points just prior to 2000, and that
most of the increase in scores for ELLs occurred before the federal
education law was implemented.

Mr. Crawford posts his critique on the Web site of the Institute for
Language and Education Policy, an organization that he helped to start in
May after the National Association for Bilingual Education decided not to
renew his contract as executive director. Three board members of NABE
resigned over that decision and two of them--Stephen Krashen and Josefina
Tinajero--helped to found the new institute. Some well-known researchers
who specialize in ELLs, such as Alfredo Artiles and Lily Wong Fillmore,
are also on the list of founders. Mr. Crawford is president of the
institute and told me in an e-mail message that he wrote the analysis of
Ms. Spellings' use of statistics.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2007/02/spellings_vs_crawford_on_use_o.html

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