Massachusetts: How Are Boston's ELLs Faring Under Sheltered Immersion?

[Harold Schiffman]

How Are Boston's ELLs Faring Under Sheltered Immersion?

A report released April 8 by the Mauricio Gaston Institute in Boston
shows troubling trends in student engagement and achievement among
English language learners (ELLs) in Boston's public schools since
2003. A voter referendum in 2002 caused Boston's public schools to
switch from transitional bilingual education to sheltered English
immersion (in which ELLs are taught in English only) as default
instruction.

Among the report's key findings are that the dropout rate for Boston
high school students classified as Limited English Proficient nearly
doubled from 2003 to 2006. By 2006, high school LEP students had the
highest dropout rate of all students compared, although LEP students
showed the lowest dropout rates in 2003 when transitional bilingual
education was instructional policy. The proportion of LEP students in
middle school who dropped out more than tripled.


The report examined scores on Massachusetts' standardized test (MCAS)
during this period and concluded that although there have been some
gains for English learners in both ELA and math MCAS pass rates in 4th
and 8th grade, gains for English learners have not matched those of
other groups, and as a result, gaps between English learners and other
Boston Public School populations have widened.

As Jill Kerper Mora discusses in "From the Ballot Box to the
Classroom", Massachusetts is one of five states that have used voter
referendums to make decisions on how language learners should be
instructed in public schools. Mora argues that discourse leading up to
voter referendums on language policy is often characterized by
political rhetoric and contains "scant reference to . . . the body of
scholarly research on the effectiveness of different program
designs"—and that it behooves educators to keep up on research
regarding the effectiveness of different instructional approaches for
ELLs.

The report, released jointly with the Center for Collaborative
Education, also looks at attendance rates, suspensions, and grade
retention since the policy change.

http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/how-are-bostons-ells-faring-under-sheltered-immersion.html
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