[lg policy] An Oversimplification About Charter Schools and ELLs

[Harold Schiffman]

Learning the Language

Mary Ann Zehr is an assistant editor at Education Week. She has
written about the schooling of English-language learners for more than
nine years and understands through her own experience of studying
Spanish that it takes a long time to learn another language well. Her
blog will tackle difficult policy questions, explore learning
innovations, and share stories about different cultural groups on her
beat.
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An Oversimplification About Charter Schools and ELLs

"Charter Schools Fail Immigrants" is a headline that caught my eye on
a column by Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj and Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco in the
Huffington Post.

What I say about that message is, "Better not jump to that conclusion so fast."

I suspect that Sattin-Bajaj and Suarez-Orozco didn't write the
headline for their column, so they aren't necessarily agreeing with
this conclusion. The point they make in their column is that
English-language learners are "severely underrepresented" in charter
schools in New York state. While 7.4 percent of students in public
schools statewide were classified as ELLs in the 2006-07 school year,
only 2.1 percent of students in charter schools were ELLs. The article
doesn't cite any evidence to show that charter schools do a worse job
in educating ELLs than do regular public schools.

An advocacy group for ELLs in Massachusetts also recently found that
ELLs were underrepresented in charter schools in that state. But in
looking at test scores for those charter schools that did have a high
proportion of ELLs, the group found that some charter schools did a
better job of teaching ELLs and some charter schools did a worse job.
You can read more about the group's analysis in an article I wrote
recently for EdWeek, "Evidence is Limited on Charters' Effect on ELL
Achievement."

The authors of the Huffington Post column fail to mention a national
study of charter schools in 10 states that found that ELLs are doing
somewhat better academically in charter schools than in regular public
schools. I cite that study in the same EdWeek article about ELLs in
Massachusetts charter schools.

Also, EdWeek will publish a story I wrote this week about charter
schools that cater to Hispanic students run by the United Neighborhood
Organization, or UNO, in Chicago. An analysis released this week by
the Illinois Policy Institute and the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington
Institute found that both ELLs and Hispanics in the UNO charter
schools and other charter schools in Chicago with high populations of
those students did better on average on state academic tests than did
ELLs and Hispanics in regular public schools.

So until we know more about how ELLs are faring in charter schools,
it's an oversimplification to say "Charter Schools Fail Immigrants,"
and when we learn more, it may even be proven to be a false statement.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2009/10/an_oversimplified_headline_abo.html
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