TESOL Matters Vol. 9 No. 4 (August/September 1999)

by Virginia P. Collier and Wayne P. Thomas

This article is based on Virginia Collier's plenary speech at the 33rd Annual TESOL Convention in New York City. Part 2 appears in the October/November 1999 issue of TM, and Part 3 in the December 1999/January 2000 issue.

What is your charge over the next several decades? What is your responsibility as you work with English language learners of many bilingual/bicultural heritages? As we look at the rapidly changing demographics in the United States, with language minorities predicted to be 40% of the school-age population by the decade of the 2030s, it is clear that we still have much to accomplish. U.S. schools are currently underserving English language learners, and this school population will continue to grow, challenging schools to continue to change. So we have a huge responsibility. How can we rise to the challenge?

Most of this century, as we ESOL/bilingual professionals have shaped our field, we have made teaching decisions based on what seems right for our students. We have set up school programs that seem to meet our students' needs, using our best professional guesses. But now, at the end of the 20th century, we have reached a new stage of maturity. It is time to base our school decisions on research findings in school effectiveness. We can follow our students across time as they progress through school. We can find out how well our schools have served our students who entered our schools as English language learners.

In this article and in Parts 2 and 3, we provide an overview of findings from our series of studies conducted in 23 school districts in 15 states over the past 14 years. We have now collected over 1 million student records from 1982 to the present, following all language minority students in each school district for every year of their attendance. In each district we follow individual students in cohorts of similar background (e.g., socioeconomic status, primary language and second language proficiency upon entry, amount of prior schooling) by each school program in which the students are placed. We follow these students for as many years as they remain in that school district, including in the mainstream, to examine their long-term academic achievement as measured by all the tests given by the school system at each grade level in math, science, social studies, reading, and writing.

We take the position that all students should have access to equal educational opportunity. This means that the average test scores of English language learners and native English speakers, which are quite different at the beginning of their school years, should be equivalent by the end of their school years, as measured by on-grade-level tests of all school subjects administered in English. After following the students' academic progress across the years in order to measure progress toward this goal, we see clearly that being schooled in one's second language is not a quick and easy process. Now that we have published many studies on the general achievement patterns among former English language learners, we want our field to understand more clearly why it takes English language learners so long to reach parity with native English speakers in school. Teachers need to understand this basic finding to explain it to politicians who mistakenly think everyone should be able to become fluent in English in 1-2 years. The point is that, for the school-age child, English proficiency is only one of many processes that occur. With every year of school, all students go through intense academic, cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical development that is measured in school tests based on the typical growth of the native English speaker. These tests measure cognitive growth as well as vocabulary and concept knowledge in English and the application of that knowledge across all the subjects taught in school. With each year of school, to stay at the 50th percentile, students must achieve 10 months of gain on the tests given across the curriculum.

English language learners are not typically given this type of school test in English during the first 1-2 years after their arrival, as the tests underestimate what they know but cannot yet demonstrate in English. But after about 2-3 years' exposure to English, most school districts begin to test former English language learners on standardized school district tests, and at this point they achieve around the 10th percentile as a group. Then the students must accomplish more than 1 year's achievement for 6 years in a row (e.g., 15 months' growth per 10-month school year for 6 consecutive years) to eventually close the 40-percentile gap between them and native English speakers. Native English speakers are not sitting around waiting for ESL students to catch up with them! They are continuing to make 1 year's progress in 1 year's time in their English language development and in every school subject. Therefore, we must not only help our students acquire the English language but also help them accelerate their academic growth.

In our research, we have found that typical programs across the United States have not succeeded in closing this achievement gap (from the 10th to the 50th percentile). Former ESL students continue to make good progress with each year of school but do not make the dramatic progress needed to close the gap. Figure 1 provides an overview of our findings to date, including the basic characteristics of typical U.S. programs and ultimate student attainment following attendance in each type of program. Many U.S. programs are conceived as remedial programs as if our students have a "problem" and need to be sent to specialists (us) to be "fixed." The end result of much of this well-meaning remedial work is that former English language learners make up the lowest achieving groups, graduating at the 10th percentile or leaving school without graduating.

How long does it take our students to reach the 50th percentile? Effective enrichment programs take a minimum of 5-6 years to close the achievement gap in second language. Remember that this means students must make 15 months' progress with every 10-month school year. They can do it, and through an enrichment model, learning can be very exciting. In Part 2, we will share some of the details of these enrichment models.

Virginia Collier and Wayne Thomas are internationally known for their research on long-term school effectiveness for linguistically and culturally diverse students. Thomas is a professor of evaluation/research methodology, and Collier is a professor of bilingual/multicultural/ESL education, both in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University. Currently, they are researchers with the national Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence. Their research reports can be downloaded from http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/ and http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/.