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TESOL Matters Vol. 9 No. 5     (October/November 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 1 appeared in the August/September issue, and Part 3 appears in the December 1999/January 2000 issue.

So now you know, from Part 1 of this article, that schools need to find new ways to accelerate the academic growth of English language learners. Acquiring English is only one of many tasks students have ahead of them in academic, cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical development during Grades K-12. What most U.S. schools are now doing is not enough, as former ESL students, as a group nationwide, are graduating at the 10th percentile or leaving school without graduating. But some exciting possibilities exist in schools where English language learners' growth is accelerated, leading to long-term equity with native English speakers.

From Remediation to Enrichment

How a program is set up and perceived by staff and students can have a powerful influence on students' achievement. Pullout or separate bilingual and ESL classes too often are set up for remediation -- to fix what is viewed as a problem. New arrivals are assessed based on what's missing. Teachers water down the curriculum to get across the remedial skills being taught. With time, ESL students know that they are not receiving age-appropriate schoolwork, and they tune out or act out. Inclusion models tend toward the same pattern, with the ESL specialist or bilingual aide tutoring English language learners in the back of the room, resulting in lowered expectations and less meaningful interaction with native English speakers. But equal team teaching in an inclusion classroom (a bilingual/ESL certified specialist teaming with a mainstream certified teacher) has the potential to become an enrichment model.

In contrast to remediation, enrichment adds to what the students already know. The strengths that English language learners bring to the classroom, including knowledge and life experiences from other cultural contexts as well as a native speaker's knowledge of another language, are used as resources for learning, as essential building blocks. In enrichment classes, students know that they are being challenged and are deeply engaged in the learning process. They get to work on the "cool stuff" -- using computers and solving real-world problems. They teach each other, and their language repertoire expands dramatically with rich language use, both oral and written. Sound like a gifted class? Sure, but students of all levels of socioeconomic status and ethnolinguistic background and with varied levels of proficiency in the two languages of instruction are able to flourish in these classes.

Data-Based Findings

Enrichment classes for ESL students are rare in the United States, but they are growing in number. Let's look at the enrichment models we have found in our research so far.

Having analyzed data in 23 school districts in 15 states since 1985, we have seen a consistent and generalizable pattern in each school district data set. This pattern is best illustrated in Figure 1 (see p. 6), showing the influence of initial school program on English language learners' long-term achievement in the mainstream curriculum. In separate analyses of the influence of student background variables such as socioeconomic status (SES), country of origin, and primary language, we have found that a well-implemented enrichment school program enables students to score high despite low SES. Figure 1 illustrates the long-term effects of programs that existed in the 1980s and how student graduates of those programs are doing in the 1990s. These are still the most widespread practices in U.S. schools today. Initially English language learners make dramatic progress whatever school program they attend in the first 2-3 years. But as they leave their special program and enter the mainstream, and as the cognitive and academic demands of the curriculum become greater in middle and high school, they begin to lose ground when compared with the constantly advancing native English speakers. The three program types represented by Lines 4, 5, and 6 are among the most common in the United States and the least successful in the long term.

Features of Enrichment

But exceptions to this pattern can be seen, especially in Lines 1 and 2. One-way and two-way developmental bilingual education are less common program models, but they are becoming increasingly popular as educators discover their potential for accelerating student achievement. In these enrichment programs, students receive the mainstream curriculum through both their primary language and English, with challenging academic work that is cognitively on grade level. Teachers use cooperative learning, thematic interdisciplinary units, and hands-on materials and make ample use of video and microcomputers. Materials and books present a cross-cultural perspective, and lessons activate students' prior knowledge for bridging to new knowledge. Enrichment bilingual classes for older students include problem posing, knowledge gathering, reflective thinking, and collaborative decision making.

We have found that groups of students who enter these programs in kindergarten reach the 50th percentile on the school tests in their L2 sometime between the fourth and seventh grade. (Remember from Part 1 of this article that students must make 15 months' progress in a 10-month school year for 5-6 years to reach the 50th percentile in their L2.) Native English speakers who choose to join the bilingual class (a two-way model) achieve similarly in their L2 and typically are on or above grade level in English across the curriculum throughout their schooling. So these models accelerate all students' growth.

Teachers in enrichment classes do not teach traditionally, which we define as a textbook-driven, teacher-controlled class in which students have few opportunities to interact with each other. Instead, teachers in enrichment classes use cooperative learning, literacy development across the curriculum, process writing, performance and portfolio assessment, critical thinking, learning strategies, and global perspectives infused into the curriculum to create an interactive, discovery, hands-on learning classroom. Ongoing staff development is a crucial support system through which teachers experiment with and share with each other creative ways of enriching the school experience. In Part 3, we will show why these enrichment strategies work well for ESL students.

For more information on the specifics of implementation of the programs discussed above, see Genesee (1999) and Ovando and Collier (1998).

References

Genesee, F. (Ed.). (1999). Program alternatives for linguistically diverse students. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics and Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence.

Ovando, C. J., and Collier, V. P. (1998). Bilingual and ESL classrooms: Teaching in multicultural contexts (2nd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Virginia P. Collier and Wayne P. Thomas are internationally known for their research on long-term school effectiveness for linguistically and culturally diverse students. They are professors in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University and researchers with the national Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE). Their research reports can be downloaded from http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu and http://www.crede.ucsc.edu.