What does having a high percentage of English learners in a class mean in practice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thats not a high percentage of English Learners in NOVA

That's insanely high if you're talking about a good school. Anything more than single digits and it means everything will move slower than it otherwise should

Racist much?

How is that racist though? Of course trying to learn a language while taking classes in that language is going to be more difficult.

Great Schools for Long Branch show white kids with 10/10 test scores and Hispanic kids with 4/10. Academic progress is 9/10 and 5/10, respectively. It would be insane to think language skills wouldn't play a role in how quickly a class can move together through subject matter.

Clearly, though, then the data shows that those EL students aren't hurting the achievement of the kids who only know one language. If the white kids scores are 9/10 or 10/10, there's no harm no foul.

I don't see how you can make that judgement, one way or another, based on SOL scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thats not a high percentage of English Learners in NOVA

That's insanely high if you're talking about a good school. Anything more than single digits and it means everything will move slower than it otherwise should

Racist much?

How is that racist though? Of course trying to learn a language while taking classes in that language is going to be more difficult.

Great Schools for Long Branch show white kids with 10/10 test scores and Hispanic kids with 4/10. Academic progress is 9/10 and 5/10, respectively. It would be insane to think language skills wouldn't play a role in how quickly a class can move together through subject matter.

Clearly, though, then the data shows that those EL students aren't hurting the achievement of the kids who only know one language. If the white kids scores are 9/10 or 10/10, there's no harm no foul.

I don't see how you can make that judgement, one way or another, based on SOL scores.

Seriously, SOL scores are the lowest possible bar.

[Anonymous]

Ugh, this thread is gross. My child goes to a school with about 60% EL and it has been an amazing experience for her. She has friends from around the world, and is learning Spanish even though it’s not an immersion school. I don’t feel that my child’s learning has been limited in any way by learning alongside EL Orr low-income kids. Social-emotional learning and having a high EQ that allows a person to work and learn with all different kinds of people will be incredibly important in our kids’ lives.

We need to think about the skills, values and experiences that will benefit our kids. College acceptances and career and social success will depend on very different factors than from when we grew up.

Your UMC will be able to read and pass standardized tests in any APS school, so chill out about that. Look at the diversity of these high-EL schools as the opportunity and gift it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thats not a high percentage of English Learners in NOVA

That's insanely high if you're talking about a good school. Anything more than single digits and it means everything will move slower than it otherwise should

Racist much?

How is that racist though? Of course trying to learn a language while taking classes in that language is going to be more difficult.

Great Schools for Long Branch show white kids with 10/10 test scores and Hispanic kids with 4/10. Academic progress is 9/10 and 5/10, respectively. It would be insane to think language skills wouldn't play a role in how quickly a class can move together through subject matter.

Clearly, though, then the data shows that those EL students aren't hurting the achievement of the kids who only know one language. If the white kids scores are 9/10 or 10/10, there's no harm no foul.

I don't see how you can make that judgement, one way or another, based on SOL scores.

And schools with high percentages of ELL students can't even get above the low bar

Seriously, SOL scores are the lowest possible bar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, this thread is gross. My child goes to a school with about 60% EL and it has been an amazing experience for her. She has friends from around the world, and is learning Spanish even though it’s not an immersion school. I don’t feel that my child’s learning has been limited in any way by learning alongside EL Orr low-income kids. Social-emotional learning and having a high EQ that allows a person to work and learn with all different kinds of people will be incredibly important in our kids’ lives.

We need to think about the skills, values and experiences that will benefit our kids. College acceptances and career and social success will depend on very different factors than from when we grew up.

Your UMC will be able to read and pass standardized tests in any APS school, so chill out about that. Look at the diversity of these high-EL schools as the opportunity and gift it is.

Uh, colleges are crazy selective now. It’s highly likely they will attend college with lots of other UMC students and a few token aid kids. Then in the workplace it will be even more segregated. Trust me, I’m the poor kid who got into a good college, I never run into any one with a background like mine. Never.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a school which has about 60% EL population. What does this mean?
Amazing kids from all over the world, who are eager to learn, caring, interesting and funny people. Many of them are smart enough to speak 2, 3 or 4 languages.

My kids who aren't as gifted linguistically, those who can only speak English, are not put on computers so I can "catch everyone else up". Nor are they given a book to read while I "catch everyone else up". In fact, the students who are only able to speak one language are often just in much of "catching up" as my bilingual and multilingual kids, if not more. Yes, even the white, middle income kids need remediation.

I think we need to stop saying our bilingual and multilingual kids need remediation and insist that every single student become proficient in at least two languages in order to graduate 8th grade. And then let's test the kids whose first language is English and see how they perform on assessments after a year or two in Urdu or Spanish or Polish. My guess is everyone else would have to sit around waiting while the "I only speak English" crowd has to catch up.

But, to the OP's question, it means that your child will have friends from different places, who speak different languages and what a rich school environment that will be! I put my own child in a heavily Spanish speaking school. She's now fully bilingual and headed to college on a full ride scholarship in her field of choice. We Americans need to stop understanding "smart" as a 1600 SAT and a top ten university and need to start understanding smart as learning more than one language.

I applaud your passion for your students.

One suggestion.

If you are a teacher, please know (and teach others) that the period goes INSIDE of the quotation marks, not outside.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have an average or above average kid they will spend a lot of time on the iPad or own their own chilling. There is no incentive to push kids to excel; there IS PUNISHMENT if the struggling kids dont improve, so where do you think the teachers will focus?

Its just how public school is structured; there is no benefit for the schools or teachers for doing better than pass the SOLs in higher and higher percentages. Teachers would love to spend time with your high performing kid and teach them interesting things, but there just isn't the time or resources.

The most important thing is making sure your kid is a strong and enthusiastic reader, so when they have all that down time they can just pull out a book and its not a complete waste of time.

Absolutely nailed it. My DD attended a school with a high ESOL population. She ended up reading independently 2+ hours every single day at school, because the teacher was too busy to deal with the advanced kids. It honestly didn't hurt her to be ignored and spend so much time reading. If you have a kid who is not an enthusiastic reader or is likely to waste the copious amounts of free time they'll be given during the school day, being in a high ESOL class could be a disaster.

This is how it was for my daughter in an APS 1st grade class. She was in a gifted cluster that was in the same classroom as an ESOL cluster. Her group got very, very little attention. Second grade was covid, so a disaster. But third grade was a ton better. Kids were better at working independently so the teacher had a lot more latitude to differentiate. The kids who needed extra help still got more teacher time, but there was much more interesting extension content for the gifted/advanced kids. Hopefully that holds true in 4th.

What should we do for a reluctant reader who is gifted? She excels at math and writing, but if left to her own devices will happily stare out the window and doodle. Doodling for 2 hours out of every school day seems... like a waste.

Mine was a doodler and a math wiz too! Get IXL and use that in spare time.

[Anonymous]

I applaud your passion for your students.

One suggestion.

If you are a teacher, please know (and teach others) that the period goes INSIDE of the quotation marks, not outside.

And you, friend, surely should know that you should have used a colon, not a period, and not a paragraph break. Your correction should have read as follows:

"One suggestion: If you are a teacher, please know (and teach others) that the period goes INSIDE of the quotation marks, not outside."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, this thread is gross. My child goes to a school with about 60% EL and it has been an amazing experience for her. She has friends from around the world, and is learning Spanish even though it’s not an immersion school. I don’t feel that my child’s learning has been limited in any way by learning alongside EL Orr low-income kids. Social-emotional learning and having a high EQ that allows a person to work and learn with all different kinds of people will be incredibly important in our kids’ lives.

We need to think about the skills, values and experiences that will benefit our kids. College acceptances and career and social success will depend on very different factors than from when we grew up.

Your UMC will be able to read and pass standardized tests in any APS school, so chill out about that. Look at the diversity of these high-EL schools as the opportunity and gift it is.

Thank you Pollyanna! This thread is trying to work through real issues that occur in diverse schools. Nice one for trying to shame it as racist.

[Anonymous]

If you are a teacher, please know (and teach others) that the period goes INSIDE of the quotation marks, not outside.

You could get familiar with British English grammar rules but okay. Not everyone here is coming from an American English background.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, this thread is gross. My child goes to a school with about 60% EL and it has been an amazing experience for her. She has friends from around the world, and is learning Spanish even though it’s not an immersion school. I don’t feel that my child’s learning has been limited in any way by learning alongside EL Orr low-income kids. Social-emotional learning and having a high EQ that allows a person to work and learn with all different kinds of people will be incredibly important in our kids’ lives.

We need to think about the skills, values and experiences that will benefit our kids. College acceptances and career and social success will depend on very different factors than from when we grew up.

Your UMC will be able to read and pass standardized tests in any APS school, so chill out about that. Look at the diversity of these high-EL schools as the opportunity and gift it is.

Thank you Pollyanna! This thread is trying to work through real issues that occur in diverse schools. Nice one for trying to shame it as racist.

Eh PP is probably sincere bc they likely have a rising 1st or 2nd grade. They still have that starry eyed kumbaya thing going on and truly believes the other kids are just there to give her kid a “multicultural experience”.

[Anonymous]

Or for her to learn Spanish from, “even though it’s not an immersion school,”. LOL, barf

[Anonymous]

My kid is first grade now. Last year 6/13 kids didn’t speak and English and also ended the school year not speaking English. Ours were only Spanish speaking and it was a high poverty population as well (versus some of kids whose parents are diplomats or whose parents are on high tech visas and are educated). It was hard in quite a few ways. Kids who are near grade level are ignored and put on computers. I was shocked that my kid spend 3+ hours a day on a computer. Half the class was taught in Spanish, which I liked because my kid picked up phrases (Dh and I speak Spanish). The only pull outs were for language because 100% of their attention was focused on that. Not reading or math.

Something that bugged me was that we only received birthday invites from white and Asian kids. But when I hosted the birthday party, only those kids came. There basically was a lot of segregation. Some caused by the language barrier, some social barrier. One mom told me (in Spanish) that they don’t do play dates.

Seems like the county should run English camps or preK to try to head off the language issue before school starts. Or teach in both Spanish and English so all kids could learn two languages.

[Anonymous]

One of the best things about our kids being in public school in ACPS (sorry, we are not in APS) is friends from different cultures who speak multiple languages. There are many kids in my son's class for whom English is not their first language and they are fully billingual or even trilingual. Meanwhile, my kids only speak English. Their school doesn't even offer Spanish until middle school while the neighboring public school is Spanish immersion. Your child's life will be much richer for having diverse classmates. My son went to an immersion preschool for kids with disabilities and learned to speak American sign language. Now my sons are learning Amharic and Spanish as well as Russian, Arabic, Farsi, French. I LOVE that my kids have friends with parents who are new Americans or who are new Americans themselves. And FYI, most public schools have language learner teachers and reading specialists who pull out language learners to help them. Like someone earlier said, my kids are the ones at a disadvantage. My husband speaks four languages, I speak Spanish, but we are not a multilingual home as they are not our native languages. Guess who misses out? our kids. Our lives are much richer from these families. And maybe they don't have cars or email or other material things but we welcome them to our homes or meet up at the playground or park. Wow. There is a lot of veiled racism and xenophobia in the comments from your neighbors.

[Anonymous]

OP, my DS attended a North Arlington school for 3 years with very few, if any, ESL but several kids with learning or behavioral challenges. He spent too much time on the ipad or free time staring out the window. His last teacher, while very smart and a lovely person, didn't seem to have a handle on the too-large class and had no idea that my son's reading and comprehension was poor. I ended up having to "home school" him myself after hours in reading, math and science (very few lessons all year) to catch up to the VA standards of learning. I primarily blame the class size and inefficient class structure.