Promise or Peril?: NCLB and the Education of ELL Students

Promise or Peril?: NCLB and the Education of ELL Students Beatriz Chu Clewell with Clemencia Cosentino de Cohen Julie Murray Program for Evaluation and Equity Research The Urban Institute Washington, DC April 2007 ________________________________________________________________________________________________ THE URBAN INSTITUTE Program for Evaluation and Equity Research (PEER) ii C O N T E N T S About this Research ................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................ iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................ 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 10 METHOD and ORGANIZATION .................................................................................... 11 FINDINGS ................................................................................................ 12 How Has NCLB Been Implemented In High-ELL Schools? 12 What Has Been the Effect of NCLB on High-ELL School Improvement? 27 What Has Been the Effect of NCLB on ELL Students in High-ELL Schools? 33 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................ 38 RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................ 40 References ................................................................................................ 43 Appendix Three Districts, Six Schools ________________________________________________________________________________________________ THE URBAN INSTITUTE Program for Evaluation and Equity Research (PEER) iii ABOUT THIS RESEARCH In an effort to expand knowledge about young immigrant populations and to examine how the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) affects schools serving LEP student, the Urban Institute was funded by the Foundation for Child Development to complete a series of reports. The series includes four reports: • A demographic profile of LEP children and children of immigrants with a special focus on pre-K to 5th grade, an extension of the Urban Institute’s previous demographic analysis of immigrant children under the age of 6, also supported by the Foundation for Child Development. • A road map document decoding the complexity of NCLB and its impacts on LEP students, with a focus on elementary schools. • A statistical portrait comparing elementary schools with high concentrations of LEP students to examine differences that may affect schools’ abilities to meet NCLB requirements. • A report on the implementation of NCLB requirements in high-LEP elementary schools (pre-K through 5), based on case studies in three school districts, to illustrate how NCLB has influenced educational approaches for LEP students and the children of immigrants. The last report—on NCLB implementation in high-LEP elementary schools—is presented here. As is true of the other components of the research series, this report was informed by the knowledge gained over the course of the entire project. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ THE URBAN INSTITUTE Program for Evaluation and Equity Research (PEER) iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This report was made possible by generous financial support from the Foundation for Child Development (FCD). We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the school districts and schools that participated in our study and which must remain anonymous. The UI site visit team who, together with the authors of this report, collected site visit data also deserve our thanks: Evelyn Davila Blackburn, Randy Capps, Nicole Deterding, Sarah Manes, and Lisa Tsui. Thanks go to Julie Murray and Clemencia Cosentino de Cohen for preparing the District A case study and to Emily Conger for reviewing NCLB requirements. We appreciate the input of Donna Christian, president of the Center for Applied Linguistics; Delia Pompa, vice president for Education at the National Council of La Raza; and Kristie Kauerz, program director, Early Learning, Education Commission of the States, who reviewed the data collection instruments. We are grateful to those who reviewed the report and provided valuable feedback: Julia Lara and several of the FCD staff, especially Annette Chin. Any opinions, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the reviewers, the funder, or the Urban Institute. _______________________________________________________________________________________ THE URBAN INSTI