Teach Effectively!

The US Supreme Court will hear arguments today in Flores v. State of Arizona, a case that captures important concerns about contemporary education in the US. Plantiff argues that English-language Learner (ELL) programs are deficient and receive inadequate funding, violating a provision of a US federal law (the Equal Educational Opportunity Act; EEOA) requiring that states ensure that students for whom English is not a first language can learn how to speak English and, thus, benefit from education.

The class-action case gets its name from Miriam Flores, an elementary student in the 1990s, who had limited English proficiency (LEP) and did not benefit from the ELL services during her primary schooling. US National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg reported Ms. Flores recollections (she is now 22 and a student at the University of Arizona):

“It was quite a disadvantage, definitely,” Flores says. “For example, even when it comes to math, I mean problem solving, they were all in English. So in order to understand, you need to be proficient in your reading in English.”

The same was true for science, social studies and the other subjects. Flores and other youngsters like her were drowning — falling further and further behind. So Flores’ mother and other parents sued the state of Arizona for failing to live up to the federal law that requires all states to take the steps needed to overcome language barriers so that non-English language speaking students can become English-proficient and fully competitive. The law, first enacted in 1974, provides a right to sue to enforce this mandate.

As Mary Ann Zehr develops in an thorough story for Education Week, the issue is connected to funding, the relative supremecy of the No Child Left Behind Law, local education control, and more. The implications of a holding are substantial:

One of the [defendant's] arguments is that compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act trumps civil rights law, said Roger L. Rice, the executive director of Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy Inc., a Somerville, Mass.-based advocacy group for ELLs.

“If the court were to buy that argument,” said Mr. Rice, “that would mean that if people around the country said, ‘My state doesn’t have an appropriate program for ELLs,’ the state could say, ‘We get our funding from NCLB [and comply with the law], so we must be doing all right.’ ”

On the other hand, he said, if the court ruled in favor of the Flores side of the case and said clearly that states have an obligation to sufficiently fund ELLs under civil rights law, advocates could go to court in states that don’t provide any additional funds for such students and make the same argument that the Nogales parents have made.

After a District Court ruled in favor of the Flores class action, finding that the Arizona programs for students with limited English proficiency violated EEOA by providing insufficient funding, the state did not appeal. There was a consent order specifying that Arizona schools would (among other things) identify students eligible for services, use uniform standards, and even develop individual education plans. But Arizona voters approved a proposition that “repealed existing bilingual education laws and enacted new law to require that all classes be taught in English” (Arizona Senate Research Staff, 2008, p. 2); that proposition also established differentiated programs for ELL and LEP students that were (you may guess this) separated from the mainstream. So, as becomes obvious, inclusion is in this mix, too; and it’s inclusion is the way the word’s used for ethnicity and with a hint of the way it’s used for disability.

Although the problem surely has tentacles that stretch into many policy areas, the central problem is failure to teach effectively. I would be surprised if Ms. Flores received effective instruction. I think it’s a fair bet that she probably got the default methods (i.e., the namby-pamby, by-guess-and-by-gosh, apparent-fun-is-more-important-than-aquiring-skills, don’t-challenge-the-poor-darlings, close-is-good-enough, I-use-methods-that-fit-my-teaching-style, blah-blah-blah approach) that characterize the anti-active instruction perspective that dominated our schooling then, and (sadly) hasn’t been extirpated yet.

I can understand how the measures of input (e.g., $$ per pupil; proportion of bilingual teacheers) seem like the right metrics, but they simply are not. The meaure that matters is the students’ outcomes. Sure, it takes dough and teachers, but it really takes teachers who know how to teach effectively, implement those methods effectively, and have support for doing so. Kick out the bologna!

To get a good basic understanding of what we ought to be providing for students who need to learn English to have a chance at the benefits of US education (such as they are), spend some time with the special issues of Learning Disability Quarterly and Topics in Language Disorders edited by Diane Haager, Mary Beth Calhoun, and Silvia Linan-Thomposon (2007) and by Peggy McCardle and Christy Leung (2006), respectively.

Link to NPR’s report by Nina Totenberg (NPR’s judiciary reporter, entitled “Supreme Court Hears Case On English In Schools.” Link to an extensive story by Ms. Zehr, Education Week policy reporter, entitled “Supreme court ruling in suit could resonate far beyond Arizona.”

Sources

Arizona Senate Research Staff. (2008). Arizona State Senate issue paper: Flores v. Arizona. Phoenix, AZ: Author. [Download]

Haager, D., Calhoon, M. B., & Linan-Thompson, S. (2007). English langauage learners and response to intervention: Introduction to special issu. Learning Disability Quarterly, 30, 151-152.

McCardle, P., & Leung, C. (2006). English Language Learners: Development and Intervention: An Introduction. Topics in Language Disorders, 26(4), 302-304.