Using State Assessments for Teaching English Language Learners

Populations of minority students the United States have increased steadily over the past few decades to 42 percent of public school enrollment (Echevarria, 2011). English language learners (ELLs) are the fastest growing population of students enrolled in public schools across the United States. Nationally, if an ELL speaks English with difficulty, 82 percent will not graduate from high school. California alone has 1.5 million ELLs attending public schools. During the 2007-2008 academic year only 11 states met their ELL accountability goals under the No Child Left Behind Act (Zehr, 2011). A recent Texas study reported that 80 percent of ELLs did not graduate from high school (Echevarria, and Short, 2010). The gap in academic achievement between Caucasian students and those from culturally and linguistically diverse groups has widened primarily because many teachers are under prepared to make content comprehensible for ELLs or teach initial or content-area literacy to a forgotten population of secondary ELLs (Echavarria and Short, 2010). The result is that ELLs enrolled in middle and high schools have become long term ELLs, who's specific learning needs for success in school are largely ignored, thus creating an ELL underachieving group (Olsen, 2010). The question posed in this article remains, What specific skills, knowledge, and strategies do teachers need to know and be able to do to provide ELLs with, (a) systematic language development, (b) academic literacy skills, (c) successful experiences in mainstream classes, (d) the ability to comprehend content standards, and (d) pass standardized assessments in their second language?