Full Report - Center for Collaborative Education

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Recommendation 20: Federal and State laws allow for the development of alternative ways of testing achievement in addition to the MCAS. The state and the district should develop these alternatives for LEP students at the lowest levels of English proficiency, particularly for late-entrant ELLs who will likely not have time to attain the level of proficiency required to pass content-based MCAS tests in time to graduate. (See Recommendation 23.) Recommendation 21: There should be a clear path to graduation for ELLs at different levels of English proficiency that includes a specific sequence of courses and activities – including summer and Saturday school – so that all students who are motivated and able can pass the MCAS or its alternatives and graduate from high school. E Specific Findings Related to Outcomes on the MCAS • Using the MCAS pass rates for the aggregate of LEP students, there is evidence that there have been strong gains in MCAS outcomes across all subjects and grade levels. When comparing students’ performance in SY2009 to SY2006, we found that ELA, Math, and Science pass rates rose at every grade level without exception and that gaps between LEP and EP students declined. But in spite of this advance, the pass rates remained very low and the gaps between LEP and EP students remained wide. • Taking language proficiency into account shows that, as expected, MCAS scores are very low among students scoring at MEPA performance Levels 1 through 3. Once MEPA Level 5 was reached, the outcomes of LEP students were higher than those of EP students across all subjects in Grade 4, in Math in Grade 8, and in ELA and Science in Grade 10; in those subjects in which EP students outscore LEP students, the gaps remained below 6 percentage points. This highlights the significant role of language proficiency in the demonstration of achievement in the MCAS. It also demonstrates the inappropriateness of the MCAS test as a measure of achievement for the LEP students at the lower MEPA performance levels. Recommendation 22: BPS should set clear and realistic expectations of the level of achievement in MCAS tests for students at different levels of English proficiency (especially at the lower levels) and communicate these to parents and school personnel. It should also communicate clearly the positive outcomes that derive from higher levels of proficiency in order to stimulate students’ work to acquire English proficiency and parents’ support for their efforts. Recommendation 23: NCLB, the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act, and more recent state law collected under Chapter 69 and Chapter 71 A allow for the development of alternative measures of achievement for “students whose performance is difficult to assess using conventional methods” (Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2011). BPS should request this remedy from the state and collaborate with MDESE to develop alternative measures of achievement for LEP students at MEPA levels 1 & 2. These accommodations can include testing academic content in L1, using testing programs such as ONPAR (Kopriva, 2009) for the assessment of Math and Science content, or developing portfolios of multiple assessments that would better measure the true extent of the knowledge acquired by LEP students with low English proficiency. Recommendation 24: While more appropriate measurements of achievement are developed by the state, BPS should seek authorization from MDESE to expand the use of accommodations for testing. (1) the only accommodation allowed by Massachusetts (in addition to the exemption from testing in ELA in the students’ first year in the U.S.) is the use of a dictionary. This has not proven to be as effective an accommodation as, for example, extra testing time, small group and individual administration, and/or a glossary of key terms (Abedi, Hofstetter, & Lord, 2009). BPS should request that MDESE add these accommodations and implement them across BPS schools during testing. 96 Improving Educational Outcomes of English Language Learners in Schools and Programs in Boston Public Schools
(2) We found instances in which students had taken MCAS ELA tests when they had been in the country less than a year. Until the testing regime is changed, school staff should be made aware of the exemptions and asked to respect them. Recommendation 25: The district should take full advantage of NCLB’s exemption from reporting MCAS scores of LEP students in their first year in the U.S. for the purposes of AYP determination (U.S. Department of Education, 2007). This is a small accommodation for schools whose accountability status is affected by the presence of students at low levels of English proficiency. This exemption would acknowledge schools’ efforts and build a stronger understanding of what constitutes realistic expectations of MCAS results for students at low levels of English proficiency. 8 Differences in MCAS Outcomes among LEP Students of Different Demographic Characteristics • The individual factors that proved to be most significant in MCAS ELA and Math pass rates at all grade levels were English proficiency and disability. Regression analysis supported the descriptive findings by underscoring the power of language proficiency in explaining the variation in the ELA and Math MCAS scores of LEP in all grade levels. The same was the case in the effect on outcomes of students designated as having a disability. • Mobility was significant in the MCAS ELA pass rates of elementary and middle school students and in the Math pass rates of middle schoolers. Gender proved significant in the MCAS pass rates of LEP students at the elementary and high school levels. These findings were not reinforced in the regression analysis. • Significant differences in the attendance rates of LEP students who passed/did not pass MCAS tests in all areas were also found, where those who passed MCAS showed higher attendance rates than those who did not. Recommendation 26: The MCAS outcomes of LEP-SWDs were by far the worst of any group: worse than LEP students without disabilities and worse than those of other SWDs. There is a full discussion of this issue at the start of this chapter but here we underscore the need for appropriate assessment and the availability of language support resources in SPED programs, including the capacity for communication with students’ families. Recommendation 27: The importance of attending school every day needs to be communicated early and often to all immigrant parents, explaining the pervasive impact it has on the educational outcomes of their children. The effect of attendance on student outcomes should also be part of what adults communicate to students in the school setting as well as the afterschool and community programs in which they participate. 8 Differences in MCAS Outcomes among LEP Students in Different Types of Programs • The comparison of outcomes of students across all programs showed that ELA pass rates were highest among elementary and middle school students attending the three Two-Way Bilingual programs. Among high school LEP students, those in the only TBE program showed the highest pass rates in ELA. In all other programs, ELA pass rates were very low. • In MCAS Math, Two-Way Bilingual and TBE LEP students, again, scored the highest of all groups of LEP students considered here. The pass rates of Two-Way Bilingual students were the highest among elementary school LEPs students and those of TBE students topped all others in middle school and high school. Aside from the rates of the students in these two programs, which almost reached those of EP students, pass rates for LEPs were very low. They were particularly low among middle school students. Improving Educational Outcomes of English Language Learners in Schools and Programs in Boston Public Schools 97
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Center for Collaborative Education
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This report, Improving Educational
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VII. DROPPING OUT 48 A. What Are th
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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION
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Language Learners (OELL) has attemp
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CHAPTER II. THE STUDY
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epresented by the blocks in differe
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Table 2. Variables, Definitions, an
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CHAPTER III. ENROLLMENT AND CHARACT
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Figure 1. Change in Enrollment of S
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Native speakers of Haitian Creole a
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In Sum Following a swift decline in
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One of the foci of this study is th
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School Poverty Rate. Income status
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ed a significantly smaller proporti
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In Sum In this chapter we focused o
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One of the deepest and most far-rea
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the transfer of large numbers of LE
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education. There are no studies of
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IN DEPTH: Enrollment of English Lan
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Table 14. Nature of Primary Disabil
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choices. From the data gathered, it
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Becoming fully literate in English,
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Populations focused upon in this an
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Table 19. English Proficiency Level
Page 51 and 52: who attained the level of English p
Page 53 and 54: ed among those LEP students scoring
Page 55 and 56: High dropout rates among Boston Pub
Page 57 and 58: B What Is the Annual High School Dr
Page 59 and 60: C What Are the Rates of Attendance,
Page 61 and 62: Table 26. Median Attendance Rates o
Page 63 and 64: Table 29. Attendance, Out-of-School
Page 65 and 66: Table 31. Annual High School Dropou
Page 67 and 68: In Sum This chapter has focused on
Page 69 and 70: The tests of the Massachusetts Comp
Page 71 and 72: student achievement (Rumberger, 199
Page 73 and 74: Table 34. MCAS Math Pass Rates of S
Page 75 and 76: Table 36. MCAS ELA, Math, and Scien
Page 77 and 78: Pass Rates in MCAS ELA, Math, and S
Page 79 and 80: IN DEPTH: Attendance Rates of MCAS
Page 81 and 82: portions of core academic courses t
Page 83 and 84: D What are the MCAS ELA and Math Pa
Page 85 and 86: LEP Students at MEPA Performance Le
Page 87 and 88: school that they attend; if student
Page 89 and 90: Results: English Language Arts In a
Page 91 and 92: 1 Massachusetts meets the requireme
Page 93 and 94: A Overall Findings and General Reco
Page 95 and 96: Designation as student with a disab
Page 97 and 98: B Specific Findings and Recommendat
Page 99 and 100: Recommendation 7: Parents of LEP st
Page 101: Recommendation 14: Monitor indicato
Page 105 and 106: Recommendation 30: The quality of i
Page 107 and 108: Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (201
Page 109 and 110: Nathan, J., & Thao, S. (2007). Smal
Page 111 and 112: Vaznis, J. (2011, Sept. 18). US fin
Page 113 and 114: Overview The report sought to answe
Page 115 and 116: Table 1. Variables, Definitions and
Page 117 and 118: In TBE learn solely in English. In
Page 119 and 120: Table 2: Variables, Definitions and
Page 121 and 122: ! ! ! 5. Limitations of the Data Wh
Page 123 and 124: Table 8: MCAS ELA Pass Rates of LEP
Page 125 and 126: Table 10. Variables Considered in H
Page 127 and 128: APPENDIX 2: Additional Tables and F
Page 129 and 130: ! Table 3.2. Characteristics of Eng
Page 131 and 132: ! ! Table 6.3. English Proficiency
Page 133 and 134: ! Table 7.3. Attendance, Out-of-Sch
Page 135 and 136: ! ! ! Figure 8.3. Science Pass Rate
Page 137 and 138: Table 8.2. MCAS Math Pass Rates for
Page 139 and 140: APPENDIX 3: Characteristics and Out
Page 141 and 142: ! ! ! ! ! ! Table 4. MCAS ELA and M
Page 143 and 144: A discussion of our HLM analyses of
Page 145 and 146: ELA scores on average than LEP stud
Page 147 and 148: Improving Educational Outcomes of E
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