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N.J. Bucks Tide on Reading for English-Learners
- To: 2language@yahoogroups.com
- Subject: N.J. Bucks Tide on Reading for English-Learners
- From: Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:26:25 -0800
Published in EdWeek: January 10, 2007
N.J. Bucks Tide on Reading for English-Learners
State cites studies finding advantage for bilingual approach.
By <file:///ew/contributors/mary.zehr.html>Mary Ann Zehr
Orange, N.J.
Taking a position that is unusual these days,
New Jersey officials are promoting research that
says bilingual education methods have an edge
over English-only methods in teaching English-language learners to read.
Recent U.S. Department of Education publications
with ?research-based recommendations? for
teaching English-learners have avoided
addressing the same research that Garden State
officials are endorsing. And many school
districts in Arizona, California, and
Massachusetts have abandoned bilingual education
after voters approved state ballot measures to
curtail the educational approach.
Since 1976, New Jersey has required bilingual
educationin which students are taught some
subjects in their native language while learning
Englishfor school districts with at least 20
students in the same language group. Over the
past three years, the state has added
requirements for districts to provide Spanish
instruction for several early-reading
initiatives, including state implementation of
the federal Reading First program.
Now, New Jersey appears to be the only state
that has written into its Reading First grant
application to the federal government that
native-language instruction is required, with
some exceptions, for children who arrive at
school with no proficiency in English.
Districts in Illinois and Texas, which also have
state laws requiring bilingual education, are
also using Reading First money for Spanish
materials. But those states haven?t required
bilingual education in their Reading First applications.
Russell W. Rumberger, the director of the
Linguistic Minority Research Institute at the
University of California, Santa Barbara,
applauded New Jersey officials for taking what
he views as an evidence-based approach.
?The research is increasingly supporting the
idea that bilingual education is not only not
bad, but is beneficial,? he said.
A Blended Approach
At Lincoln Avenue School here in Orange, a
gritty suburb of Newark, the state?s push for
bilingual reading instruction means that on a
recent day, Latino 1st graders who didn?t know
much English first read a story about a rat in
English, and then followed it up with a
different story about a rat in Spanish.
During the 120-minute literacy block, Enid
Shapiro Unger, an English-as-a-second-language
teacher, and Maria Albuquerque-Malaman, a 1st
grade classroom teacher, used the same
themeanimals and their homesto teach in both
English and Spanish. Under Reading First, the
state requires that at least 30 minutes of that block be in English.
With bilingual education, said Ms.
Albuquerque-Malaman, ?the transition from the
mother language to the second language goes more
smoothly? than with English-only instruction.
Not all New Jersey teachers agree. ?I feel that
bilingual methods hold the students back,?
Charmaine Della Bella, the ESL teacher for
Norwood Public School, a K-8 school with 650
students that makes up the Norwood school
district, wrote in an e-mail message. She said
ESL techniques have worked for the 17
English-learners in her school, all of whom are
Korean. The district can get a waiver from using
bilingual education because of the difficulty of
finding teachers who speak Korean.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act, which
governs the Reading First program, doesn?t say
anything about what language must be used for
reading instruction, Chad Colby, a spokesman for
the U.S. Department of Education, noted in an e-mail message.
But regional and national meetings for Reading
First paid for by the federal department tend to
feature English-only programs as models, said
Jeffrey Cohen, the lead consultant for Reading
First for the California Department of Education.
California initially wrote in its plan that
Reading First money could be used only for
English instruction, but the state had to change
that stance after losing a lawsuit in 2003
brought by districts that demanded to use the
money for Spanish instruction and materials as
well. About 10 percent of the state?s Reading
First classrooms provide instruction in Spanish, Mr. Cohen said.
Research Cited
In New Jersey, Fred Carrigg, the special
assistant for literacy to the state education
commissioner, is the engine behind the policy
that essentially calls for Spanish instruction for early reading.
In 2003, the state started requiring certain
school districtsthose with a concentration of
Latino English-learners that receive Reading
First grants or that get court-ordered extra aid
to offset their disadvantagesto provide two
years of Spanish instruction in kindergarten through grade 3.
New Jersey?s Reading First application for
federal funding provides two exceptions to the
general requirement for bilingual education: if
districts don?t have enough children to warrant
such a program, or if they don?t have adequate
teachers or materials to carry one out. Mr.
Carrigg said the second exception isn?t valid for Spanish-speaking students.
?Our attitude is that if we are going to accept
scientifically based reading research for the
general population, we must accept that same
research base for children who speak a language
other than English,? Mr. Carrigg said.
He cites findings from two reviews of research
to back the state?s requirements. The first is
Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young
Children, written by a panel headed by Harvard
University reading expert Catherine Snow and
published by the National Research Council in
1998. The other is Developing Literacy in
Second-Language Learners: Report of the National
Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and
Youth, edited by second-language-acquisition
expert Diane August and reading expert Timothy
Shanahan, and published last year by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
The National Research Council report says that
if appropriate learning materials and bilingual
teachers are available, it?s best for children
who don?t know English to be taught to read in
their native language while acquiring oral
proficiency in English. Then they can transfer
their reading skills from the native language to English.
The National Literacy Panel report contains a
chapter with a review of studies that concludes
there is a ?small to moderate? advantage for
bilingual education over English-only methods.
The federal Department of Education paid $1.8
million for the National Literacy Panel to write
that study, but then declined to publish it;
department officials said it didn?t stand up to
the peer-review process.
(<file:///ew/articles/2005/08/31/01fedfil.h25.html>"Not
for Publication," Aug. 31, 2005.)
When asked why he puts stock in that
publication, Mr. Carrigg said that the federal
government?s criticism of the study concerned
procedures and process, not ?recommendations or
results.? He added: ?We note that fine line.?
Implementation Varies
But elsewhere, some officials have disregarded
the literacy panel?s finding that favors
bilingual education. Margaret Garcia Dugan, for
example, who oversees programs for
English-language learners for the Arizona
Department of Education and opposes bilingual
education, said the federal department?s
decision not to publish the study raised ?a red
flag? for her, pointing to potential questions about its validity.
How New Jersey educators meet the state?s
requirements for bilingual education varies.
In the 5,400-student Orange district, Latino
kindergartners through 6th graders who are
learning English are concentrated in a bilingual
track in a single elementary school, in which
classes are made up only of Latino children.
In the 1st grade bilingual class in Orange,
children sound out words in English and Spanish
during each morning?s literacy block.
By contrast, in the 9,900-student Perth Amboy
district, teachers generally focus on teaching
reading only in Spanish, complemented with
instruction only in oral English, for the first
couple of years that a child with limited
proficiency in English is learning to read.
Meanwhile, the 2,700-student Englewood district
has 57 percent of its 290 English-learners in a
dual-language program in which children who are
dominant in either English or Spanish learn both
languages in the same classroom.
As evidence that the state?s policies are
working, Mr. Carrigg says 50 percent of
English-learners in 3rd grade are scoring at the
proficient level or above on the state?s
language arts test, which they must take in
English. He added that 75 percent of former 3rd
grade English-learners are scoring at those
levels. Among all 3rd graders, 82 percent scored
at least proficient on the test.
Statewide, only 22 percent of 11th grade
English-learners are testing as proficient or
above on New Jersey?s language arts exam.
The scores aren?t surprising, Mr. Carrigg said,
because so many of those students are new to the
country. The state?s focus on having students
learn to read in Spanish is concentrated at the
K-2 level, he added, and thus test scores for
3rd or 4th graders give a good indication of how those efforts are working.
The state?s next steps, Mr. Carrigg says, ?are
focused on expanding successful practices from
the elementary experience? into the middle grades.
At the same time, he said, ?New Jersey has not
made any efforts to publicize our primary
language policies. We are very cognizant of each
state having different policies and attitudes
about the use of languages other than English.?
Coverage of education research is supported in
part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation.
Vol. 26, Issue 18, Pages 1,12
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