There has been a lot in the news concerning the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 Horne v. Flores ruling that says the federal government should no longer be supervising state spending on ELL education in Arizona. The highest court in the land has found that Arizona already does a sufficient job of educating ELL students, and Arizona has not broken any federal laws that require schools to provide assistance such as education translation services and bilingual programs to ELL students.
According to Richard Fry of the Pew Research Center, the five states with the highest number of ELL students are Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas with about 70% of the total country’s ELL student population. Of this student population, there is still a very significant achievement gap between ELL students and their fluent English speaking counterparts, “In both elementary grades and middle school grades in these states, ELL students are much less likely than white students to score at or above the proficient level in mathematics. The measured gaps are in the double-digits. For example, in Florida 45% of ELL third-graders scored at or above the proficient level on the math assessment, compared with 78% of white third-graders, yielding a white-to-ELL gap of 34 percentage points.”
In my mind, with a 34% achievement gap, I am incredibly hesitant to discontinue monitoring state spending on ELL education. It is our responsibility to ensure all students, regardless of their English fluency, are receiving the highest quality education that we can provide. If we don’t spend the money necessary for education translation services and ELL programs, our ELL students will slip through the cracks even further.
Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate
References:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/education/26educ.html?_r=3&emc=eta1
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/882/english-language-learner
Tags: English Language Learners
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