Rising Drop Out Rate for Boston's ELL's

A report will be released tomorrow by UMass Boston and the Center for Collaborative Education showing how the "English Only" rule in Boston's public schools has led to a doubling of drop-out rates by English Language Learners. If you might remember, back in 2002, Boston voted to enact the rule and erase bilingual education from the books so that all students would learn through "immersion." The report that will be released will show how, over a period of two years, student drop out rates have gone from 6% to 12% among immigrant children.

I am by no means a proponent of bilingual education. My mother was a bilingual educator for many years and even she would claim that there was much to be desired in that system: many teachers, whose comfort level in English was lower, would fail to help students transition; and parents would elect to keep their children in bilingual programs, stunting their children's growth. Students, too, would self-segregate along linguistic and (ultimately) ethnic lines. However, with that said, the inadequate programs we had back then were better than the ones we have now.

Frankly, I am not surprised at the findings of this report. It confirms my experiences over the past four years of teaching English at a 6-12 school. There was not a single year that I didn't encounter three or more students whom I could not devote enough of my personal resources to. Though I can't list them here, each of their names come to mind as I type-- they are phantoms that haunt me whenever I evaluate how I, as a member of an educating team, "left behind" many kids. There were the ones who began the year already jaded, who had long ago decided to give up. There were the few who were excited to get a brand new start, but then buckled under the weight of unreachable standards. I stayed with a student after school for 2 hours a day once; but it was never enough. They couldn't read. They couldn't understand the assignments. They were lonely and bored and, eventually, bitter. And they were under-served. During my time in the school, no fewer than ten of my students dropped out or had to transfer out of the system-- and we were considered one of the better clusters in the district.

The "English Only" folks will get defensive here-- and they are right to be because they are being blamed for ruining the futures of a 6% of our language learner youths per year! While there are a lot of reasons for parents, advocates, politicians, and ultimately teachers and students to take that position and be angry, I want to step back from that and deal with the realities we've got instead of the ideological should-haves.

The problem is not with whether you've got an "English Only" school or a bilingual system. In fact in a perfect world, you might have schools that model both within the same district and parents could choose. The reason, however, that the "English Only" rule was so devasting to Boston was that it came from outsiders who had no intimate knowledge of what the school system was like. And when schools were required to implement it, often against their better judgment and will, we weren't ready.

A lot of folks will say that it should be easy-- their grandparents didn't have any "special programs" to help them learn English and they did fine. Just drop 'em in and make 'em swim! The problem with this is that the picture, especially in urban districts, has gotten very complicated. With increasing numbers of minorities and people living in ethnically divided neighborhoods, there is no world of "correct English" from which these students can absorb the language. Also, consider the numbers of special needs learners that are integrated into every single classroom in the district: there is no way that a teacher can tackle giving the extra attention to both the ELL kids AND special needs learners at once, especially once you get into the secondary school level, where kids rotate through a minimum of six teachers a day. But if they don't get this from extra attention by the teacher, where will they get it? This is why supplemental ELL classes (traditionally "ESL") are needed in bountiful supply.

Over the past four years of teaching, that was a reality that I tried to work with and around. There were times I tried to be that program. There were times I gritted my teeth and told my self to be realistic-- it's just a fact of life that I'll lose some. And there were times when I gave a shot at advocating for hiring changes so that there would be more money designated for ELL teachers . There were times I did my best; and there were times when, honestly, I was too tired to try do my best. In the end, though, we weren't ready because we didn't have the programs, teachers, training, and money in place to do what we needed to do.

A lot of people will be reading that report in the next few days. But teachers who have seen it all and wrestled with these failures won't be surprised at the numbers-- after all, the numbers are never worse than the stories behind them. If anything, maybe many of us will breath a sigh of cathartic relief that the dirty little secret is finally out.

A not-so-radical proposal: Our schools need to hire full-time, full service ELL teachers. You cannot turn back the clocks now on "English Only." There's no money in the city to hire an entire parallel system of teachers who speak Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Portugese and more. But what we have to do is make sure our ELL programs are adequately funded and have enough teachers, whose schedule and pay allows them to focus ONLY on ELL issues and students. ELL classes need to have no more than six students for every one adult. There must be a department of English Language Learner Education in every school that has more than 20 ELL students with a department head who has a reduced teaching load. Regular classes must have a paraprofessional to assist students for every class that has 2 or more ELL kids who are classified in the lowest proficiency category. Even when implemented to the full measure of this proposal, this would cost far less than returning to "bilingual" education; and I have no doubt that it would not only lower the drop-rates among ELL and regular students alike, but it would also significantly improve test scores across the board.