One of the biggest ongoing challenges in ESL education is the growing number of Long-Term English Learners (LTELs). This is a cohort of students who are not considered proficient in English after the designated amount of time given by the federal and state governments. This timeframe ranges anywhere between 5 and 7 years depending on the state. Here in Minnesota students get 5. This may not seem like such an issue but the devil is in the pudding.
After the designated years for the student to learn English, school districts stop receiving funding for those students. Simultaneously, we are still mandated by law to give those students ESL services in some form or another. This creates a massive discrepancy between funding and requirement. Moreover, the population of LTELs is growing. National numbers are hard to pin down due to each state having their own definitions, but I feel comfortable estimating that at least 30% of all English learners in the school system are designated as LTEL.
Ok, so they don’t learn English fast enough. What’s the issue?
Beyond funding, the problem that LTELs present is also academic. Students designated as LTELs are less likely to graduate high school, graduate unprepared for post-secondary education, and … And this isn’t just about students who arrive in the states during their teens. Many of the LTELs we have in our district have been here for almost their entire academic lives. One important caveat is that some LTELs are also identified for special education services. Students with reading disabilities may struggle to pass literacy-based proficiency tests regardless of their English language development. That raises an uncomfortable question: are we measuring English proficiency, literacy, disability, or some combination of all three? But many LTELs have been tested for SpED services and did not qualify. So what is the reason they can’t pass this test?
One of the largest solutions presented has been a focus on “academic vocabulary.” Scholars and proponents say that the students aren’t learning enough of it or fast enough. Other people point to things like poverty, lack of reading at home, and even deficient cultural norms that seemingly devalue education. But what if we’ve been looking in the wrong place? A 2022 study from researchers at UCLA and Cal State suggests that the issue may not be students’ language development at all—it may be the design of the proficiency test itself.
Researchers at UCLA and Cal State collaborated on parsing the data on LTELs from a large charter school district. They took the California English Language Development Test (CELDT) scores from 560 students grades 6-12 and ran scenarios with the data to determine if removing the literacy components (reading and writing) of the test would reduce the number of LTELs in the district. Their findings suggest that by removing literacy components would allow 97% of the LTELs to exit ESL services. Of the students who remained, most of them were dually identified with SpED which suggests that the test needs to change for that particular group of students. This isn’t saying that by removing the literacy components that suddenly all these students became proficient in English. It’s showing that they already showed their proficiency in oral English.
There are two critiques I can already hear coming my way. First, removing the literacy components would ruffle some feathers of teachers who adamantly believe they belong. This is not directly addressed in the paper, but indirectly they make a few good points that I would like to list out here. To start with, we already test student’s literacy skills on other state tests. Why test MLs more? Moreover, those literacy tests already show high degrees of variability in literacy skills in ALL students. Next, by keeping the literacy component, we are holding students back from receiving literacy interventions. Anecdotally, I see this all the time where getting an ML student a true intervention is stymied by administrative misconceptions about language learning, literacy, and SpED testing. Finally, at least one study has shown that the oral domains of listening and speaking differentiate MLs from non-MLs much more effectively than the literacy components (CLD, 2011). Second, removing the literacy components would drastically reduce the number of ML students we have leading to reduced funding and eventual layoffs. Yes. This would suck. But imagine keeping up an ineffective practice just so you can keep your job.
Either way, this is just one piece of evidence in the study of LTELs. While this doesn’t solve the LTEL problem, I believe it places us one step closer to understanding how to better serve this group of students in a more equitable way. What is most interesting to me is that this is not a local issue in the USA nor with English. Long term language learners as a concept can be found in every language where one group of young people are forced to move in adolescence and learn another language.
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