UPDATE:  Sept. 21, 2012:  Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 2193 into law.

Anyone who studied French all through high school and withal ended up hiring an avocado (avocat) instead of an attorney (avocat) understands that learning a foreign language is complicated, and isn't a strong suit for U.S. schools. So information technology shouldn't be a surprise that the same is truthful when it comes to bilingual educational activity. About 59 per centum of California'south English learners in grades six-12 are considered long-term English learners, meaning they've been in school here for more than 6 years, still are not academically fluent.

Alarmed by those statistics, dozens of California school districts have been developing courses to end this educational stagnation.  These efforts are showing promise and progress, according to a new report, and have propelled California to the forefront of a new nationwide movement.

Secondary School Courses Designed to Address the Linguistic communication Needs and Bookish Gaps of Long Term English Learners, released Thursday by the advocacy group Californians Together , profiles how four districts accept taken different approaches to solving this problem. The ideas, advice and information were culled from a forum Californians Together organized with educators from 24 districts that were piloting programs.  The goal was to outset a statewide network for districts and teachers to commutation information and ideas.  Until then, they had mostly been working in isolation.

"California is breaking new ground here for the nation," said Laurie Olsen, a longtime researcher on bilingual didactics and author of the report. "Information technology'due south not like there was a lot of stuff out there," she added, referring to a dearth of curriculum and instructional materials.

Olsen also wrote the 2010 predecessor to this study, Reparable Harm , which provided the first in-depth await at the numbers of long-term English learners and galvanized many schoolhouse districts to take action.

Ventura Unified School Commune redesigned its program when it saw data showing that 79 per centum of its loftier schoolhouse English learners were long-term English learners. Students accept English evolution classes focused on speedily moving them up the levels of proficiency, along with specialized high school English courses that meet the requirements for the University of California and California State University.

A key function of the district'southward program has included a major investment in professional evolution for all classroom teachers, administrators and counselors that includes student feedback.  After merely a couple of years, the new curriculum is making headway.  The number of long-term English learners testing in the proficient range and to a higher place on the English language language arts section of the California Standards Test (CST) virtually tripled at one schoolhouse, from 8.7 percent to 25 percent, and increased from 11.3 percent to 17.v percent at another high schoolhouse.

"These are the very students who take been far below basic and beneath basic," emphasized Olsen. "So the fact that yous're seeing move at all is encouraging."

Mistaken proficiency

Equally with many problems in education, in that location's no single reason why so many students were left languishing in classrooms, unable to participate or even comprehend.   One common misstep is that when students get to the point where they speak enough English to become past, they're causeless to be fluent and are placed in mainstream classes with no support.

Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, executive director of Californians Together, speculates on another set up of factors that occurred at the same time and created a vacuum of instruction.

Ane was passage of Proposition 227 , the 1998 ballot measure that express bilingual educational activity in California.  2d, and more damaging, said Spiegel-Coleman, was the narrowing of the curriculum to diminish science and social studies while increasing the time spent on math and English language arts, with the adoption of a 1-size-fits-all curriculum.

"That really had no support for English language learners in it," said Spiegel-Coleman, "then the kids that we see now in secondary school are the result of that. The combination of the two was similar a perfect storm."

In that scenario, long-term English learners became invisible; they were the kids who saturday at the dorsum of the classroom, never participated in discussions and moved quietly from year to year.

Many districts took activeness following the publication of Reparable Harm, but it has been scattered and fragmented.  A bill on Gov. Jerry Brown's desk would bring some consistency and transparency to the event. AB 2193 , past Assemblymember Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), would create a single definition of long-term English learners and require schoolhouse districts to keep runway of these students and study their numbers every year to the State Department of Education. The bill also would require districts to place students at hazard of becoming long-term English language learners, and provide quick intervention for both groups.

There isn't good information on what happens to these students.  How many give up and drop out of school?  Olsen said her enquiry found that many dream of attending college and aren't giving up.  "What is surprising to me is how many of them hang in the school even though they're failing their subjects and even though they're not earning credits for graduation," said Olsen.  "Information technology's a group that by and large carries with them fairly high hopes of their families and communities that they're the ones that are going to make it in U.S. society."

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