How have English Language Learners fared under Common Core?
As we previously commented, the Courier-Journal and The Hechinger Report have collaborated on a series of articles about education in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) during the Common Core era. We’ve already discussed the articles on achievement gaps for special education students and the one for racial minorities. In both cases, the Courier and Hechinger don’t paint a happy tale for these students in the era of Common Core.
The third article in the series examines the performance of students who are English Language Learners (ELL), officially termed “Limited English Proficient (LEP) in Kentucky Department of Education reports. Unlike the picture for racial minorities and special education students, the picture for English learners, who are mostly immigrants, isn’t quite so clear. However, it does look like LEP students have also fared poorly in the era of Common Core in Kentucky The Courier-Journal points to the problem of accurately understanding the full picture of LEP student performance with the title of its article, “Limited-English students’ success tough to gauge.”
In Hechinger, the title was even vaguer, listed as, “Closing gap for immigrant students under Common Core in Kentucky is a moving target.”
Despite the title differences, the text body seems essentially identical in both articles, except that the initial online version in the Courier confusingly included a couple of graphs of white and black achievement data added by an editor (which have nothing to do with the story). I alerted the Courier’s education reporter, Allison Ross, and she got that editorial mistake fixed in a hurry.
In any event, Ross points out that:
“It's hard to determine from looking at the state's testing data how successful schools have been in closing the achievement gap between these students and their peers since Common Core was implemented.”
The reason is that the students hopefully progress to the point where they are no longer considered early English language learners. However, at present “graduates” of the LEP program are no longer tracked as limited English proficient students in the states assessment and accountability system. Thus, there is no long-term data on the real success of students after they leave the LEP programs.
Furthermore, there is a constant churn of newly entering LEP students replacing students “graduating” from the program. This churn tends to always keep the scores for the LEP students low.
Still, the Courier/Hechinger article points out:
“The gap for English learners in elementary and middle school for reading and math has not shrunk compared to students who are not placed in one of the state's "gap groups." Instead, in many cases, the gap has grown slightly.”
We’ll have to take the Courier at its word on this because while the Kentucky Department of Education does publicly post scores for “Limited English Proficiency” students, it does not publicly post scores for those students who do not fit into any of the other special student groups such as learning disabled, racial minority or in poverty. It would take a special data run from the department to determine scores for the non-gap-group students.
However, I did do a rather interesting algebraic calculation of the overall average scores for all students who are not LEP. Table 1 shows how that works out for Kentucky’s elementary and middle school KPREP math and reading results in 2011-12 and 2014-15.
KY LEP and Non-LEP KPREP Scores 2011-12 and 2014-15 Table 1
In 2011-12 in elementary school reading, Table 1 shows the official Kentucky School Report Card for the state reports that there were 4,110 students tested who were considered LEP students and their average reading proficiency rate was 23.3 percent.
In the same year, the total number of students tested for elementary school reading in Kentucky was 152,106, and the overall average score for all of those students was 48.0. Doing a little algebra reveals that there were 147,996 students who were not LEP in this total. The average proficiency rate for those non-LEP students would have to be 48.7 percent (rounded to the nearest tenth) for the math to work out properly.
As you look through Table 1, it is obvious that the LEP students score well below the non-LEP students in every area. It is also obvious that the situation looks much worse in the middle school data.
Furthermore, in some cases the LEP scores have remained flat or even declined. For example, the LEP elementary reading scores stayed flat at 23.3 percent over the years covered in the table. In middle school math, the LEP proficiency rate was 15.9 percent in 2011-12 and dropped to 12.2 percent by 2014-15. That stands in notable contrast to the scores for non-LEP students, which all increased between 2011-12 and 2014-15.
I also computed gaps and changes in the gaps from the data in Table 1. That gap information is found in Table 2.
KY LEP and Non-LEP KPREP Scores Change in Gaps 2011-12 to 2014-15 Table 2
The gaps are quite notable in every case, and except for middle school math where the gap stayed flat, the proficiency rate gaps for non-LEP versus LEP students have grown over the past four test cycles, agreeing with what the Courier’s article points out from their analysis.
So, here is another concern for Kentucky in the era of Common Core. As we discussed in our earlier blogs, even the Courier-Hechinger analysis shows what we have been saying at the Bluegrass Institute for some time. Common Core has not improved things for special student groups in Kentucky. In fact, the situation in general is deteriorating for these students as they get further left behind.