I stood in front of the classroom, testing guidelines in hand, as 17 sixth-grade students looked up at me with fear in their eyes. After I read the testing directions for the English Language Proficiency Assessment of California (ELPAC), the questions began. “What if we fail, Ms. Perro?” asked Rina. “You won’t fail,” I answered with a reassuring smile, “you just get to show how much you know!” “What if I don’t know how to answer a question?” asked Manny. “Just try your best to make an educated guess, you will do great,” I said. “Why do only Brown kids have to take this test Ms. Perro?” asked Yari. There was an eerie silence as the students looked around at one another. “Uhh, well—” I stammered, but was immediately interrupted. “Is this a test just to call out everyone that speaks Spanish?” asked Edgar. “Not exactly—” This time I was interrupted by Sara. “I’ve never spoken another language, why am I here? My mom speaks Spanish—so you assume I do too? This is a little racist, isn’t it?”
I was stopped dead in my tracks. I felt like the air in my lungs was stuck in my throat, my heart in my stomach. I wanted to scream, cry even. Sara named something I felt deep in my gut about the ELPAC, but failed to face until that moment. I was already uncomfortable about expecting English Language Learners (a population predominantly made up of students of color with bilingual backgrounds) to conform to the unofficial, white-dominant expectations of the English language. After witnessing the impact this test was having on my students, then watching them struggle through the test, and finally finding out that only four of the 17 students received “passing” results on the test, I knew the answer was, yes, the ELPAC is problematic… but so is my teaching, because I, like many educators, struggle to support students who have language development needs.
About 28% of students at my school, High Tech Middle North County (HTMNC), are classified as English Language Learners (ELL) or Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (RFEP). Digging deeper into student data, I found that 100% of the students on the “D & F Grade Report’’ were ELL students. When I pulled the summer school rosters for the past two years, I found that 67% of the list was composed of ELL students. The data, paired with student voices, showed me that the test is not a singular issue: it is one of several components that form a mosaic. Sara’s question came to mind, “This is a little racist, isn’t it?” Yes.
We needed to make a change, not just for the sake of our students, but for the sake of following state law, and even the US Constitution. According to the California Department of Education (CDE), schools that receive state funding are required to “ensure that English learners acquire full proficiency in English as rapidly and effectively as possible and attain parity with native speakers of English,” and “ensure that English learners, within a reasonable period of time, achieve the same rigorous grade-level academic standards that are expected of all students” (2019). By not servicing our ELL population as the state of California mandates, we were failing to meet the requirements set by the CDE. We were also infringing on students’ 14th amendment right to an equal education. In the months following the ELPAC testing day, I developed an urgency to make sure that my students’ 14th amendment rights were protected. To do this, I needed to identify why our ELL students were not showing mastery in their language development, and what was holding teachers back from providing students with the support they needed.
The inequities facing ELL students go far beyond the walls of my school and district. “On average, ELLs’ academic achievement tends to be low” across the United States (Goldenberg, 2008, p. 14).
To be more specific, ELL students are, on average, about 40 percentage points behind their non-ELL peers in both fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math exams (Murphy, 2015, p. 2). This trend has continued (with slight improvement) over the past two decades. Challenging this inequity and closing the performance gap between ELL students and non-ELL peers may prove to be difficult, but it is possible if the issue is addressed one contributing factor at a time. I decided to focus my master’s degree research on this task, using a continuous improvement methodology. After conducting a literature review, and interviewing teachers and students, I identified three key barriers to academic success for ELL students:
After identifying these contributing factors, I set two goals (or “aims” in the language of continuous improvement):
With these aims in place, I could try out numerous “change ideas” (specific, measurable interventions to try in classrooms) to not only transform the way ELL students are supported in inclusive, project based learning settings, but also support teachers to feel confident in doing so (MacConnell & Caillier, 2016, p. 18). Applying the structures of continuous improvement, I carried out eight Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles between November 2020 and April 2021, in order to collect data and make improvements one change idea at a time.
I knew I could not do this work alone, so I formed a team with two other teachers to drive the change efforts alongside me. We dubbed ourselves the “Emerging Multilingual Team (EML Team)”—the first our school has ever had. We chose this name because our first step as a team had been to officially change the label we used for students. Instead of “English Language Learner” (EL), which focuses on a deficit (a student’s limited ability to speak English) we used “Emerging Multilingual” (EML), which focuses on an asset (the student, already fluent in at least one language, is adding another language to their repertoire). To mark this shift, I will use “EML” throughout the rest of this piece. The team consisted of our school’s EML coordinator (8th grade humanities teacher), an EML support teacher (7th grade math and science student teacher) and me (testing coordinator and 8th grade humanities teacher). Our director, who shared our passion for supporting emergent multilingual learners, allocated one hour of professional development time for us to work with the entire staff every other Monday. This dedicated time with our fellow teachers was critical to our success. We identified three learning experiences as the
most impactful, according to teacher feedback data and improved student results in the classroom:
The huddle consisted of a humanities teacher, math/science teacher, and special education teacher, who met for 10 minutes to discuss a single student. This enabled teachers to routinely check in and discuss progress about each and every EML student. We called this the “By-Name Protocol” and returned to it every two weeks. During our sessions, we committed to using pro-child language, avoiding assumptions, and staying as specific as possible.
We did this so that teachers would experience the test the way our students experience it. Afterwards, the majority of teachers were frustrated by how difficult and confusing the test was, and ready to join us in our mission.
In our biweekly one-hour professional development sessions, we provided space and support for teachers to learn, adapt, and develop EML scaffolds and strategies to support students in the classroom. In these sessions, teachers shared success stories of deeper connections they were making with students. In one session, teachers decided to create small group opportunities for their EML students to foster a more targeted learning environment for high need students.
After the PDSA cycles finished, teachers from all content areas were trying different instructional strategies and sharing their results with each other. More and more teachers were joining our EML team’s weekly meetings, to support students. In April, it was time to analyze if we were able to make improvements on our campus.
Here are our main findings from the data we collected in April:
• 85% of the EML population either partially or completely achieved a goal set for them by their core classroom teachers.
• Teachers shared that after six months of professional development:
» They felt more prepared to help their EML students grow.
» They felt more comfortable seeking feedback from colleagues and students to help adjust lessons for EML students.
» They embedded more California’s English Language Development Standards into their classroom lessons, provided more specific classroom accommodations to their EML students to help them improve their English language development, and confidently communicated with parents of EML students. While these achievements were very exciting, we could not cease our efforts just yet. The coming of spring and the month of April meant that it was time for the students to face the ELPAC once again. This time, we felt that they were more prepared than ever before. In a final push to celebrate and support our students’ hard work in the classroom and in small groups, our team created a fun theme to uplift the superpowers of our EML students: The Secret Society. We turned the ELPAC test prep experience into a secret agent-themed set of missions, complete with top secret folders, nicknames, and certificates. We wanted all our students to feel valued no matter what the outcome of their tests were. While the Secret Society convened, I started thinking about my own experience of the past year. I went from feelings of frustration and anger, to motivation and urgency, and finally awareness and understanding. Yes, the ELPAC test remains problematic, complicated, and despite perhaps good intentions from its creators, it can put down students rather than uplift them. Unfortunately, we can’t just stop administering it (I checked). With that option off the table, we need to do all that we can as educators to prepare our students for all opportunities that our problematic, complicated, and racist world will throw at them. We can empower our students to face obstacles, such as a test, and overcome them with confidence and pride. In order for teachers to prepare students for such obstacles, I learned that teachers need the time, space, and structures to service their most at-risk students. Teaching Emerging Multilingual Learners is a skill that needs to be explicitly taught, and that is something we were able to do in this Improvement Science experience. School leaders can support their students to succeed by investing in the teacher’s feelings of efficacy to service those students. After our year of work, ELPAC testing day sounded very different. Instead of being greeted by a flurry of anxious questions the morning of the test, I was greeted by confident “game faces.” I was amazed at how the very students who had been so frightened of the test in sixth grade left the testing room as eighth graders with their heads held high. When I talked to Edgar, who had asked if the test was meant to “call out” kids who spoke Spanish, he told me, “I feel pretty great. It was just like how I practiced in Secret Society. I knew what I was doing this time!” Manny, who had been afraid of not knowing the answer to a question, said “I feel like I was prepared and less nervous than when I took it last time.” Sara, who had accused the test of being racist, shared “I felt so relieved. I worked hard to prepare for the test. It made me feel a little more powerful and that I could do anything I set my mind to.” We won’t receive our ELPAC results until August, long after this article goes to press, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about them, but our students faced the test without fear this year, and for right now, that’s enough for me.
MacConnell, K. & Caillier, S. (2016). Getting better together: one school’s journey with improvement science. Manuscript accepted by Phi Delta Kappan for publication.
Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: what the research does—and does not—say. https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/goldenberg.pdf
Murphy, D. (2014, December). The academic achievement of English language learners: data for the U.S. and each of the states. https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/07/2014-62AcademicAchievementEnglish.pdf
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