| structured immersion |
2/12/07 12:03 PM |
| Author:
ann myers
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Jill Kemper Mora asserts that because the 2005 study shows that there is no significant difference in achievement between students who participate in bilingual and immersion classrooms why not allow communities to decide the method of instruction. Those of us who actually work daily with these students are well aware that few schools have implemented any sort of systematic, structured program for them. According to a report by Boston University Professor Christine Rossell “the implementation of the California state law voters passed to transform bilingual education programs has been undermined and “rewritten” by the California State Board of Education and numerous school districts.” Again those of us on the ground know this to be true.
Nevertheless, the 2005 study's authors found “that English learners have done better academically since the passage of Prop. 227. But all California students improved in the same period, and the performance gap between English learners and native English speakers has changed little.” In addition a PPIC study found; “Students in bilingual programs improve more slowly than those in English-only programs but they also tend to be poorer and less prepared.” Finally Jane Echevarria, a professor at Cal State Long Beach and principal investigator with OERI’s Center for Research on Excellence, Education & Diversity and developer of the empirically validated Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol points out that “where chronically underachieving students made consistent and significant yearly gains on standardized tests when the SIOP model was implemented to a high degree by all teachers.” (“What the Research Says About Effective Strategies for ELL Students”, from this discussions library).School of education do not teach new teachers methods that emphasize essential language development strategies, instead spending valuable time on “cultural awareness” and, ironically, bilingual models, even though the majority don’t speak Spanish! The language deficit that ELL students demonstrate is evident in their native language. Their parents often have little more that a few years of education and often cannot read in any language. By starting these students ‘bilingual’ programs which is all Spanish all day with no one, including teachers, aids and classmates modeling English, rather than in structured, systematic English language development from the first day of school we are reaping the achievement that we’ve sown.
Posted as a reply to:
The AIR/WestEd Report 2006 by Dr. Jill Kerper Mora
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