Four Cities Cited for Successful ELL Policies

Achievement is based on addressing many issues, city schools’ group says.

Large urban school districts that are successful with English-language learners provide strong oversight from the central office for educating those students, ensure that general education teachers as well as specialists receive professional development on how to work with ELLs, and use student data in a meaningful way to improve instruction for that population.

By contrast, districts that haven’t had that success with English-learners lack a coherent vision for educating them, limit access to the general curriculum for such students, don’t use disaggregated student data in a systematic way, and haven’t given authority and adequate resources to the district office in charge of ELLs.

Those are findings released last week by the Council of the Great City Schools in a report on the common best practices of four large urban districts that have significantly improved ELL achievement, compared with two urban districts that have not. The four districts deemed successful are Dallas, San Francisco, New York City, and St. Paul, Minn. They were selected in part based on strong growth in achievement by ELLs in the 3rd and 4th grades on state reading tests between 2002 and 2006. The study did not name the two districts that...