Studies Take Aim at Policies on English-Language Learners in Arizona

Arizona’s program for teaching English-language learners, which has been implemented for two school years by state mandate, will “almost certainly” widen the achievement gap between ELLs and their mainstream peers, concludes a qualitative study of five Arizona school districts released last week by a California research and advocacy group.

The researchers say the program, which requires ELLs to be separated into classes for four hours a day to learn discrete English skills, provides instruction that is inferior to that received by other students, and ELLs aren’t learning enough English in one year to succeed in mainstream classrooms, as the program design had intended. The study also raises questions about whether the four-hour program will hinder English-learners in high schools from acquiring the credits they need to graduate on time.

The study is one of nine released last week by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at the University of California, Los Angeles, that conclude Arizona’s four-hour ELL program and the state’s decision to alter its home-language survey for students whose first language isn’t English are detrimental to ELLs. Educators nationwide have had an eye on Arizona’s policies foreducating its 150,000 ELLs because they are at the center of a federal case, Horne v. Flores , that was remanded by the U.S. Supreme Court last summer to a U.S. District Court in Tucson. Hearings for the case...