Report Advises Rethinking Home-Language Surveys

Paper Finds Questions Miss Or Overidentify ELL Students

A review of state policies by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, raises questions about the validity of the use of home-language surveys as a step to identify students eligible for special help in learning English.

While it’s ubiquitous in schools across the country, the practice of educators’ giving a home-language survey to parents or students who are believed to speak a language other than English at home is not mandated by the federal government. Federal law does, however, require that states somehow identify students who need extra services to learn English, and many schools use such a survey to find out whether children’s English skills should be tested.

But the wording of questions on the surveys and how the questionnaires are carried out vary so much among states, and the validity of the information gathered from them is so unproved, that the researchers suggest it might be best for home-language surveys to be abandoned. They say a study should be conducted to explore if schools should instead use a short language-screening...