When school districts decide how English learners will receive language support and access to grade-level content, the default is often to group these students together during the school day.
But new research suggests that approach may not work for all students.
Studies from researchers at New York University found that grouping English learners in separate classrooms for most of the school day at best offers few benefits overall—and in some cases may hinder some students’ ability to graduate from high school on time and later enroll in college.
The studies, published last October and funded by the federal Institute of Education Sciences, address where English learners are placed throughout the school day and whether that affects academic outcomes.
The findings challenge the idea that there is one “best” way to group English learners, said Rebecca Bergey, a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research, who did not work on the NYU studies.
The studies help make the case for district leaders to regularly evaluate which English learners they are serving, their unique needs, and schools’ staffing capacity in determining how best to place students into classrooms, she said.
“When we think about English learners, we’re often focused on what curriculum or what instructional practices work for them. But this is a good, really strong reminder that we need to take a step up and look at, what are the system-level levers of change?” Bergey said.
No single grouping model works for every English learner
The first NYU study, led by Kristin Black, a research scientist at the university’s Institute for Human Development and Social Change, focused on high school English learners, analyzing New York City public school data for more than 31,000 English learners enrolled as 9th graders in 2013, 2014, and 2015.
The study, part of a broader research and development center project focused on the academic tracking of English learners, looked at two key groups of English learners: those who are long-term, meaning they’ve been in the district for years but still haven’t met proficiency and are often academically marginalized as a result; and those who are newcomer immigrants and have varied experiences with the English language and the U.S. school system, Black said.
Black found that when long-term English learners were more concentrated together in classrooms, they were less likely to graduate within four or six years, less likely to immediately enroll in college after graduation, and less likely to enroll in college about 2 and a half years after graduation.
Newcomer English learners also experienced these negative outcomes associated with being grouped together, but to a lesser degree.
“They may very well need opportunities to have really good, targeted English language instruction in a more sheltered environment,” Black said. “But they also need and deserve opportunities to be fully integrated with non-English learners in their regular academic coursework.”
In the second study, Michael Kieffer, professor of literacy education at NYU, led an experiment with schools in a large urban district in the Northeast.
Fourth and 5th grade teachers used a specific curriculum focused on language and literacy designed with English learners in mind. Each teacher taught two different groups: homogenous groups of only English learners and heterogeneous groups of English learners and non-English learners.
Kieffer found no average benefit of homogenous grouping.
Instead, if English learners had higher English proficiency before the experiment, they benefited more from heterogeneous groups on language and reading outcomes. If they had lower English proficiency beforehand, they benefited more from homogenous groups.
“We feel like it calls into question this notion that we should group students homogenously as a default,” Kieffer said.
Districts can review and adjust how English learners are grouped
Taken together, the NYU studies shed light on why it matters for districts to understand the English learners they serve, their needs, and how well-equipped teachers are to meet these needs before defaulting to grouping English learners together, Kieffer and Black said.
In his experiment, Kieffer found that while teachers in both groups stuck to the same curriculum, there were some key differences in how they perceived and reacted to students’ abilities.
With the heterogeneous groups of English learners and non-English learners, teachers did things like ask more open-ended questions and seemed to expect a little more of English learners in terms of what they could do with language. With the homogenous groups, teachers did a little more scaffolding, such as explaining vocabulary and setting up more structured ways for students to practice speaking.
As more districts catch on to research that shows the benefits of all teachers taking responsibility for English learners’ academic achievement, not just specialized English-learner teachers, Kieffer said it’s important to ensure that more general education teachers learn scaffolding techniques for the English learners in their classrooms, and that more English-learner teachers set high expectations in homogenous settings.
When making districtwide decisions on where to place English learners, and what trainings to offer teachers, Bergey from AIR recommends leaders regularly analyze data they collect on their English learners and adapt as needed.
In some years, a district may have more staffing capacity to get English-learner teachers and general education teachers to work more closely in the same classroom as co-teachers. In other years, there may be a sudden influx of newcomer students with greater language needs that would necessitate more homogenous groupings.
“It really comes to understanding what your context is, and who your students are, and having to make continuous decisions about what that looks like,” Bergey said.
