Improving Programs for Language Minority Youth (in Secondary Schools) in the Context of Standards-Based School Reform

A Forum — May 18, 2001

The American Youth Policy Forum invited researchers and policymakers to a forum on Capitol Hill to discuss the current state of immigrant education in American secondary schools and legislative proposals that will shape this area of education policy in the future. Donna Christian, President of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), moderated the discussion and gave an overview of CAL’s Program in Immigrant Education. Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco, a civil rights attorney and associate at the Urban Institute’s Education Policy Center presented the findings from his report Overlooked and Underserved: Immigrant Students in U.S. Secondary Schools, co-authored with the Urban Institute’s Michael Fix. Rounding out the panel, Delia Pompa, Executive Director of the National Association of Bilingual Educators, discussed legislative proposals to increase educational opportunity for immigrant youth.

Founded in 1993 and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CAL’s Program in Immigrant Education has three goals. The program aims to: 1) improve English language and literacy development of immigrant students in secondary schools; 2) improve their mastery of academic content and skills; and 3) better prepare these students for postsecondary educational opportunities and careers. In her presentation, Donna Christian described the local demonstration projects that are the cornerstones of CAL’s efforts to improve immigrant education in the United States. Located in Hayward and Long Beach, California as well as Prince George’s County, Maryland, the local demonstration sites use a whole-school model of education reform to provide comprehensive support for immigrant youth. The demonstration schools began with a planning year, involving teacher/administrator teams. After the planning year, each site received funding for three years of implementation, followed by one year of self-evaluation and documentation. Christian hopes that the lessons learned from the demonstration sites will help educators formulate a coherent reform strategy that enlists all secondary school staff in addressing the needs of immigrant youth.

The Urban Institute’s Jorge Ruiz-de-Velasco also argues that whole-school reform is necessary to serve the growing population of immigrant youth in secondary schools. At the AYPF forum, he started with a general overview of the immigrant student population in America. In the 1970s, only six percent of America’s public school children were immigrant students and only one-third of these students were from Latin America or Asia. By the late 1990s, one in five school children in this country were from immigrant families and over three-quarters of these families came from Latin America and Asia. The shifting nature of America’s immigrant population requires a supple support system that can change to address the needs of these newcomers. Right now, according to Ruiz-de-Velasco, the educational services for immigrant youth are "very thin." Forty percent of elementary school children who have been identified as limited English proficiency (LEP) students are not being served by alternative language programs. This is especially true in rural and suburban districts with smaller overall percentages of LEP students. A special problem for high schools attempting to serve this student population is that immigrant students in secondary schools may be able to speak English relatively well, but have low English literacy and writing abilities.

To address the needs of this underserved student population, Ruiz-de-Velasco points to four broad policies for secondary school reform. The first strategy is whole-school reform, which was discussed earlier. Ruiz-de-Velasco theorizes that this is the best way to deal with the disconnect between language development teachers and teachers of history, mathematics, and other mainstream subjects. Additional professional development initiatives will facilitate collaboration between these teachers and will also help them hone their pedagogical skills to target the needs of immigrant youth. The whole-school model will also allow for a reorganization of learning time (e.g. block scheduling), which Ruiz-de-Velasco believes will allow for more individualized instruction of immigrant youth. Finally, he suggests that schools and states should not exempt immigrant youth from tests or high standards for gateway courses, but should give them the necessary supports to meet the same standards as students who speak English as a first language.

Delia Pompa concluded the panel presentations with a discussion of the legislative proposals before Congress that impact this population of secondary school students. With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1994, Pompa argues that we saw a major shift in the way federal policy dealt with immigrant students. For the first time, Title I of ESEA explicitly included language minority kids in the funding stream previously reserved for districts serving economically disadvantaged students. "It was the first time that immigrant kids were not simply an afterthought," Pompa said, but unfortunately, she also observed that "implementation did not keep up with the policy shift." Thus, she believes that stricter measures of accountability must be included in future legislation. Only 11 states have developed accountability systems to measure the impact of their services for LEP students. Without such accountability standards and funds to develop programs that will help immigrant students meet these standards, the panelists warn that immigrant students will remain "overlooked and underserved."

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