Educational Policy and ELLs
In 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which re-affirmed the civil rights law obligated schools to ensure that ELLs have equal access to education (NCELA, 2016; Colorin Colorado, 2017). The same concept underlining this Act was previously found in the No Child Left Behind policy. The effect that this policy has had on the education of is that it has helped to ensure that ELLs receive fair treatment in schools and receive the help they require.
Because ELLs come from a foreign environment and culture, they are more likely to require special assistance when it comes to acquiring the L2. Their familiarity with the new surroundings and the manner of expressions is less than a learner who has been raised in the native environment.
Some specific ways that the policy has helped ELLs is that it has taken into consideration that situation substantially. For instance, as Colorin Colorado (2017) reports, there are now requirements that schools establish statewide exit and entrance procedures for ELLs and that schools provide more focus on multilingualism to help students retain their L1 as they learn their L2. Schools enhancing their ability to monitor ELL progress is...
References
American Federation of Teachers. (2016). Retrieved from
http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/essa_ells.pdf
Colorin Colorado. (2017). Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and English language
learners. Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/ell-basics/ell-policy-research/ell-laws-regulations/essa-ells
Ferguson, M. (2016). Washington View: ESSA is more than the latest acronym on
education’s block. Phi Delta Kappan, 97(6), 72-73.
NCELA. (2016). Legal obligations. Retrieved from http://www.ncela.us/faqs/view/6
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III. Other Issues and Challenges The No Child Left Behind act is viewed by many if not most of today's teachers as having tunnel vision and that acknowledges little but standardized testing outcomes. Specifically reported by Dillon (2009) in the 2009 New York Times article entitled: "No Child Law Is Not Closing a Racial Gap" that there has not been a narrowing of the gap between white and minority students in
These authors note that the obstacles for ELL students are particularly challenging, given that they include both educational and technical issues. These challenges include the following: Historically low ELL performance and very slow improvement. State tests show that ELL students' academic performance is far below that of other students, oftentimes 20 to 30 percentage points lower, and usually shows little improvement across many years. Measurement accuracy. Research shows that the language
There are over 4.4 million ELs enrolled in U.S. public schools, a number that has doubled during the last decade, making ELs roughly 10% of the total enrollment nationwide (Conrad 2005). The demographic increases demonstrate to government agencies that more needs to be done to support and ensure their integration and success in the educational process, and standardized testing in English is the least appropriate way to meet their
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