Promise or Peril?

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Abstract

This report describes the implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in school districts and schools with large enrollments of English language learners (ELLs) and immigrant students. The study, part of a series on the education of young immigrant students, documents how this landmark legislation in education policy played out in three high-ELL districts and six schools and traces the law’s effect on the education of ELL students attending these schools. The research, which takes a case study approach, addresses the following questions: 1) How has NCLB been implemented in high-ELL schools? 2) What has been the effect of NCLB on the improvement of high-ELL schools? and 3) What has been the effect of NCLB on ELL students in high-ELL schools? The findings reveal that, while implementation of NCLB in high-LEP schools has resulted in some problems for ELL students’ education, the net effect of the law has been positive because it has increased attention paid to ELL students; increased the alignment of curriculum, instruction, professional development, and testing; and raised the bar for ELL student achievement.

Introduction

Since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in January of 2002, there have been attempts to document how the requirements of this legislation have affected policies and practices in schools and school districts. There has, however, been little attention paid thus far to the way that NCLB has affected educational practices for limited English proficient students (LEPs) or English language learners (ELLs) (Lara 2005). And discussion of how NCLB may have indirectly affected pre-K education has been missing from the research literature on this important legislation.

ELLs are likely to be immigrants or the children of immigrants, whether second or even third generation, as has been found by other research in this series (Capps et al. 2005). Because of the lack of data to identify students in U.S. schools by immigrant status, we have used ELL status as a proxy for immigrant status, while recognizing that these terms are not perfectly interchangeable. The proportion of the U.S. school-age population comprised of children of immigrants has risen sharply from 6 percent in 1970 to almost 19 percent in 2000 (Capps et al. 2005). The share of LEP students also rose during this period to make up 7 percent and 5 percent, respectively, of U.S. elementary and secondary schools, with a higher percentage of these students enrolled in the earlier years. About 52.6 percent of all LEP students were enrolled in pre-K to 5th grade compared to 47.4 percent enrolled in grades 6–12 (Fix and Passel 2003). While schoolage children of immigrants were highly concentrated in six states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey), their numbers grew even more rapidly in states that have not traditionally received immigrants: Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, and Nebraska. LEP students showed a similar state distribution and growth trends (Capps et al. 2005).

Research in this series also found that LEP students were highly concentrated in a few schools (Cosentino de Cohen, Deterding, and Clewell 2005). Nearly 70 percent of LEP students were enrolled in 10 percent of elementary schools, with so-called “high-LEP schools” having enrollments of at least 50 percent LEP students. This study also found that high-LEP schools were more likely to be located in urban areas and to have many of the characteristics of urban schools: larger class sizes; greater racial and ethnic diversity; higher rates of student poverty; as well as the related problems that these characteristics imply. The study also found, however, that high-LEP schools were more likely to offer support and remedial programs tailored to their at-risk students together with providing specialized instruction and assessment for their non-English speaking population. These schools also differed from their counterparts with low—or no—enrollments of LEP students in terms of principal and teacher characteristics.

This report provides a snapshot of six of high-LEP elementary schools located in three urban school districts with a focus on how NCLB requirements have affected policies and practices vis a vis LEP students in these schools. Even though pre-K education is not covered by NCLB, because of the special interest of the Foundation for Child Development in the pre-K through third grade student population, the report pays special attention to the “spillover” effects of NCLB on this young population. The focus of the study, therefore, is on pre-K through fifth grade. All the case study schools we selected were high-LEP enrollment elementary schools with pre-K classes.

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The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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