Fact or Fiction: ELL Adolescents and Literacy

_____1.About half of private employers and more than 60% of state government employers saywriting skills impact promotion decisions.

_____2.Grammar instruction is the key element to improving student writing.

_____3.Approximately 85% of adolescent readers require some form of remediation for comprehension.

_____4.Only 70% of all high school students and 60% of African-American and Latino students graduate on time.

_____5.Between 1996 and 2006, the average literacy required for all American occupations is projected to increase by 5%.

_____6.The majority of struggling adolescent readers can read, but cannot understand what they read.

_____7.The struggling native English speakers and English Language Learners (ELLs) have similar needs and benefit from the same literacy interventions.

_____8.Fifty-seven percent of adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs) were born outside the U.S.

_____9.More than half of the adolescent limited English proficient (LEP) students live in families with incomes 185% below the poverty line.

_____10.The achievement gap for LEP students is more than threetimes as high in English as it is in math.

_____11.On the 2005-2006 English I EOCs, more than 65% of LEP students scored “not proficient.”

_____12.In 2005-2006, LEP student performance was lower for the Biology EOC than for any other EOC.

Fact or Fiction: ELL Adolescents and Literacy

KEY

  1. TRUE. Over half of employers put a major emphasis on writing skills when looking to promote employees, according to the National Commission on Writing of 2005 (WN 9).
  2. FALSE. Research shows that traditional approaches to grammar have a negative effect on the quality of students writing. (WN 21).
  3. FALSE. Some 70 percent of adolescent readers require some form of remediation. The problem doesn’t lie in the ability to read the words on the page, but in the inability to comprehend the meaning of those words (RN 3).
  4. TRUE. Sadly, according to a 2002 study by Greene, only 70 percent of high school students graduate on time with a regular diploma, and fewer than 60 percent of African-American and Latino students do so (RN). In fact, more than 3,000 students drop out of high school every day, says the Alliance for Excellent Education of 2003 (RN 7).
  5. FALSE. The average literacy required for American occupations hasincreased over this past decade by 14 percent. The twenty-five fastest growing professions have far greater than average literacy demands, while the twenty-five fastest declining professions have lower than average literacy demands (RN 8).
  6. TRUE. The problem for struggling readers is not usually illiteracy, but comprehension. Actually, the majority of struggling readers can read, but cannot understand, creating a disparity (RN 10).
  7. FALSE. As a general rule, adolescent ELLs need much more time focused on vocabulary and background schema development than native English speakers. Because of wide variations in language acquisition and literacy across the ELL population, one-size-fits-all solutions do not usually work (DTW 8).
  8. FALSE. Fifty-seven percent of adolescent ELLs were born in the U.S. and are second- or third-generation immigrants (DTW 10).
  9. TRUE. According to Double the Work, although some adolescent ELLs live in middle- and upper-income families, immigrant youth are more likely to be poor than are non-immigrants (DTW 10).
  10. FALSE. Just check out the table below.

LEP Achievement Gap 2004-2005 (ABC data 32).

MATH (%met or exceeded) / READING (% met or exceeded)
LEP / 77.5 / 64.5
Non-LEP / 87.9 / 85.8
LEP achievement gap / 10.4 / 21.3

11FALSE.For the English I EOC, 55.3% of LEP students scored below proficiency, and 2117 studentsretook the test – the second highest retake rate on all EOCs.

12FALSE. LEP Student proficiency on the Biology EOC was 27%; proficiency on social studies EOCs was lower (24% for U.S. History; 19% for Civics and Economics).

2005-2006 EOC Statistics for LEP Students (DPI Testing 26).

Percent NOT PROFICIENT / # of Test Retakes
English I / 55.3 / 2117
Algebra I / 35.7 / 1306
Biology / 73.2 / 1905
Civics / 80.9 / 2140
U.S. History / 75.8 / 1328