Student Distribution By Language Proficiency in Arizona

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Research suggests certain schools face greater challenges in effectively teaching its English language learner (ELL) students and in closing the achievement gap between these students and those who are native English speakers.

Those schools are ones with high concentrations of English language learner students, high populations of students living in poverty, and those located in rural and urban areas. Research also suggests that an open-enrollment program in a district may increase the concentrations of both English language learner and socioeconomically disadvantaged students in some schools. Students generally moved to schools outside their neighborhood that had equal or greater concentrations of students like themselves, such as by race or socioeconomic status.

This technical brief, Where Do English Language Learner Students Go to School? Student Distribution By Language Proficiency in Arizona analyzes Arizona’s 2007/08 student-level data to determine how concentrations of English language learner students vary across its schools and by the school characteristics listed above.

Key findings include:

• Schools with smaller concentrations (19 or fewer) of English language learner students were not required to submit disaggregated adequate yearly progress reports that group of students or to implement the state’s new four-hour a day English Language Development pullout program for English language learner students. These schools represented 41 percent of Arizona’s schools.

• Schools with larger concentrations (40 or more) of English language learner students were required to both disaggregate adequate yearly progress data and implement the new English Language Development pullout program. These schools represented 45 percent of Arizona’s schools.

• Schools with 20–39 English language learner students were required to implement the new English Language Development pullout program but not to disaggregate adequate yearly progress data. These schools represented 14 percent of Arizona’s schools.

• Schools with a majority of English language learner students were more prevalent among primary schools than among middle and high schools, among traditional public schools than among alternative and charter schools, and in schools where more than 75 percent of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch.

• Schools with no English language learner students were more prevalent in high schools, charter schools, and schools where no students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch.

This REL report was released by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance in the Institute of Education Sciences.