The Changing Face of ELL Literacy Practices Under No Child Left Behind

By Michelle Adam, ELL Outlook™ Contributing Writer

Two years after enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), visible consequences of the law on literacy practices for English language learners (ELLs) are being seen. According to the U.S. Department of Education, teachers are slowly acquiring tools and strategies to teach the English language at the same time they teach content. But for Kris Gutierrez, an internationally renowned educator and researcher in the field of literacy, the government is focusing too strongly on language mechanics at the expense of students' comprehensive learning.

"No Child Left Behind has hurt English language learners tremendously," said Gutierrez, who is a professor in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, director of the Center for the Study of Urban Literacies, and director of the Education Studies minor at the University of California at Los Angeles. "ELLs don't get to use their native language so their learning is limited, and the kinds of skills they are learning are reductive. They are receiving an impoverished curriculum."

Gutierrez has focused tremendous effort on researching the impact on ELLs of No Child Left Behind, as well as high-stakes testing and English-only legislation in California. Most recently, she was selected this past February to speak about issues stemming from NCLB to twenty bipartisan members of Congress at a congressional forum of the Aspen Institute.

"I told them that we have been using a monocultural vision when it comes to English learners, and that we need to develop a bidirectional vision. A student may be gifted in math, but then today's intervention reduces [him or her] to an ELL. We have to create curriculum that is situated in a local context. There's got to be flexibility," she said. "The representatives were concerned very much with what I had said about improving policy for English learners. They said that they didn't want to repeal NCLB, but that they thought it needed to be fixed."

Gutierrez spoke to the nation's leaders about how No Child Left Behind, English-only legislation, and high-stakes testing have been mutually reinforcing and how, together, they have negatively impacted the literacy practices used for poorer students and English language learners. As she said, "What I see is that for poor kids in schools deemed underperforming, you have more reductive literacy practices. By reductive, I mean that there is an emphasis on the acquisition of autonomous skills such as vocabulary, decoding, and phonics, instead of making these skills a part of a larger menu within a literacy program. They are not engaging students in meaningful texts and learning. For example, kids will spend all day on this kind of reading and not get social studies or science. If they don't get the language first, they don't learn content."

Despite the fact that Gutierrez feels NCLB has had primarily negative effects on ELLs, Kathleen Leos of the U.S. Department of Education believes the opposite. As Leos said, "I think NCLB for non-English speaking students is their civil rights law. They now have to be accounted for."

As senior policy advisor for the Office of English Language Acquisition and associate deputy undersecretary to the secretary of education, Leos has been working on No Child Left Behind during the past two-plus years. She recognizes that states, schools, and teachers have been "thrown a loop" with all the new standards but also believes that with time and assistance teachers will be better able to serve ELLs.

"Now we are aligning English proficiency standards with content standards in reading and math. It has raised expectations," said Leos. "We are putting in academic standards that are wedded to language standards. It's a bear. It's not about teaching one and then waiting for the other. We are talking about systemic change."

While educators struggle to determine how to actually teach literacy and content in one single swoop, Leos has been traveling from state to state trying to assist with recommendations of "research-proven" methods of teaching literacy. According to Leos, many schools are looking into sheltered immersion methods of bringing students up to par, and with this, the Department of Education has recommended teaching ELLs using alphabetic phonetics, phonetic awareness, guided group reading, emphasis on grammar and vocabulary, and direct instruction (teachers explaining the process of reading to students).

"When English speakers learn to read they already know the [spoken] language. But non-English speakers don't have the same repertoire. A lot of this needs to be taught," said Leos, who has all too often seen U.S.-born ELLs reach fifth grade without being able to read. ("They are removed from class, taken to the cafeteria, and then a paraprofessional is given a piece of paper with a lesson plan to implement.")

Although Gutierrez sees value in using the teaching methods that Leos described, she has argued strongly for a much broader educational palette in teaching literacy along with content. She also believes that NCLB has placed testing "front and center" to a fault and has "conflated learning English with learning content."

"We limit the kinds of literacy. The way I define literacy includes more than the acquisition of skills and strategies, which is what is being done now. It includes social and cultural knowledge of when to use these skills and how to engage in texts. Because you learn English, that doesn't mean you become literate," she said. "Language is a powerful tool for learning. There's a time for deep learning in which you have to use your full tool kit. To privilege the acquisition of skills and strategies in the absence of learning is not learning."

Although Leos said that schools could use ELLs' native language to initially teach content, Gutierrez pointed out that the emphasis on high-stakes testing in English has placed intense pressure on teachers to use English at all times, regardless of students' language abilities or their need to learn high-level content in their native languages.

"What I see now, even in the high-performing schools where primary language is allowed, is a default toward English because of the pressure of accountability," she said. "There's more test preparation. Kids are learning how to take the tests in the absence of building literacy skills. And, in the end, people don't assume ELLs can engage in rigorous learning activities."

When asked what kind of literacy practices she has found successful for ELLs in her research classrooms (her students teach an after-school elementary program and she runs a migrant summer program), Gutierrez said, "The way you address kids is to let them engage in a variety of literacy activities, such as writing (writing has been almost absent in the classrooms we've observed) and engaging in conversations about texts in the language of choice. The very simple opportunity to make sense of the texts in their own language helps them be a lot more successful. We can also help them participate in different activities as authors and listeners, and as translators. A lot of these kids do this all the time for their parents, but we never tap into their potential."

For Gutierrez, building literacy requires that learning English not be the only goal of the classroom-being literate in the full sense of the word entails making use of all languages. Unfortunately, as she sees it, learning English has become the primary goal of NCLB, and as a consequence, ELLs are quickly falling behind in acquiring deep learning and content. "In the past couple of years, effective teachers have been changing their practices. They are unremarkable practices," she said.

Despite her concerns, however, Gutierrez does agree with Leos that NCLB "is putting these kids on the map." Now the challenge is to see what people are doing about it, and, as congressional representatives have recognized, fixing what is not working.

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