Big question: when?

There's a lawsuit underway in St. Paul, Minnesota schools on behalf of a family who says the public schools made their high-school aged ELL child take mainstream classes alongside fluent English speakers while only having rudimentary English proficiency and reading on a 2nd grade level. They also assert that the district waited 14 months (too long) to address a suspected learning disability. This brings me to the big question in ELL education: when? When is a student ready to take mainstream classes?

I think it depends on the individual learner, but also depends on state mandates for what high school students are supposed to be learning.

When is a student ready to take mainstream classes? Well, if research says ELLs need 5 to 7 years to master CALP, and students enroll in 9th grade not speaking any English, we really don't have time to wait those years for them to develop advanced proficiency before exposing them to mainstream content classes. Ready or not, ELLs will be plunked down into these courses alongside English-speaking peers, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. First of all, we do not want to segregate ELLs completely from their school community, so it's not good to keep them in only sheltered ELL classes their whole high school career.

Secondly, if content teachers are trained and capable, they can make their content accessible to students learning English just as they modify their instruction for SPED, students who are below grade level, or other individual differences in students. I worked this summer on taking content courses that are requirements for graduation and retooling them so that they would be accessible to students in their 2nd or 3rd semester of learning English. Instead of pushing them into content courses where the language of delivery is not accessible, let's bring the content down to them and meet them at their level of language. My state only has criteria for when students EXIT ELL services, but not for when they ENTER mainstream classes. Out of our 30+ graduating seniors this year, not ONE had met the exit criteria but had obviously been taking mainstream content classes to meet the requirements for their diploma.

Finally, readiness for mainstream classes also depends on the individual student. Some students pick up the language more quickly, have more motivation and perseverance, and are ready to move out of sheltered ELL classes sooner than others. Other students need more time in developmental English classes until they find their footing both with the language, but also in adjusting to the expectations of high school academics. It's also worth noting that many parents refuse ELL services or transfer their children to schools with smaller ELL populations because they believe their children will learn English faster in an immersion environment. Having been the mainstream English Language Arts teacher and having one student in that class speak zero English while everyone else was reading novels in English, yeah, that's not an ideal learning situation for that ELL, so I don't agree with skipping over ELL services. I don;t think we'll make everyone happy because families and educators have different perspectives on where children should be placed on the spectrum from sheltered ESOL to mainstream content classes.

When is it appropriate for ELLs to be in the mainstream? Sooner than we think, but not too soon!