Notes on School success and failure

The reading was a study done by Guadalupe Valdes that studied the language issues immigrant children are forced to deal with. She had been selected as the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest lecturer for the 1998 AERA annual meeting. Valdes started the study in 1991 that focused on schools in Mission Vista, a city in the greater Bay Area. It is primarily focused on two students: Lilian and Elisa.

Lilian was a bit of a "problem child" while enrolled in school. She rarely participated and spent more time socializing with friends rather than working the assigned activities. She didn't really try so it was no surprise that she was never able to transition out of the ESL program.

Elisa was more like a model immigrant student. She was shy but respected the teacher and tried her hardest to learn English. She strived to make it out of the sheltered curriculum with little luck. Despite her efforts, she was still told to enroll in ESL classes despite her increase in English proficiency.

Valdes reveals that the young students in the school ESL program were expected to learn English quickly, but their exposure to proper spoken English was minimal. There were usually 35 to 40 students in each class and teachers were poorly equipped to provide the instruction the students needed. Classroom instruction usually consisted of copying vocabulary/sentences and coloring. Students rarely progressed out of the program. Teachers who taught the regular courses simply catered to the majority of native English speakers and they weren't willing to adjust to a new student who struggled or had proficient but broken English. The fact that policymakers believe immigrant children are learning English does not help the cause.