Chapter 5

The mismeasurement of students who are considered by districts to be English learners is all-too-common, highly consequential, and in some cases, illegal. Three factors collide. First, there’s the semantic confusion. After all, we’re always learning English. What is the line that distinguishes the degree of English fluency of a 6-year-old from a family that speaks English only, from a 6-year-old whose family speaks Spanish and occasional English? Second, there’s the logic problem of trying to define the attributes of a group of people whose members change over time. Today’s English learner may very well be reclassified next year as English fluent. Third, there’s the measurement problem itself. How, exactly, do you assess kindergartners’ four dimensions of fluency—reading, writing, speaking and understanding—reasonably accurately, and then combine those four factors into one number that’s well suited for a decision that has huge consequences for the student, and expensive consequences for the district?

In the interest of untangling the mess that’s been made of this, we will proceed with care, in light of the harm that has resulted from misidentifying students at the start of this process; creating high hurdles for them to clear to exit English learner status; misclassifying some English learners as students with disabilities or special education students; and denying English learner students access to the core curricula and college-prep electives.

Let’s begin to untangle the semantic and logical confusion by pretending we’re a visiting delegation of Vulcans from the Starship Enterprise. Vulcans are high in logical thinking and low in emotional intelligence. To understand what makes an English learner different from other students, we have to ask the Earthlings some naïve, fundamental questions.

Aren’t all 5- and 6-year-old students learning English? Why do you only call some of them English learners?
Why are some students who have partial mastery of two languages called multilingual, and others called English learners?
How do you know when they have learned English?
How long might a quick learner take to become English fluent? How about a slower learner?
When students are unable to write, how can you evaluate their thinking or determine if they’ve learned a lesson?

We Vulcan visitors have by now discovered that academic English is an entirely different flavor of English than that which is written in text messages or spoken on the playground. We’ve also learned that the key to school is reading and that the language of instruction is English. So those who can’t read English or those who can’t decode English words can’t get to the knowledge and skills they’re supposed to attain. We can now unravel this riddle, viewing the strange, illogical habits of earthlings from the Vulcan’s point of view….