{"id":887,"date":"2005-05-12T00:50:22","date_gmt":"2005-05-12T08:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/05\/12\/educational-conundrum\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:23:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:23:39","slug":"educational-conundrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/05\/12\/educational-conundrum\/","title":{"rendered":"Educational Conundrum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n

\n\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n

One-third of the state’s public elementary school students — that’s more than 1.5 million children — are classified as English learners.<\/p>\n

Currently, the schools face conflicting incentives over how to deal with these students.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, NCLB [No Child Left Behind] requires California schools to increase the number of students they reclassify from English learner to English proficient. On the other hand, the act requires all groups — including English learners — to show improvement in academic achievement. By themselves both requirements are reasonable.<\/p>\n

Schools should strive for improvement in English proficiency as well as academic achievement among their English learners. But if students haven’t reached a certain threshold of English proficiency, they simply cannot demonstrate their full academic ability on tests that are given in English.<\/p>\n

Under the current law, increases in reclassification are likely to cause decreases in academic test scores for English learners because the most proficient — and consequently highest scoring — students are no longer part of that group. So, with improvement required in both areas … where does the incentive lie?<\/p>\n

And then there’s the financial lure: Schools now receive additional funding from NCLB for each English learner student they have, but once they reclassify a student from English learner to English proficient, they lose that money. So again, where does the incentive lie?<\/p>\n

–Christopher Jepsen, ‘No Child Left Behind’ leaving English-learners behind?<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read more in English Learners in California Schools<\/a>, by Christopher Jepsen and Shelley de Alth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One-third of the state’s public elementary school students — that’s more than 1.5 million children — are classified as English learners. Currently, the schools face conflicting incentives over how to deal with these students. On the one hand, NCLB [No Child Left Behind] requires California schools to increase the number of students they reclassify from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28,29,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-humanities","category-regional","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11965,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions\/11965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}