Analysis and Highlights
The purpose of this study was to describe the types, operations, administration, staffing and parent involvement efforts of local education agency (LEA) services for limited English proficient (LEP) students and to provide this information for the 1993 reauthorization of the federal elementary and secondary education programs. The nationally-representative sample, conducted by Development Associates, Inc., is based on mail, telephone, and on-site surveys of state, district, and school personnel.
LEP Student Characteristics
The number of LEP students is growing. There were 2.31 million LEP students in public elementary and secondary schools in the 1991-92 school year. This is a 70 percent increase in the eight years since the 1984 Descriptive Study.
The concentration of LEP students varies across districts. Approximately 43 percent of the nation's school districts enroll LEP students. While approximately 24 percent of these districts serve 9 or fewer LEP students, 8 percent of the districts serve a thousand or more LEP students.
Most LEP students are young. Over two out of three LEP students are in grades K-6, 18 percent are in grades 7-9, and 14 percent are in grades 10-12.
Almost three out of four LEP students speak Spanish as their native language, followed by Vietnamese (4 percent), and Hmong, Cantonese, Cambodian, and Korean (2 percent each). About 2.5 percent of our nation's LEP students speak one of 29 different Native American languages.
Some LEP students are not immigrants or recent arrivals. Forty-one percent of the LEP students in US elementary schools were born in the US. Of the Spanish speakers at all grade levels, 40 percent were born in Mexico, 7 percent in Puerto Rico, and 39 percent in the US.
Criteria for Services
Schools with large numbers of LEP students are less likely to rely simply on teacher judgement and more likely to use multiple indicators, including standardized assessments of language proficiency, to determine student eligibility for services.
The most common methods used by schools to determine a student's English language proficiency are tests of oral proficiency in English (83 percent of districts) and a home language survey (77 percent of districts). Other measures used, often to complement these measures, are teacher judgement (70 percent), achievement tests in English (52 percent) and writing samples in English (46 percent). Districts with few LEP students were the most likely to rely on teacher judgement.
Assessment is primarily in English. Approximately one third of districts test for oral proficiency in the child's native language and 12 percent of districts test for achievement in the child's mother tongue.
To determine a student's eligibility for language related services, 86 percent of the districts reviewed student proficiency in English at least once a year--over a third of these districts assessed student proficiency in English at least twice a year.
Instructional Services
The major determinant of native language services in a district seems to be the presence of large numbers of Spanish speaking LEP students, particularly in the elementary grades. Moreover, Spanish LEP students are concentrated in specific schools and districts which have high numbers of LEP students. These districts utilize resources under special state funding for LEP students and federal Title VII resources. In summary, a district with a high number of LEP students who are Spanish speaking utilizes more native language instructional services; a district with few LEP students with a diversity of native languages spoken by its LEP students is less likely to utilize native language instructional services. Most of our nation's LEP students reside in districts that fit the former, not the latter category.
Nearly half of State education agencies (SEAs) require local districts and schools to provide special services to LEP students. Almost all these states require English as a second language (ESL) services and two-thirds require instruction in content areas using native language if feasible. Many other states recommended appropriate services. Twenty percent of states did not require or promote particular services to LEP students.
Only 22 states (43 percent) provided state funds designed specifically for administration and/or provision of instructional services to LEP students.
English as a second language instruction is offered by 56 percent of the schools with LEP students (with 11 percent of them offering ESL with some use of native language, and 45 percent offering ESL with no use of native language). Approximately 17 percent of schools offer intensive LEP services with significant native language use.
Aides provide significant translation and instruction services. In elementary schools with special services to LEP students, almost half the teachers have an aide in the classroom; in middle and high schools, 16 percent do. Teachers say the aide's work includes instruction (89 percent), translating between teachers and students (31 percent), translating between staff and parents (22 percent) and other instruction related tasks.
Student opportunities to practice language skills are limited by the mode of instruction. Teachers reported that 43 percent of instructional time involved a teacher or aide talking to students, 29 percent involved students talking to or responding to the teacher or aide, and 28 percent involved students talking to other students.
Use of Native Language in Instruction
There is not extensive use of the child's native language in instruction in most schools serving LEP children. One quarter of districts serving LEP students offer elementary school instruction that includes use of the child's native language in 60 percent or more of total instruction. This drops to 11 percent of districts in middle school and 9 percent in high school. Just under a third of the districts with over 1,000 LEP students offer such instruction at some grade level. The strongest predictors of the presence of intensive services for LEP students were the number of LEP students in the school and the percentage who were foreign born.
Few schools offer native language services in languages other than Spanish. Four percent of districts with LEP students offer extensive native language instruction in languages other than Spanish in elementary grades. At the middle and high school levels, this falls to 3 percent.
Staff Characteristics
Many regular classroom teachers provide instruction for LEP students. Over 363,000 teachers (15 percent of the nation's teachers) had at least one LEP student in their classes(s). Two-thirds of the teachers serving LEP students were main classroom teachers; another 18 percent were main classroom teachers serving mainly LEP students. Only 10 percent of teachers of LEP students were certified in bilingual education, and 8 percent in ESL.
About 80 percent of all districts report having "some" to "a lot" of difficulty recruiting bilingual teachers of Spanish and other languages. Over half (53 percent) report having the same difficulty hiring ESL teachers.
Eighty percent of districts with LEP students provided inservice training to teachers of LEP students, and 57 percent offered such training to classroom aides. Less than a third of the districts supported college training for teachers. Districts with larger numbers of LEP students were more likely to provide both inservice training and support for college courses than districts with fewer LEP students. All districts with 1,000 or more LEP students offered inservice training while less than two-thirds of districts with less than 25 LEP students did. The number of hours ranged from 34 hours annually in districts with the largest number of LEP students to 9 hours in districts with the smallest number. Classroom aides, on average, received 9 hours of inservice training annually.
Despite the training provided, only 55 percent of all teachers of LEP students had taken relevant college courses or had received recent inservice training related to teaching LEP students. Only about one-third of teachers of LEP students had ever taken college courses concerning cultural differences and implications for instruction, language acquisition theory and teaching English to LEP students.
Among teachers of LEP students who speak Spanish, only about two out of five teachers reported sharing the language of their students with at least moderate proficiency. This fell to 7 percent for other language groups.
Receipt of state funds for instruction of LEP students and receipt of Title VII funds were the two strongest predictors of the amount of inservice training offered by districts.
Overall, teachers report that parents of LEP students are substantially less involved in school functions or as classroom or school volunteers than parents of non-LEP students. Involvement of the parents of LEP students is highest in elementary schools.
Parent involvement is higher under certain circumstances. The best predictors of involvement in school by parents of LEP students were the presence of language competent teachers, the percentage of LEP students in the school, and the presence of Title VII funds.
Student Performance
Comparisons of the achievement of LEP students with the general student population are not generally made by school districts. Less than half the districts which served LEP students compared the achievement of LEP students with other district students in English reading, English language arts, and mathematics--and less than 20 percent did in science, history, or geography.
Over three out of five schools report followup of the achievement of former LEP students, primarily through standardized test results and classroom grades. The study did not collect information on services provided to former LEP students.
In those schools which maintained achievement data on former LEP students, schools were asked how such students compared with their non-language minority peers. Over half of the schools with such data reported formerly LEP students were performing at levels equal or above their peers while 43 percent of the schools reported formerly LEP students were performing "somewhat" or "considerably" below their peers.
For more information please write the Planning and Evaluation Service, Office of the Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Room 3127, Washington, DC 20202-8240.
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Last update December 27, 2002 (jer).