GILROY
– A program for English Language Learners at Las Animas
Elementary School has proven so successful that the school district
is creating steps to implement it at other schools.
GILROY – A program for English Language Learners at Las Animas Elementary School has proven so successful that the school district is creating steps to implement it at other schools.
Gilroy Unified School District’s only bilingual education program – dual immersion – may be responsible for accelerated improvement among English learners, compared with those not in the program, Olivia Schaad, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, told the school board earlier this month.
Dual immersion, which currently serves kindergarten through third grades at Las Animas, teaches students in English for one half of the day and Spanish in the other half. A 13-member English Language Learners task force – with district representatives, principals, teachers and a parent – re-convened this spring to evaluate dual immersion and plan steps other schools should take when implementing the program.
Schaad presented school board trustees with data indicating that dual immersion could be a more effective program for improving English language and reading skills, but did not show faster improvement in math. She cautioned that the numbers are untrustworthy at this point.
“These are preliminary data that are being collected; it’s better to look at this data over time,” Schaad said.
The district compared the scores of 18 dual immersion students with scores of 97 non-dual immersion students, Schaad said. Standardized reading scores for dual immersion students improved 16 percentage points versus 5 percentage points for non-dual immersion students over a one-year period. Also, of 40 dual immersion students, 69 percent were reading at grade level by the end of kindergarten, compared to 62 percent of 40-50 regular program students. At the end of first year, it was 76 percent reading at grade level versus 52 percent.
Trustee Bob Kraemer again cautioned against depending on the preliminary numbers.
In addition to offering a specially structured program, dual immersion at the kindergarten level is full-day versus half-day for other schools, students in the program are purposely enrolled by their parents, teachers often stay with one class for more than one year and more attention is focused on the program, he said.
“I’m concerned that this is really research,” Trustee Bob Kraemer said. “I think there are so many variables.”
Superintendent Edwin Diaz said dual immersion students’ success is more an indication of the total package offered by the district.
“Not only with dual immersion, but with all our instructional improvement efforts, it’s going to be hard to find the program that does it…” he said.
The district will continue to monitor dual immersion students’ progress compared with other students, he said.
Regardless, the English Language Learners task force has developed a plan for other schools, largely funded by grants. Some of the steps include using parents and school leadership to develop a program plan and ensuring parent and volunteer support for dual immersion.
“Overwhelmingly, the national research shows that the dual immersion program is the only one that maintains longevity over time for both (English Language Learners) and non-ELL,” Schaad said.
