AZ’s ELL English Immersion policy studied, found lacking

by David Safier

UCLA's Civil Rights Project has pulled together a number of abstracts and papers about Arizona's 4 hour English Immersion policy for ELL students. Two of the studies come from UA.

The verdict: At best, the program is no more effective than other states' ELL programs. At worst, it's harmful to the students.

The worst aspects of the program are the segregation of ELL students from everyone else — one study refers to the classrooms as "Mexican Rooms" — and the fact that high school ELL students lose any chance of taking their required classes while they're in the program.

Then there's the problem with the all-or-nothing aspect of the program. Either students are in the 4 hour ELL block, or they're out in the cold without any ELL help or supervision. The "cut scores" to decide who stays in ELL and who is considered proficient in English are arbitrary. And many students end up spending more than one year in the "Mexican Rooms," even though one of the justifications for the intensive program is to bring the students up to proficiency in a year.

Tom Horne and his cronies came up with this scheme without any serious scholarship to indicate it would work. It's just one of many punitive measures the Republicans continue to take against all these "undesirable people" who we have to tolerate (unless we can give them incentives to leave, like SB1070), but we don't have to like. If we can't lock all of 'em up, at least we can put 'em in educational prison cells and keep 'em away from the students who are smart enough to already know English.