Linda Dawson is IASB director of editorial services and Journal editor.
Once upon a time, in suburbs not very far away, there existed a little school district with 3,500 students and five school buildings. One day in the early 1990s, the school board in the little district noticed that more and more houses were being built where there once had been prairie grass and cornfields.
As the houses began to spring up, families began moving in and the number of students in the little district began to grow. And the number of students grew ... and it grew ... and it grew ... more than anyone ever could have imagined.
School board members began to feel like the old woman in the shoe, because they had so many children that they almost didn't know what to do. Board members realized they soon would need more and more school buildings to house more and more students, so they began building schools.
In 1996 and each year thereafter, the district was either building or opening at least one new school until 2009-10, when the sawdust subsided and board members surveyed all the changes that had come upon the district.
Their little district had grown so fast that it now had nearly 29,000 students in 30 buildings ... 17 elementary schools, seven middle schools, four high schools, an alternative school and an early learning center that also housed the district offices.
And while all of this building was going on, the school board realized another phenomenon was happening in the district: many more students than ever before did not speak English.
In just four years, the number of English Language Learners (ELL) grew from 612 students to 2,237. And it wasn't just one other language. There were 69 different languages represented in the schools. Most spoke Spanish, but in a number of different dialects; others spoke Polish, Urdu, Arabic and Filipino.
The board members knew as these ELL student numbers kept increasing that they would need to address their challenges in unique ways. So they looked at their programs, planned for their classes and even sent representatives to Mexico to seek out and interview teachers for their increasing Hispanic population.
And, to complicate matters during this same time, federal and state officials implemented No Child Left Behind. It called for ELL students to be tested and to achieve at the same grade level as those students who spoke English. That made the little district push even harder to show gains in reading and math scores.
So the little district that now was a great big district that spoke many languages housed it students in new buildings and worked hard to lead them to high rates of achievement.
At this point, most fairy tales would end with, "And they all lived happily ever after ... The End." But this story is not finished.
The "fairy tale" above is a true story, according to Tom Hernandez, director of Community Relations in Plainfield CCSD 2002. It's "The Magnificent Story of District 202" and the story is still being written.
Addressing the problems
District 202 is not unique. According to statistics quoted by Claude Goldenberg in the Summer 2008 issue of American Educator, the number of ELL students in the U.S. rose from one in 20 in 1990 to one in nine in 2008. And, he added, demographers estimate that number could rise to one in four over the next 20 years.
The question isn't just: "How can we educate these students?" The question now is: "How do we help these students to embrace their culture, language and heritage and become fluent enough to pass test benchmarks in English?"
Under Illinois' statewide bilingual education requirements, districts with 20 students in the same language in the same building must provide transitional bilingual education (TBE) for those students. IASB has lobbied to make that requirement optional instead of mandatory, but as it stands, the magic number is 20.
For Plainfield, that means 14 of its 17 elementary buildings offer TBE services for Spanish-speaking students and all seven middle schools and four high schools offer TBE support in core content areas. Numbers are near the threshold for services in other languages as well.
According to Carmen Acevedo, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, Plainfield's preschool hit the magic number of 20 for Polish-speaking students this year. The question now is one of whether they are concentrated in one neighborhood or if they live throughout the district.
"If they all go to the same elementary school, we will need to offer TBE services (in Polish)," Acevedo said. Or, if enough enroll in a school that already has a fairly high number of Polish students, they could push that school over the mark.
Linda Hoste, who took over as District 202's director of English Language Learner programs this school year, said one building now has 17 students who speak Urdu, putting them very close to the threshold for TBE in that language.
The conversations about language acquisition have been courageous and ongoing since the district began acquiring more students with language needs, Acevedo said. And the first step always needs to be awareness by the district.
"We looked at the aggregate data," she said, "which brought our attention to different subgroups. We began with a tutoring approach, but just tutoring doesn't help a child."
The District 202 approach is based on sound educational theory, Hoste said. "If they are grounded in their own language, their transition is easier. When transitioning they have something to hold onto."
That theory is substantiated by a 1998 study by Catherine E. Snow, M. Susan Burns and Peg Griffin that found supporting literacy and language skills in the first language provides a base for successful literacy development in the second language.
So, in a first-grade TBE class at Creekside Elementary, the walls are filled with Spanish words. Students read Spanish books. They speak mostly Spanish with their teacher, Sandy Figueroa.
But as three little girls stand in line waiting to go to lunch, they chatter animatedly, alternately in Spanish and English.
Figueroa does the majority of her instruction in Spanish, with 30 to 45 minutes of English content for science and social studies, according to Creekside principal Kevin Slattery.
Most of the time, these students stay in the TBE program while they are in elementary school, Slattery said. Although students can exit the program, they are still monitored.
People often have misconceptions about bilingual education, assistant superintendent Acevedo said. "We're capitalizing on the strengths students bring and formalizing English as a second language.
"They (students) don't go from reading in Spanish, drop that and then start reading in English. Some skills transfer. We focus on the non-transferable skills."
Acevedo gave language sounds as an example: "In English there are 26 letters and 42 different sounds. In Spanish, you have 29 letters but just 26 different sounds. They're learning in Spanish for transition into English."
Vocabulary importance
At Ridge Elementary, staff always has an ELL component for in-service training, according to Eileen Nelson, Ridge's principal who is in her eighth year at the school.
"It was evident from the first year that we needed to gain knowledge about second language learners," she said. But recently increased emphasis has focused on student's oral language.
"Watching TV and not talking to the kids in the car are taking their toll on vocabulary," she said.
The issue of vocabulary also is important as it relates to testing. It's the difference between using "surface language," Acevedo said, and academic English, or the difference between the way students talk on the playground with friends and how they need to write a response to a question in the classroom.
"Take, for example, the concept of the food pyramid," she said. "How will children understand the concepts of meat and potatoes when mostly they eat tortillas and frijoles?"
To help students with their vocabulary, Ridge has initiated an after-school program where Becky Schneider, a first-grade teacher, works with students in a more relaxed setting.
"We work with word ladders ... how to think about things differently," Schneider said of the after-school activities. "We need to get them talking with teachers and each other."
And the teachers talk to each other about their students.
Nelson said she attended a conference two years ago and realized that one of the things the school had not been doing was making use of cooperative learning structures. When she came back, all 38 staff participated in a five-day training session.
"We make sure they continually speak about what they're doing," Nelson said.
"There's no ostrich stuff here," said Hernandez, district director of community relations. "They're building their systems as well as their schools. The curriculum changes are all teacher driven. They see the challenges every single day."
At the middle level
If students begin with pre-school in District 202 ... or even with kindergarten ... by the time they reach middle school they are transitioning into more English-speaking classrooms with TBE supports. But the need for language support is growing.
Sharon Alexander is in her fourth year as principal at Aux Sable Middle School. They began their TBE support with one half-time person. They currently are at three TBE staff and project they will need four soon.
At this level ... sixth, seventh and eighth grades ... students are more "mainstreamed" but still taught in a format known as Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP).
In the "sheltered format," they use native language only as needed, according to Maria Sherrill, who works with Aux Sable's TBE program. "SIOP in regular ed classrooms helps students understand terminology" in their native language while they're getting the bulk of their teaching in English.
Alexander said middle school students are really making their transition into English. There's nothing on the wall in Spanish to take cues from.
At this age, students often feel peer pressure to fit in and not be different from the others around them ... and speaking a different language can set students apart. However, Alexander said the teachers and staff stress the importance of being respectful of others in all that they do. During her four years, she said, just one student has come forward to cite it as a problem.
Translating to achievement
In spite of the growth and demographic shifts, Plainfield District 202 has consistently increased achievement, according to Hernandez.
"We are above averages overall and decreasing the number who are not meets or exceeds," he said. And the achievement gap between subgroups also is narrowing.
In 2003-04, 63 percent of all Plainfield students met or exceeded standards in grades 3-8. By 2008-09, that number had increased to 82 percent. But the more amazing data shows Hispanic students meeting or exceeding standards at a rate of 51 percent in 2003-04 (a gap of 12 points) and 72 percent in 2008-09 (a gap of just 10 points).
The same gap closure is evident for African-American students as well. In 2003-04, the meets or exceeds percentage was just 43 percent. By 2008-09, 75 percent in that subgroup were at meets or exceeds, just 7 percentage points behind the entire population.
The district works hard to identify students who are not meeting standards through various tests — Discovery benchmark assessments, DIBELS and Curriculum Based Measurements — to name a few.
Their work initiatives fill the screen on a PowerPoint presentation available on their website:
And the list goes on.
"As a newcomer, I was impressed by the leadership of the principals and their wonderful 'can-do' attitude," said Linda Hoste, District 202's ELL director. "They understand the data of the students and they get them in the right classes for their needs. They have an aligned curriculum, but with the freedom to adapt."
Having come from other districts, she credits the success with the culture of learning that has been built in the district.
To build such a culture also takes direction and good policy from the school board.
Michael Kelly came onto the school board in 1997 as the influx of new students was really starting to grow. He said the board credits the district's staff and supportive community.
"The board was responsive to the growth to make sure that we had a seat for every kid who came to our door," Kelly said. "We had to build schools fast. There was no time for a design process each time."
So the board and administration came up with a plan to do a template school, a plan that saves both construction time and money.
"If you have the template, you're looking at contractors and subcontractors who have done this before," he added. If the template doesn't exactly fit with the available land, it can be flipped and adapted with ease.
While construction has slowed during the recent recession, the board and administration are well aware that district demographers predict more growth. The number of new students slowed to between 400 and 500 this school year, the district's community relations director Hernandez said. But demographers believe that number will increase to 800 to 1,000 again once the recession is over.
Why? Anecdotally, Hernandez said, they hear from the mayors and community leaders in the seven communities that District 202 serves that people see the American dream here.
"We have had an excellent reputation for many years," he added. "They find lower taxes than in the city."
"They also came because of job opportunities," curriculum and instruction's Acevedo said. "Plainfield lies along the I-55 corridor with many distribution centers that can be seen from the highway. They have good access to rail transportation. The growth has nowhere to go but up."
"The saying has been, 'don't stand still, they'll build something around you,'" Hernandez said.
Kelly said that, based on the 64 square miles in the district, only half is "built out." "If it builds out as it is, the original projection was for 55,000 students," which is nearly double what the district houses now.
How many of those predicted new students will be English Language Learners is still an unknown. But Plainfield, the little district that grew, appears to be poised and ready to take them in.
Resources
Claude Goldenberg, "Teaching English Language Learners," American Educator, Summer 2008
Plainfield NCLB Board of Education Report, http://www.psd202.org/Documents/AssessmentPresentation.pdf
Plainfield Association to Nurture Diversity Awareness, http://www.pandaplainfield.org/
Catherine Snow, M. Susan Burns and Peg Giffin, editors, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1998
Engaging parents of ELL students
Tom Hernandez, director of community relations for Plainfield CCSD 202, has a dream that someday everything that comes out of his office will be in both English and Spanish ... and maybe someday even Hindi and Polish.
Right now, not all materials are translated for parents. But with issues such as the recent N1H1 flu challenge, the district made certain that letters going out to families were in both English and Spanish.
The district does have a translator and individual schools may do things differently based on their student populations, he said.
But beyond the distribution of written materials, the district has a bigger focus right now: creation of a district Equity Action Team to be the "eyes and ears" for the superintendent on race and equity issues, as well as Equity School Advisory Councils to get parents more involved.
Bea Young of The Kaleidoscope Group Inc., based in Chicago, is guiding the district through the process.
"Plainfield does not have a positive image regarding race," Young said. So when board member Michael Kelly approached her about doing something in the community, their first project was to create the Plainfield Association to Nurture Diversity Awareness (PANDA) ... because "it's black and white."
While that group is still active in the community, the equity team and councils want to take the district to a new level of diversity awareness. They have conducted homogeneous focus groups in an effort to get more honest answers, she said, and the district's diversity plan now holds each of the assistant superintendents accountable for results.
Young said their three beliefs are:
What the district is looking for is systemic change involving diversity issues, Young said. It's an ongoing process, not a single event. Just as with the district's building program and its Transitional Bilingual Education, equity issues take time and planning.
But, she added, other districts she's working with all look to District 202 and its ongoing processes as a model to emulate.
Glossary
English Language Learners (ELL) — Those students whose first language is something other than English. They are learning the English language at the same time that they are trying to master subject content.
Cooperative Learning Structures — Various interactive instructional procedures where students work together on academic tasks in small groups to help themselves and their teammates learn together.
Curriculum Based Measurements (CBM) — Assessment instruments designed to assess progress in basic skills using tests with common features. These tests are standardized, short, easy to administer and score, technically adequate and sensitive to student improvement.
Discovery benchmark assessments — A universal screening method administered three to four times each school year. Discovery is the company that provides this testing for Plainfield.
Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) — A formative literacy assessment used to screen children in grades K-6 for reading difficulties, monitor progress and guide instruction.
Plainfield Association to Nurture Diversity Awareness (PANDA) — A coalition of local business, government, religious and educational leaders who recognize the challenges and opportunities created by the many changes to the community in recent years. The coalition's goal is to foster ways to empower people to live in conscious and active awareness of the blessings and benefits of the community's evolving diverse population.
Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) — A research-based approach to teaching that makes grade-level content comprehensible for English Language Learners while they are developing English proficiency. Teachers develop a student's ability to communicate in English within the content area.
Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) — A program to provide academic instruction in a student's primary language while they learn English for academic purposes.
Word Ladders — Word game attributed to author Lewis Carroll. In order to win, a player must work progressively to change a "start" word into an "end" word, creating an existing word at each step by adding a letter, removing a letter, changing a letter or using the same letters in a different order.