What It Takes for English Learners to Succeed

Tomás sits quietly in his 4th grade class hoping the teacher won't call on him. When working with his peers, he is able to understand most of the assignment but feels that he has to whisper in his native Spanish to ask a peer for help. Independent reading and writing tasks are difficult for him, and he often does not finish these assignments on time. Tomás has attended the same school for four years, but there are still times when he feels like he doesn't belong. He wants to do well and make his family proud, but he struggles to make sense of what the teacher expects of him.

Tomás is representative of a growing number of students in U.S. classrooms, those who have spent more than five years in U.S. schools but have not yet attained fluency in English. Students like Tomás are at great risk for becoming long-term English learners. These students account for a large portion of secondary English learners—estimates range from 30 percent to 70 percent—and most have been in U.S. schools since kindergarten (Olsen, 2010). Yet research (for example, August & Shanahan, 2010; Short, Echevarria, & Richards-Tutor, 2011) points to effective practices for preventing English learners from becoming long-term English learners. And we have found that under the right conditions, English learners can participate fully in rigorous lessons and achieve high academic standards (Echevarria, 2012; Frey, Fisher, & Nelson, 2013). The effective practices we've seen in research and our own experience can be divided into four areas: access, climate, expectations, and language instruction.

Access