Achievement Gap Between ESL And Ells

After reading the chapter 3, one of the most important points that really stood up to me is that the curriculum development is perceived as a multilevel and multi sector process and as a collaborative effort. How important is it as a teacher, an administrator, and as a parent to understand the five levels of planning if the curriculum does not cater the needs of the bilingual/ESL students? From state to the classroom, each level exercises authority over levels below it. As mentioned by Olivia and Gordon (2012), in Developing the Curriculum, “standardized tests of achievement and textbooks used in the schools have played a great part in molding the contemporary curriculum….achievement tests profoundly affect what is being taught and how it is

However, at the beginning, it is hard to narrow the achievement gap between the mainstream students and the ELLs because acquiring a language is a process where BICS and CALPS are involved, therefore one year of ESL is not enough, besides research has demonstrated that a person will need between five to seven years to acquire a second language (Crawford, 2004). It is unfortunate to see that there is a no proper language development program for ELLs that can help them to perform better on the standardized tests, but still the ELLs are trying hard to cope up with the constant pressure of testing. As a bilingual teacher, it is concerning to know our students are not given the opportunity to have equal access to state testing, since PARCC testing will only come in Spanish for the Math portion and not for the Language Arts section. How can it be possibly fair to assess them in a language unknown to

I believe that the “classroom planning is far more important than any of the successive steps” (p.39). At the classroom level, the teachers can follow their grade level curriculum by using differentiated strategies according to the students’ proficiency levels which ensure academic and linguistic growth in learning. Evaluations and the assessments of the students’ learning can provide a true picture whether the curriculum is effective or beneficial for the students to grow in future or not. The results of curriculum planning make their impact on their learners. In theory and in practice, groups and subgroups were formed and reformed continuously depending on their learning needs, goals, and interests and on the teachers’ individual competencies (p.45). However, in our “decentralized system of education, authority for education is reserved to the states” (p.41). The regional and international sectors may seek to bring about curriculum change, but only through persuasion by working through state and local levels