The Increasing Challenge of Bilingual Education

At last week’s school board meeting, Nicole Ramirez, special programs coordinator, gave a report on the Bilingual/English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for the 2022-23 school year.

There are two different programs occurring in LGISD. Some of the students in grades PreK-2 participate in bilingual-transitional early exit. In this program, instruction in literacy is through the medium of the student’s first language and math, science, and social studies are taught in English. There are other students in grades PreK-12 who participate in the ESL (English as a Second Language) program. That program has two components. 1. Content Based ESL serves students identified as English learners through English instruction by a teacher appropriately certified in ESL through English language arts and reading, science and social studies. 2. Pull out ESL serves students identified as English learners through English instruction provided by an appropriately certified ESL teacher under TEC, through English language arts and reading.

TEA requires that if there are 20 or more students in one grade level from PreK-6th grade, whose first language is not English, there needs to be bilingual certified staff at those grade levels. LGISD has filed an exception for this program because the district has been unable to find/hire enough bilingual certified teachers for this district. This is the 23rd year that the district has applied for the bilingual exception. The exception was given for five bilingual teachers. LGISD has made recruiting efforts at the La Grange ISD Job Fair, Texas A & M, University of Texas, Sam Houston State University, Stephen F. Austin University, and Texas State University. The bilingual teacher stipend is $3,000.

There are a total of 332 students who qualify as emergent bilingual (EB)/English learners (EL). Of those 327 are currently participating in the program. The other five students are not participating due to parent denial. This number has continued to increase over the last few years going from 259 students in the 2019-20 school year to 332 in the 2022-23 school year.

Each year all the student who qualify for this program must take a federally required assessment called TELPAS which stands for the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System. This assessment is designed to measure the annual progress that ElS make in learning the English language.

There are four levels of English proficiency on the TELPAS assessment: Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Advanced High (which is the required level for exiting the program.) Students at each of the levels will demonstrate the following abilities: Beginning –

• Early stages of learning English Intermediate –

• Able to use common, basic English in routine academic activities Advanced –

• Able to understand and use academic English in classroom activities when given some language support Advance High –

• Able to use academic English in classroom activities with little support, even when learning about unfamiliar material In the 2022-23 school year, 193 students were considered to be at the beginning level, 66 at the intermediate level, 94 at the advanced level, and 26 at advanced high. That is 379 students being monitored and/or tested. While most students are assessed, there are some that are only monitored. That group includes students in PreK and those who have exited the program by passing the TELPAS.