July 16, 2006

RALEIGH – North Carolina schools need better teaching methods to help students with limited English speaking skills. That’s the recommendation in a new John Locke Foundation Spotlight report.

“The best way to teach English to students with limited English proficiency – or LEP – is through universal training in and adoption of Direct Instruction methods,” said Terry Stoops, JLF education policy analyst. “Direct Instruction is a proven, research-based way to teach English as a second language.”

Using Direct Instruction, teachers can immerse students in both their native language and English at different times during the school day, Stoops said. “Teachers follow a script, allowing them to keep students continually engaged by moving at a faster pace than traditional methods of instruction,” he said. “To address different needs, students are grouped according to ability. They’re assessed frequently.”

Adopting new methods would help schools deal with a growing number of students who struggle with English, Stoops said. “The number of LEP students has been increasing for years, but the state’s public schools lack a systematic and proven program to teach English to these children,” he said. “Reading scores among students who are learning English remain low, especially among high school students.”

Most LEP students speak Spanish as their primary language, Stoops said. In the 2004-2005 school year, the state spent $467 million to educate more than 100,000 Hispanic students.

The number of illegal immigrants within that student population is unclear, Stoops said. The state fails to track the number of illegal immigrant students. But a recent study from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise offers some clues.

“The report estimated that 45 percent of North Carolina’s Hispanic population do not have legal residency,” Stoops said. “Using the Kenan estimate, this means that the state spent $210 million on schooling for around 45,600 illegal immigrant students, or 3.4 percent of the total student population.”

Regardless of the number of illegal immigrants in the public schools, a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision guarantees each student a “free and uniform education,” Stoops said. “It is not a question of whether the state should provide illegal immigrant children an education,” he said. “The question is what kind of education it should provide.”

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction now allows local school systems to use any instructional model for their LEP students, Stoops said. The recommended approach is called the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP).

“Astonishingly, it is not entirely clear what SIOP is or how it works,” Stoops said. “It appears to be education jargon for a program that encourages teachers to teach using many different types of supplementary materials, such as graphs, models, objects, and films. It also requires them to modify their speech to accommodate the students’ proficiency level.”

This program leads to a wide variety of teaching styles, Stoops said. That variability makes it impossible to determine the effectiveness of SIOP methods. “Rather than use the instructional model recommended now by the state, school districts should implement a systematic program of Direct Instruction.”

Now is the time to make the change, Stoops said. “Both immigrant families and policy makers agree that, in order to make a lasting contribution to North Carolina’s economy, immigrant children must become fluent in English,” he said. “The one consistent finding in education research is that Direct Instruction is the best way to teach English to limited English proficient students.”

Terry Stoops’ Spotlight, “Teaching Immigrants English: Direct Instruction Is the Best Way to Teach Limited English Proficient Students,” is available at the JLF web site. For more information, please contact Terry Stoops at (919) 828-3876 or [email protected]. To arrange an interview, contact JLF communications director Mitch Kokai at (919) 306-8736 or [email protected].