Study Shares Newcomer Schools' Best Practices

Students watch an educator pour water as part of an experiment on erosion at the Columbus Global Academy in Columbus, Ohio. The academy enrolls about 460 students in grades 6-12, all of whom are recent arrivals to the United States.

—Maddie McGarvey for Education Week

Adolescent immigrants face big challenge: time

When adolescent immigrants enroll in American public schools, time is not on their side.

Within as few as four years, they must learn English, master academic content, and adapt to American culture. Some, lacking formal schooling, may not be literate in their native languages.

But a small number of programs around the United States offer promising practices for teaching such students for other school districts to emulate, according to a new national research study from the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Practical guidance on working with this vulnerable group is crucial: "Newcomer" students make up one slice of the nation's more than 5.3 million English-language learners, the fastest-growing population of students in public schools. Increasingly, these newcomers are moving to communities where educators have little or no experience working with students having such academic and social needs.

Financed by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the new report by the Washington-based research center draws on survey data collected over three years from 63 newcomer programs at middle and high schools across the nation. Researchers Deborah J. Short and Beverly A. Boyson also have compiled a searchable database of those programs. (Carnegie also helps support coverage of district and high school reform inEducation Week.)

For their analysis, the researchers delved into the attributes that successful secondary newcomer programs share as they help adolescent students overcome multiple learning challenges in a short amount of time. Beyond offering instruction in beginning English, many newcomer programs teach core academic courses and provide social services to help newcomers and their families adjust to living in the United States.

"The key is for educators to know exactly who their students are and to design a program that meets their needs," said Ms. Short, a senior research associate. "You have to start with the basics for many of these students. And it's clear that you can benefit these students even if you are only able to do a little bit to support them."

Impact of NCLB

Special programs serving recently arrived immigrant teenagers who are English-learners began appearing in school districts during the 1970s. Most enroll students for a limited period—one or two years—before the students transfer to a regular language-support program such as English as a second language or bilingual education. In 2000, the Center for Applied Linguistics collected data from 115 newcomer centers around the country.

But several programs closed down in the years after the federal No Child Left Behind Act became law in 2002 because of accountability pressures, Ms. Short said.

Maryan Abdullahi, 17, works on her chemistry homework at the Global Academy. Ms. Abdullahi, a junior, was born in a refugee camp for Somalis in Kenya.

—Maddie McGarvey for Education Week

"The whole-school programs would never reach proficiency under ...

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