Test scores soar for Hispanic elementary students in second language program

Students at a Lexington elementary school, who once lagged in their test scores, are now near the front of the pack.

Cardinal Valley Elementary in northwest Lexington, which has the most Hispanic students of any school in the district, crumbled many of its language barriers by reinforcing lessons with methods more commonly found in high-level foreign language courses.

The school incorporated English as a Second Language practices — styles similar to those usually found in high school French or German classrooms that reinforce vocabulary and language comprehension through special activities — into subjects like social studies, math and science.

As a result, Cardinal Valley pushed the number of students proficient in English from 48 to 75 percent, according to state test scores. The school also increased the time specialized instructors spent with students who need extra language lessons.

“We believe by immersing children in a language and giving them strategies for learning a language, they can actually be quite self-sufficient,” Cardinal Valley Principal Ivonne Beegle said.

During the past decade, the number of Hispanic students enrolled at Cardinal Valley increased sharply, from roughly 30 percent to 68 percent today, according to school records and officials.

And, administrators said, as the number of students who didn’t share a language in common with their teachers rose, academic testing showed a distinct fall in English language comprehension.

Turn around in student achievement

Of the 16 children who took home overall distinguished honors this year — the highest academic achievement level on the Kentucky Core Content exam — 12 of them are ESL students who have spent two or three years in the school’s redeveloped language programs.

Beegle said this means the majority of her school’s best students spoke little to no English when they entered the school. She estimated that at least 40 percent of her students do not hear English spoken at home.

Liga Abolins, director for University of Kentucky’s Center for English as a Second Language, said it’s common for young students to find success with strong ESL programs in elementary schools.

“I’m not surprised (with the school’s growing achievements),” Abolins said. “Kids are very adaptive. There’s something about an immigrant population that knows it has a good chance here if they learn the language.”

When 11-year-old Fernando Cruz found out he was getting an award for his high scores, he wrote outgoing Superintendent Stu Silberman, asking, “Why don’t you bring me my medals yourself?”

Silberman was unable to do so but sent a special note of congratulations along to Fernando.

Just three years ago, Fernando’s grades were slipping, and end-of-the-year testing showed his language skills lagging behind. But his teachers reinforced these skills through ESL techniques and helped him set and achieve academic goals.

Fernando, bashful in front of strangers but still succinct, listed what he studied over the last year at Cardinal Valley.

“I learned about light and heat, and division and multiplication, comprehension and reading,” Fernando said, while smiling shyly.

As Fernando finishes his last year of elementary school and readies to enter sixth grade, his exit test score of 237 indicated a knowledge base of a child exiting the seventh grade, according to nationwide Measures of Academic Progress scoring, which helps faculty measure a student’s knowledge progression as they change grades.

The difference in instruction

John Hayes, Fayette County Public Schools director of student achievement, attributes much of the school’s successful switch in instruction styles to the knowledge Beegle — a fluent Spanish speaker — brought to the school from her time as an ESL content specialist with the school system.

“They’ve got this phenomenal percentage of kids performing at the proficient language level,” Hayes said.

Beegle helped the school system develop more rigorous ESL programs for all of the county’s schools before becoming Cardinal Valley’s principal in 2007, he added.

Most schools use an intensive “newcomer” program where students who need extra language tutoring can attend specialized classes, and ESL instructors are more likely to work alongside other teachers supplementing standard classrooms lessons.

But with such a large Hispanic student population, Cardinal Valley needed an even more intensive and customized language program.

“She understands the needs of these English language learners, where as a lot of people might not,” said Betty Yu, Fayette County’s elementary and middle school ESL content specialist. “She really has a handle on that, based on where the student’s language proficiencies are.”

Cardinal Valley has five full-time ESL instructors who float between multiple classes to supplement standard subject lessons with vocabulary and language building activities.

Students are not removed from “mainstream classrooms” for extra language help but taught techniques — like maintaining their own content dictionaries — that help them sustain their own language development alongside their classmates in regular classes.

This creates classrooms where students are immersed in English and forces them to communicate with their fellow students in a common tongue through group activities.

“(The students) need more visual and graphic organizers as well as content objectives,” Yu said. “They need to have the ability to talk with their peers and opportunities to practice their academic language.”

Eight other teachers are certified to teach bilingually. Beegle said these teachers can quickly explain complicated lessons in Spanish to keep students learning English on track with the rest of the class.

The school’s goal is to bring the number of bilingual teachers to 12 through extra training and state certifications, which Beegle believes will help push literacy and language comprehension further toward the 100 percent proficiency mark that federal academic standards are calling for.

“To learn a language, you have to actually talk to someone that speaks that language and use that language,” Beegle said. “So rather than pull them out into a separate classroom, we actually integrate them directly into the classroom and provide support to them in that room.”

Amy Kennedy first started at the school as an ESL instructor before becoming a fifth-grade homeroom teacher in 2009. As one of the school’s bilingual instructors, she said she leverages her ESL background effectively in core subjects like social studies and quickly helps students grasp complicated topics via Spanish when necessary.

“During guided reading, I will print off stories in Spanish and English,” Kennedy said. “We read the books in Spanish in order to build their background and knowledge. … Then we will commence to reading the same material in English.”

She said activities like this reinforce language retention and understanding, and her students create their own content dictionaries and other self-learning resources, which builds independence in language development.

Beegle said the changes the staff at Cardinal Valley has made over the past five years have been aimed at making children like Fernando fully proficient in English, removing barriers that could have slowed them down for the rest of their lives.

As the staff keeps refining the ESL program, end-of-the-year testing scores continue to increase. Academic scores from the 2009 to 2010 school year showed student reading pushing past the projected goal of 96 to 100.6.

“Our goal is to have them career-ready, for whatever profession they choose,” Beegle said. “We’re teaching our kids how to branch out and tap other resources that will allow them to reach the American Dream, go to college.

“We want them to aspire to be whatever they want them to be.”

Photos: Eleven-year-old Fernando Cruz has jumped to the top of academic achievement thanks to Cardinal Valley Elementary’s revamped English as a Second Language program.