Bilingual students do better on tests than native English speakers. Why?

Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

A group of elementary school girls listens to their teacher during class.

Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

A group of elementary school girls listens to their teacher during class.

Zaidee Stavely

February 6, 2023

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Students who were once English learners but are now proficient in English do better on average on California’s standardized tests than students who only speak English.

Some district leaders and advocates for English learners celebrate this achievement as a sign that districts are preparing English learners well. Some researchers, however, say it is a sign that the bar for students to be considered proficient in English is too high.

“It’s kind of like a chicken-and-egg situation,” said Nicole Knight, executive director of English language learner and multilingual achievement for Oakland Unified School District. “Are they performing so well because they’ve demonstrated that they’re performing at grade level, or are they performing so well because they’ve hit a critical point that accelerates their learning?”

About one-fifth of students in California are learning English as a second language and have not yet achieved proficiency. Another sixth were once English learners but have now learned enough English to be reclassified as proficient.

In 2022, 58.8% of students who were once English learners but are now considered proficient in English met or exceeded the state standard in English language arts on Smarter Balanced, the state’s standardized test, compared with 51.8% of students who speak only English at home. Among students still learning English, only 12.5% met or exceeded the state standard.

Students who spoke English and another language fluently before entering school performed even better, with 72.7% meeting or exceeding the standard.

Performance varied among districts, however. For example, in San Francisco Unified, 69.7% of reclassified students met or exceeded the standard versus 61.6% of English-only students. In Oakland, 57.1% of reclassified students met or exceeded the standard, versus 43.5% of English-only students.

In Fresno, 52.5% of reclassified students met or exceeded the standard versus 32.3% of English-only students. But reclassified students in Los Angeles Unified were comparable to English-only students, with about 47% of both groups meeting or exceeding the standard, and in San Diego Unified, contrary to most of the state, fewer reclassified students than English-only students met the standard.

Fresno Unified, San Francisco Unified and Oakland Unified pointed to their bilingual programs that help support students in both becoming fluent in English and retaining their native language as one reason why former English learners are high achievers. Some research shows that knowing more than one language boosts brain development.

“Everything we know about the bilingual or multilingual brain is that it’s going to make you a better learner,” said Knight. “I do think that’s one of the reasons why reclassified students do well — they’re not just proficient in English, they’re bilingual.”

However, many researchers said that former English learners are outperforming native English speakers because only students who perform well are able to be reclassified as proficient in English.

“What’s happening there is that you’re pretty much taking the cream of the crop,” said Pete Goldschmidt, a professor who teaches about research methods and program evaluation at the School of Education at CSU Northridge.

In order for English learners to be reclassified as proficient in English, California requires that districts take into account a student’s score on the English Language Proficiency Assessment of California (ELPAC), a test all English learners must take every year until they are proficient, teacher and parent input, and student performance comparable to students who are proficient in English, which can be shown by tests such as Smarter Balanced or reading tests.

“If fewer than half of your students are meeting the standard, but you’re going to require English learner students to be at the standard to be reclassified, how is that justified?” said Laura Hill, policy director and senior fellow, Public Policy Institute of California.

Each district decides what score a student must get on tests such as Smarter Balanced or reading tests to be reclassified as proficient.

“If they set that cut point high, what that means is that they’re basically taking the best-performing students from the English learner pool and moving them into the reclassified pool,” said Laura Hill, policy director and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “So those students might be performing better than the average English-only student in their district because, as we know, not even half of all students are meeting the standard statewide.”

Hill says districts should consider how their average students who speak only English do on tests, when setting criteria for English learners to be reclassified.

“Let’s not set the standard higher than our average student is meeting. If fewer than half of your students are meeting the standard, but you’re going to require English learner students to be at the standard to be reclassified, how is that justified?” said Hill.

A survey conducted by PPIC in 2020 found that among districts that use the Smarter Balanced assessment for reclassification, about half required that students at least meet the standard in English language arts on the assessment to be reclassified.

Since then, some districts have changed their reclassification requirements to align more closely with the average score of their peers who speak only English. Fresno Unified, for example, changed reclassification requirements for 2022-23, so that English learners can reclassify if they have a score of “nearly met” in English language arts on the Smarter Balanced test, instead of having to meet the standard.

“It is important that criteria do not serve as an obstacle to reclassification for our multilingual learners,” wrote Diana Díaz, a spokeswoman for the district. “Truly, the first criteria of ELPAC score of 4 is highly rigorous. … Local criteria do not need to be more rigorous than ELPAC.”

The California Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment on the reclassification criteria.

If reclassification criteria are set too high, researchers said, students may remain in English language classes that can keep them from accessing advanced courses and electives, particularly in middle and high school.

“Certainly what I’ve seen is that English learners don’t have the same access to AP courses or other courses that play a role in preparing for college,” said Goldschmidt.

At the same time, researchers say districts should be wary of reclassifying students too soon, which could deprive students of language instruction they still need and make it harder for them to do well in other academic classes.

“A majority of kids do get reclassified, and if they do well, why do we want to lower [the bar]?” said Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, strategic advisor for Californians Together, a statewide coalition of organizations advocating for English learners. “We set a cut score that has a predictive value of succeeding. If you lower it, you’d have to look at it to see, does it still hold, do students still do well?”

Some researchers and advocates have suggested that California should consider whether an ELPAC score alone is enough to determine whether to reclassify a student as proficient in English. Spiegel-Coleman said first, she would like to see a study by the California State Department of Education to analyze whether students who do well on the ELPAC also perform well in class and on other tests.

Some researchers also said it would be helpful if the state gathered and shared more data on when students were reclassified as proficient in English.

“Reclassified students, especially as you look at secondary grades, do need additional attention and support,” said Manuel Buenrostro, associate director of policy for Californians Together. “When you start looking at the data in high school grades, even starting in middle school, you start to see a little bit of a dropoff in achievement.”

Data on when students were reclassified would help show whether students continue to do well on tests several years after they are no longer receiving extra instruction in English language.

“We’re trying to push California to disaggregate results by the year they were redesignated,” said Goldschmidt. “If you don’t know which year [students] got redesignated, you don’t know whether the trend is stable or not.”

Researchers agreed that academic performance of current English learners and reclassified students should be looked at alongside how many English learners are becoming proficient in English.

“It’s OK if a school has really low academic achievement for current English learners, if and only if those children are being reclassified over time in large numbers and doing really well as reclassified English proficient kids,” said Conor P. Williams, senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Still, California is ahead of some other states that do not gather data on English learners once they have been reclassified.

“California deserves commendation that it is even possible to tell this story because they gather data on RFEPs and share it publicly. That is not yet the norm in many states,” said Williams.

EdSource data journalist Daniel J. Willis contributed to this article.

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