How well do dual-immersion programs serve English learners?

A first-grade boy points out letters of the Korean alphabet in a dual-language immersion classroom.

Credit: Allison Shelley for American Education

If you look at English learners’ third-grade reading scores in English at Dolores Huerta International Academy, a dual-language immersion school in Fontana Unified, you might not be too impressed.

But if you look at how students who began school as English learners do over several years, you see huge growth.

Just 12.5% of English learners in third grade at the school were reading and writing at grade level in 2022, according to their scores on Smarter Balanced, the state’s standardized test. That’s lower than the statewide rate of 16.8%.

But the number of students who were once English learners reading and writing at grade level increases in each grade at the school, surpassing the statewide numbers in fourth grade. In sixth grade, 42.85% of students who were once English learners met or exceeded standards in English language arts, higher than the statewide rate of 34.66%.

These aren’t the same students — that is hard to measure this year because most students didn’t take standardized tests during 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Still, it shows a pattern.

It’s actually a common pattern for dual-language immersion programs. These programs sometimes take longer to get students to proficiency in English, but several studies show that by the end of elementary school, they have at least the same number of students proficient in English as programs that teach students only in English. Longer-term bilingual programs that continue into middle or high school often have better achievement.

In addition, students in dual-immersion programs tend to have better reading and writing skills in their home languages than those who have been taught only in English.

“The problem is using the third grade test scores, when they haven’t been instructed much in English yet,” said Laurie Olsen, a researcher and leading advocate for English learners. “What we know over and over again from research is that by fifth or sixth grade, they’ve both caught up or surpassed in English reading the kids that have been in English-only instruction, and they have literacy in a second language.”

In California, 747 schools had dual-language immersion programs in 2019, according to the California Department of Education. Languages taught include Spanish, Arabic, Hmong, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese and many others.

Dual-language immersion programs are designed to teach both students who are fluent in English and students who are fluent in another language so that both groups of students retain their home language and learn a second language. Some programs teach students half the day in English and half in the other language starting in kindergarten. Other programs teach students mostly in the language other than English in kindergarten and gradually add more English each year.

It’s hard to track exactly how English learners do over time because the English learner population is constantly changing. As children become fluent in English, they are reclassified as “fluent and proficient in English” and are no longer counted in the English learner group. As new children immigrate and enroll, they are added to the English learner group.

At the same time, the group of students who have been reclassified as fluent in English by definition does well, since proficiency is a requirement to be reclassified.

A more accurate way to track achievement over time is to look at “ever English learners,” a group that includes both students learning English and those who were once classified as English learners but are now classified as fluent in English.

Many school districts point to their dual-language programs as helping English learners do better in school.

Still, dual-language immersion programs vary in achievement and still have room to improve, some researchers point out.

In a recent paper, Claude Goldenberg, professor emeritus at Stanford University, and Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan, bilingual speech-language pathologist, wrote that bilingual education can help students “become bilingual and biliterate” and “attain modestly higher levels of English proficiency, including English literacy skills.” Still, they wrote, many students do not attain fluency within six years, becoming long-term English learners, even in bilingual programs, including dual-immersion programs.

“By itself bilingual education will not lead to educational equity for English learners. If it is to succeed in doing so, it must incorporate findings from other streams of research — and work toward findings yet to come,” they wrote.

Martha Dueñas, director of multilingual programs and services at Fontana Unified, said that in dual-language programs like Dolores Huerta International Academy, teachers must focus both on language development in Spanish and English and reading and writing in both languages. The academy follows a 90/10 model, meaning that they teach 90% in Spanish in kindergarten and gradually add more English until they are teaching 50% in English and 50% in Spanish.

“For instance, in the early grades, in the 90/10 model, we only have 10% in English. You have to make the best use of that time,” said Dueñas.

The principal of Dolores Huerta International Academy, Sandra Loudermilk, said the school has made a conscious effort to help students achieve fluency in English by the time they graduate.

“Our program is still really young, but we’re really focusing on making sure that our students reclassify before they leave us,” said Loudermilk. “We really want to make sure that by the time they leave us, they are speaking, reading, writing in both languages.”

Loudermilk said that means focusing on reading and writing skills and speaking, using academic language in both languages. She said, teachers give students a lot of time to do group work where they discuss their work.

“That’s where it’s really important that we have the [native] English and the [native] Spanish speakers,” Loudermilk said. “That’s where they’re able to clarify for each other; they teach each other; they work well together, and that’s where they’re developing oral skills.”

She described visiting a fourth grade classroom where students had to create an instrument out of recycled materials and then present in front of the class about how they made it.

Loudermilk said she makes sure that teachers have a list of their English learners at the beginning of the school year, and their latest scores on the English Language Proficiency Assessment of California, the state’s standardized test of English proficiency for students who do not speak English at home.

Teachers also look at students’ data from the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress test, which is given to students in the district every year from kindergarten to 10th grade and measures student achievement based on common core standards both in English Language Arts and Spanish Language Arts. The school also uses Istation to test students’ reading skills in Spanish. If a student is doing better in Spanish, then teachers can see whether those skills might be transferable to English or not, Loudermilk said.

Loudermilk said it’s important for teachers to be able to see their students’ strengths and weaknesses so they can target those skills.

“As a classroom teacher, you’re so overwhelmed with everything that you need to be given that time to really look at where the kids are at, really digging deep into where their weaknesses are so we can be targeting it,” Loudermilk said.