Creating a Plan for a Culturally Diverse Classroom - Essay Example

ROOM ATTN DRAFT FORM ORDER IS ON HOLD THIS WILL BE POSTED ONLINE IF YOU TRY TO HAND IT IN WITHOUT PAYING ACADEMIA-RESEARCH.COM ELL includes their ability to get materials out in other languages so that parents can understand, but it also involves focusing on English in the classroom situation. “Entry and exit procedures for bilingual programs have been severely criticized over the years. Children have been inappropriately assigned to native language classrooms due to the use of unreliable tests or on the basis of ethnic group identification. Once enrolled, students have been wrongfully kept in bilingual programs, years beyond the time they needed it” (More, 1996). This is a potential problem for school management and teachers because devising an evaluation measure that works across the board naturally, according to some, denies the individuality of teachers who all have a different teaching and learning style, making it difficult to judge them by broad and ill-defined standards. Also, what works for one teacher may not work for another. The situation is one in which many dedicated individuals go about the act of teaching in different ways, which makes it hard to impose an outside standard on their activities in terms of a “one-size-fits-all” approach. This is why communication and learning are so vital to the management process, as effective communication between teachers and social workers is one way of overcoming this obstacle. The social worker needs to be especially up to date on these cases as well because other kinds of research really don’t show the way clearly. “Modern research findings on bilingual education are mixed. As with all educational research, it is so difficult to control for complex background factors that affect academic outcomes that no single study is ultimately satisfying… the conflicting evidence from these studies does not suggest that abolishing bilingual programs would change results much” (Rothstein, 2000). If there is no empirical evidence one way or the other, it falls to look towards the courts and legislators. Part B Legislation review: The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 This piece of legislation was one of the first to address issues of growing numbers of students in US classrooms who could not speak English. The legislation was primitive by today’s standards and was rather quickly replaced by another piece of legislation in 1974 that was better in terms of addressing assessment issues. However, it is important to know about this Act because it represented a first move forward in terms of Title VII empowerment for bilingual programs. “The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 provided supplemental funding for school districts interested in establishing programs to meet the special educational needs of large numbers of children of limited English speaking ability in the United States” (Bangura, 2001). The problem being investigated in questions raised by the Act is the efficiency and quality of bilingual education programs vs. ESL programs in the light of theoretical processes involving bias, acculturation, and multiculturalism, for the general education teacher. For one thing, questions revolve around the presences and effects which bias, discrimination, acculturation, expectations as regards to status, and multiculturalism, have on the bilingual educational process. Questions also focus on the interrelationships and comparisons made between countries in terms of the bilingual education services offered. The efficiency of different types of bilingual programs, such as immersion programs, is also a factor that can be argued. Since this is mainly a theory-based type of question that collates data with theoretical perspectives and seeks to ground the theory in legislation, this is not a mixed type question that employs both quantitative and qualitative elements. Most of the existing literature in supply seems to stress the notion that ESL teaching needs to stay within the target language rather than being bilingual, and that thus general education teachers can still facilitate English language learning even without being able to speak the student’s native language. However, the Act seems contrary to this message, even though it was a significant step forward. “Funding was provided for planning, developing and operating bilingual education programs; preservice training; early childhood and adult education; student retention programs; vocational retraining programs; and developing courses dealing with the history and culture of the language minority group” (Bangura, 2001). As mentioned, the legislation had a major flaw: it didn’t really account for the assessment of the new bilingual programs. “A major shortcoming of the 1968 Act was its failure to systematize means of determining success in programs funded under the act. Thus after the first five years, little was known about what comprised successful programs or what progress had been made to overcome obstacles” (Bangura, 2001). Some of these drawbacks were solved in future legislation, which also tended towards provision of bilingual education. Even if the execution was questionable, it is still important that this Act opened the door to new mandated opportunities for those for whom English is not the first language. Importance to social workers: There are many perspectives in extant legislation regarding how best to accommodate ESL (English as a Second Language) students, or ELL (English Language Learners). Social workers need to learn how to accommodate these students while still keeping general goals of academic and social learning in mind. Expert social workers have a wide-ranging base of experience with which to address policy issues of ESL inclusive classrooms and help create classroom environments that show a great degree of cross-pollination with the world outside of the classroom. They are able to reach students and teachers with concepts that will help them generally as well as having mastered the specific subject materials based on legislation. Social workers are also better able to relate to students and teachers on a level that fosters mutual respect and understanding in creating a learning environment when they are informed about relevant legislation. In their everyday duties, expert social workers show how the legislation is interrelated to the lives of the students. “The intent of the ESL Standards was to have individual states or districts develop curricula based on the standards and describe their own proficiency levels and benchmarks for performance. Standards implementation activities are very important because of widespread high stakes assessment” (Rothstein, 2000). These high stakes standardized tests, a relatively new part of NCLB initiatives, are often heavily weighted, and conducted in English. On one side of the argument, the parents of many children in Brooklyn claimed that their children were not being adequately educated in English-Spanish bilingual classrooms, so that they were winding up not being able to speak English or Spanish. “A case brought by families in Brooklyn, most of them Hispanic, to free their kids from an ever expanding bilingual ed bureaucracy. Some of the most compelling evidence came from Latino parents who felt that their US born sons and daughters had been coerced into programs that left the children illiterate in two languages” (More, 1996). In terms of what the issue of accommodating ELL represents in terms of the researcher’s preconceptions, the case of Bushwick vs. Mills supports English as a Second Language programs as a primary way of reaching students who come into the system speaking another language. Bangura, A (2001). United States Congress and Bilingual Education. New York: Peter Lang. Lavilla, S (2000). An education on bilingual ed—Lau vs. Nichols. Rothstein, R (2000). Bilingual education. PDK International. Lau v. Nichols (2000). http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Jwcrawford/lau.htm More discrimination—Bushwick Parents Organization vs. Mills (1996). Read More