The Effects of NCLB on ELL students

I chose the article "Promise or Peril? NCLB and the Education of ELL Students" by Cohen, Murray, and Clewell. This article, as well as the reading in our textbook (Ch 6), talks about hows negatively No Child Left behind has effected students who do not speak English in US school systems.

The article discusses how NCLB is implement in high ELL schools, What has been the effect on high-ELL school improvement, and what has been the effect of NCLB on ELL students in high-ELL schools? The article address each of these questions by observing three different districts and there approaches to the problems and how the various solutions work and don't work. This article is long but interesting because it describes different ways to interpret NCLB and ways schools can use it to their advantage to help students.

Part of this article that really stuck out to me was that in our text, the term Limited English Proficient (LEP) was considered abandoned because of its negative connotation and even offensive meaning behind it. The article used this term freely and repeatedly, however it was published in 2007 when this term was perhaps still in circulation with ELL.

http://www.urban.org/publications/411469.html
PDF:  http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411469_ell_students.pdf

Retention In Middle School

Jane David talks about retention in this article and how it is in place in schools but does little to help students while not being cost beneficial. Jane talks specifically about African American males having the highest risk of being retained in a school career at least once. One of the more interesting parts of the article is the discussion of the research done and the negative affects that retention has had on all students such as in the article, one paragraph talks about students with retention rates have much higher drop out rates in high school, meaning the correlations are becoming to close. The article talks about solutions to correct problems such as summer school or after school programs, instead of placing them in the same grade for a second time. Students are losing self-esteem and motivation needed to succeed.

I really enjoyed this article because of how closely it tied into the reading into chapter with retention. The book talks about retention having no positive effects on students and causing only further harm to the students while the article goes further in depth and talks about the costs and some possible solutions. Some of these solutions could be more useful then others like after school programs.

 http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar08/vol65/num06/Grade-Retention.aspx