Student Characteristics, School Characteristics, ESL Programs, and the Reading Achievement of 10th-Grade English Language Learners

• In Event: 32.083 - Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 32.083-8 - Efforts Toward Educational Equity for Bilingual and Emergent Bilingual Children

Abstract

English Language Learners (ELLs) are students whose native language is other than English, and who often experience difficulty learning successfully in English only classrooms (Meyer, Madden, & McGrath, 2004). English as a Second Language programs (ESL) are one of the English learning programs that are designed to meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse ELL students (Rennie, 1993). This study examined the relations between student characteristics, school characteristics, ESL programs, and tenth grade ELL students’ reading achievement. Results of multilevel analysis based on the nationally representative data from Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 showed that ELL students’ race, SES, English fluency, school types and poverty were all significant predictors to reading achievement. Significant interactive terms were also detected.

Authors

• Liyun Zhang, University of South Carolina - Columbia

• Sandra Lynn Rogelberg, University of South Carolina