Poster #28 - Association Between English Learner Classification and Bilingual Skills Among Preschoolers from Spanish-Speaking Homes

• In Event: Poster Session 10

Abstract

A third of preschool and early elementary school-aged students in the U.S. live in households where a language besides English is spoken (MPI Data Hub, 2019), and about half of these children are designated as English learners (ELs) by their school district (NCES, 2021). In elementary school, ELs have civil rights protections identified in a 1974 Supreme Court case, Lau vs Nichols, which determined school districts must ensure that all students can “meaningfully participate” in educational programming without language barriers (Lhamon & Gupta, 2015). Yet unlike in elementary school, there are no federal policies specifying rights and protections for EL students in preschool, and little is known about whether EL classification procedures developed for elementary school students are relevant to preschoolers.

The present study addresses this gap in the research using data drawn from the Tulsa School Experiences & Early Development (SEED) Study, a longitudinal study of the educational experiences of children with economic disadvantage in Oklahoma, one of 36 states that use a combination of a home language survey and the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) English language proficiency assessment to assign EL status from pre-K to grade 12 (Villegas & Pompa, 2020). We aim to document the cross-sectional variation in English and Spanish skills among bilingual preschoolers from economically-disadvantaged, Spanish-speaking households (N = 312) at the start of preschool, and how such skills relate to school-district EL classification from administrative records. Children’s English literacy skills were assessed using the letter-word identification subtest from the Woodcock-Johnson III Academic Achievement Tests (Woodcock et al., 2001), and English oral language skills were assessed using the Expressive Vocabulary and Sentence Structure subtests from CELF-P2 English (Wiig et al., 2004). In addition, Spanish oral language skills were assessed using Expressive Vocabulary subtest from the CELF-P2 Spanish (Wiig et al., 2009).

Based on school administrative records, 184 Spanish-speaking preschoolers were classified as ELs while 128 Spanish-speaking preschoolers were not. On average, non-EL bilinguals scored higher than EL bilinguals on all English assessments (p < .001). Although EL bilinguals had lower scores on average, the distributions overlapped considerably (Figure 1). Additionally, logistic regression models predicting EL classification from English language skills revealed that only English expressive vocabulary was a significant predictor of EL classification among bilingual preschoolers (OR = 0.21, SE = 0.05, p < .001). There were no differences in Spanish expressive vocabulary skills between EL and non-EL bilingual preschoolers. Indeed, the EL bilinguals showed a bimodal distribution (Figure 1) suggests that some bilinguals classified as ELs in preschool are Spanish dominant, whereas others scored low across both English and Spanish.

For preschoolers, EL classification may be insufficient to inform instructional support for linguistically diverse preschoolers with developing English and Spanish skills. Gaining a holistic understanding of bilingual children’s skills across both languages can provide better insights for educators to best meet their students’ needs and protect their right to meaningful education, whether or not they are officially classified as English learners.

Authors

• Anne Partika, Georgetown University
  Presenting Author

• Gigi Luk, McGill University

• Anna D. Johnson, Georgetown University