ELL Classes Projected to Increase by 150 Percent

The number of classes in Tennessee for students who don’t know English is expected to triple in the next five years. According to Education Week Magazine’s annual Quality Counts report, that’s the fifth highest rate of growth in the nation.

Eleven states offer scholarships or tuition grants to attract teachers of English Language Learner, or ELL, classes. Tennessee is not one of those states. Researcher Sterling Lloyd says it’s not clear that kind of program would help fill the growing need.

“Most states don’t have a lot of experience trying to increase the population of ELL teachers or ESL certified teachers, so it’s a little bit early to determine how well these incentives are working.”

Tennessee’s ELL students move towards English proficiency at a faster rate than the national average, although it should be noted that each state sets its own proficiency standards. On standardized tests, the performance gap between ELL students and native English speakers is close to the national average in both Math and Reading.

WEB EXTRA:

Tennessee earned a B+ and a fourth in the nation ranking for enacting policies that help students transition through school and on into college and the workforce. It’s just the most recent in a string of reports to give high marks in this area.

The state earned just a D+ for its spending on schools. Half of that grade came from indicators that measure how fairly state money is distributed among school systems. However, as is often the case in these sorts of studies, the latest available data was several years old. In this case, that means it predates the “BEP 2.0” funding model currently used by the state.

The report gives Tennessee a C- in its “Chance for Success” category, which looks at factors such as parents’ income and education level, how many adults finish college, and the language spoken at home.

The state’s overall grade also includes scores based on student achievement, testing standards, and policies regarding teachers, but Education did not actually do any new evaluation in those areas. Instead, last year’s scores were rolled over and included in the average. Next year, the report will analyze those categories, and will roll over the scores for transition, finance and success.

Overall, the state scored a C+. The national average was a C.