Did the Students Learn?

James Robinette

Article

Did the Students Learn? A Dual-Language Story During the Pandemic

Teaching during the pandemic offered many different challenges. Teaching in a dual language school offered even more challenges. As a two-way dual language school, teaching and planning for the success of the students and staff doubled the number of challenges. The questions then raised is “Did students enrolled in the dual-language program fail to learn during the pandemic?” Or “What does the data tell us about the effectiveness of the dual-language program?” To answer this question, one must identify why there was a need to deviate from a traditional model of teaching in the dual language program in our district.

The Problem

Identifying how the students were going to get a proper dual language education in alignment with the program model was the task at hand. As a two-way dual language school with a 50/50 model, the students learn half their day in English and the other half in Spanish. English Language Arts and Spanish Language Arts are taught daily, math instruction in the program is taught daily in Spanish in grades K-2 and English in third grade. Throw in the fact that the district offered a remote learning model as well as a half-day hybrid model, tripled the difficulty

level for students and staff by adding interchangeable time constraints. It became very evident that we were not going to be able to teach with fidelity using our program model.

Creating a half-day hybrid model for a 50/50 dual language model doesn’t necessarily add up. As we worked through many different schedules, offering students the same language allocation each day was not possible. However, having the students receive the same amount of English and Spanish over a portion of time could be a possible solution. This was accomplished by combining both hybrid and remote models over two weeks to achieve the that stayed somewhat aligned with our English and Spanish language allocations, we created a huge concern. Dual language students would not be receiving math instruction daily! This was not ideal and did not align with the district’s plan for pandemic learning yet had to be done to keep the fidelity of the dual-language program.

The End of Year Data

With the knowledge of the situation described, the results can be discussed. During the pandemic, the district utilized a standard-based local math assessment for grades K-6 to determine the effectiveness of math instruction,

Students in grades K-2 who were enrolled in the dual-language program outperformed many of the students not enrolled in the dual-language program in many different mathematical standards...

language allocations necessary. After many, many different schedule drafts and hours playing Tetris with the duallanguage classes, a sufficient schedule was created. Just like creating any schedule, when one attribute is changed, many other attributes change as well.

Even though we were able to identify a way that we could create a schedule Fountas and Pinnel assessment for reading, as well as the 2021 IAR assessment for students in grades 3-8. The school’s dual-language program is currently operating in third grade which meant that the students would be taking the IAR assessment for the first time. Taking the IAR assessment is a big task in a normal year but turned into a massive task during a pandemic.

Third grade IAR is where we will begin. Out of all the students in third grade that met or exceeded expectations based on the preliminary IAR math assessment scores, 62% of the students were enrolled in the dual-language program, and 78% of the students in third grade that met or exceeded ELA expectations were enrolled in the duallanguage program.

Students in grades K-2 who were enrolled in the dual-language program outperformed many of the students not enrolled in the dual-language program in many different mathematical standards on the standards-based math assessment. The third grade students enrolled in the dual-language program outperformed the students in the traditional classroom on every standard!!

The Fountas and Pinnel (2021) reading assessment was given to students in grades K-3 to identify if the students were making progress in reading during the pandemic. This assessment was done in English for all students. Amongst students that were reading at or above grade level in kindergarten, over half (55%) of the students were enrolled in the kindergarten dual language program. Similar trends were identified in first grade (86%), second grade (83%), and third grade (56%).

The End of Year Realization

A concern going into the year was the lack of math minutes because of the program model and the need to utilize a half-day remote/hybrid dual language program model. This concern was justified since the students not enrolled in the dual-language programs would be getting twice the math compared to the non-dual language students. The data for students enrolled in the dual-language program does not lie when compared to students in traditional classrooms.

According to the 2021 IAR preliminary math scores, the students in third grade were very successful. State averages from 2019 must be used to make a comparison since the IAR assessment was not given in 2020 due to the pandemic. Sixty-two percent of the students in third grade that met or exceeded expectations on the math assessment were enrolled in the dual-language program. That number is above the state average of 41% of third grade students meeting or exceeding the math expectations for third grade students statewide (ISBE, 2019). The preliminary reading scores on the 2021 IAR reading assessment demonstrated similar results as 78% of the students in third grade that met or exceeded expectations were enrolled in the dual-language program compared to the state average of 37% (ISBE, 2019).

The previously identified local math data demonstrated that the students in grades K-2 enrolled in the dual-language program were very successful on some of the standards assessed when compared to students not enrolled in the duallanguage program. Whereas by the time the dual language students reached third grade, many outperformed their nondual counterparts in every math standard assessed. The Fountas and Pinnell (2012) reading data identified that over half of the students enrolled in the dual-language from grades K-3 were reading at or above grade level at the end of the year.

A New Beginning

Another school year begins with the opportunity to truly see if the dual language program benefited students. The end-of-year data demonstrated that students in the dual-language program were typically successful during the pandemic. The NWEA MAP assessment is administered as a baseline for students in grades 2-8 at the beginning and end of each school year and to demonstrate growth. This year, there was a new level of anticipation and heightened anxiety for the scores.

The data was in! Would we be proud of what we saw? Let’s take a look beginning with the reading scores. Sixtyone percent of students in the second grade dual-language program were at or above grade level mean RIT score. Similar results were demonstrated in third grade with 63% and 50% of fourth grade students were at or above grade level mean RIT score. These scores demonstrated that the dual language program was very successful in teaching the students reading during a pandemic.

Utilizing the NWEA MAP math assessment, 56% of dual language students in the second grade were at or above grade level mean RIT score. Results for third grade demonstrated some positive results with 43% of dual language students at or above grade level mean RIT score. The fourth-grade dual language students rebounded with 50% of students at or above grade level mean RIT score. The scores on this assessment demonstrated once again that there were definitive successes within the dual language program while also identifying areas for growth.

The realization is that this school’s duallanguage program was able to support the students and keep learning going. Some students thrived in many areas! Thomas & Collier (2002) indicated that students in dual language programs will be performing better or as well as nondual language learners by fifth grade. This theory is on pace to be holding true for this dual-language program even during the pandemic.

References

Fountas and Pinnell. (2021). Retrieved from

https://www.fountasandpinnell.com/ resourcelibrary/resource?id=270

Illinois State Report Card. (n.d.).

Retrieved from https://www.

illinoisreportcard.com/State.aspx

Thomas, W., & Collier, V. (2002). A national study of school effectiveness for language minority students’ long-term academic achievement. Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence. https://

www.semanticscholar.org/paper/

A-National-Study-of-School-

Effectiveness-for-Thomas-Collier/ e5069e7e93ee95848ff07de62fe 74b26bb4416e8

James E. Robinette, Ed.D, pHCLE has served as the principal of Congress Park Elementary School since 2018. Before that, he was a principal at Barbour Two-Way Language Immersion K-8 for 3 years. He has presented at several Illinois conferences including Kane County ROE institute Day (2020), ESSA Conference (2019), IPA Conference (2018), as well as the Statewide Conference on Bilingual Education in 2017, 2018 and 2019. He has also worked with CORWIN on DEEP Equity within District 102. James is the recipient of the John Ourth and Fred Singleton IPA professional development scholarship 2021.