The legislation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has brought to educators’ attention the need, requirement, and demand that all children are guaranteed an equitable education. In support of this mandate, Assistant Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Education Kathleen Leos (2006) states, “There are approximately 5 ½ million non-English-speaking students in the United States public schools, speaking 440 different languages and 80% of those English language learners speak Spanish” (p. 2). Continuing, Leos reports that English language learners are the fastest growing K–12 population in the United States with 16 states reporting a 200% increase in English language learner enrollment from 1991–2001, (NCELA, 2006b). The Mississippi English language learner population has steadily grown between 50–100% during this same time period (NCELA, 2006b). Since 1994, the steady growth of numbers of English language learners is an indicator of why NCLB mandates specific requirements for English language learners in school districts across the nation(NCLB, 2002). NCLB includes basic principles that require stronger accountability in all realms of education, increase flexibility and local control, expand options for parents, and emphasize utilizing teaching methods that have proven to work in other school programs. Other stipulations of NCLB include providing assistance to schools in need of improvement, providing better information to teachers and administrators, ensuring teacher quality is a high priority, and giving more resources to the schools to accomplish these goals (USDE, 2004). Furthermore, this law has prioritized that all school-age children must make the grade state-defined education standards by the end of the 2013–2014 school year. Stemming from this legislation, educators and school districts have become more aware of their obligations to identify and provide English language instruction for immigrant students in order for them to understand and perform successfully in an all-English-speaking academic setting. Because of the impact of immigration in Mississippi and the legislation of NCLB, this study was designed to determine the progress of English language acquisition of English language learners (ELLs) on the Stanford English Language Proficiency test (SELP), and the relationship, if any, to the progress of English language learners on the Mississippi Curriculum Test (MCT). The results of this study show that ELLs showed English language acquisition on the (SELP) and academic progress on the Mississippi Curriculum Test (MCT) and that there was a significant positive relationship between the two assessments administered during the 3-year period of this study in the Rankin County School District in Mississippi.

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The number of English Language Learner (ELL) students in U.S. public schools are increasing yearly. More than 75% of ELL student's home language is Spanish. Their academic performance and graduation rates are lower than their non-ELL peers. Parent involvement contributes to student success in school, and urban leaders must examine how they involve ELL students and parents in school. The purpose of this study was to identify perceived strategies urban high school teachers use to involve ELL parents and to identify whether perceived barriers exist. School leaders can benefit from this qualitative study to address the achievement gap between ELL and non-ELL students. Five ESL teachers, six content teachers, and three Graduation Coaches participated in three focus group interviews. Seven findings arose from the interviews. A few findings include 71% (10 out of 14) of participants perceived that all educators in the building are responsible for ELL students, 93% (13 out of 14) of participants perceived there are practices and policies established to aid teachers with communicating and involving ELL parents, and 80% percent (4 out of 5) of ESL teachers interviewed believed parents are more trusting of the school when schools partner with other community agencies to host events. Teachers perceived barriers exist that inhibit them from involving and communicating with parents. Ninety-three percent (13 out of 14) of participants noted time as a barrier. Almost 43% (6 out of 14) participants noted parents being unaware of their rights as a barrier. / Doctor of Education / Hispanic English Language Learners (ELL) are the fastest-growing group of students in U.S. public schools. There is an achievement gap between ELL students and non-ELL students. The graduation rates and academic performance of ELL students are lower than non-ELL students. Parent involvement is one factor that increases students' academic performance. The research in this study explored the impact and perception of parent involvement. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify perceived strategies urban school teachers use to involve ELL parents and whether teachers perceive the strategies are effective. Content Teachers, Graduation Coaches, and ESL teachers from two high schools within one eastern Virginia school division participated in focus group interviews. The study indicated seven findings and eight implications. A recommendation for future studies is to explore and examine the practices of more diverse areas of Virginia and the impact of ELL parent involvement.

The problem addressed in this study is that English Language Learners (ELLs) in a California school district are not meeting the targeted yearly grade level expectations or making the same progress as non-ELL students. Meeting this goal will help close the achievement gap between ELLs and their native-English speaking peers. The purpose of the qualitative study was to explore the local problem and identify how teachers provided academic instruction to support ELLs with academic instruction and investigate perceived causes of the inadequate progress in learning English and the academic content. The research was guided by Vygotsky's theory of development and the social/cognitive interactions with Ladson-Billings' approach to cultural relevance. These theories support how teachers and students maintain an active cognitive and social learning approach. The qualitative study investigated teachers' instructional practices for ELLs through classroom observations and interviews. Purposeful sampling identified 12 potential participants who met the criteria of providing ELL instruction. Four ELL teachers participated through observations and interviews. The data analysis examined, identified, and interpreted themes. Data saturation was reached as no new themes emerged. The following 4 themes resulted: (a) classroom environment, (b) curriculum content, (c) academic language, and (d) differentiation. A 3-Day PD was designed to guide future ELL pedagogy and strategic activity to promote social change by providing educators opportunities to practice research based ELL instructional approaches to teaching. The end goal is for improved academic and social achievements for ELL students.

This thesis identifies the English Language Learners (ELL) policies according to federal, state, and districts and compares these policies to what is currently implemented in Orange County Public Schools in the state of Florida. The introduction includes vocabulary for ELL and personal rational. They are followed by the history of the court cases and policies pertaining to the state of Florida that create a timeline. Immediately after, a literature review compares policies to what is being implemented in various states across the United States. Next, interviews with two former or retired Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) were conducted with findings supporting the information in the literature review. Results suggest there are inconsistencies in implementation across states. Two factors include vagueness of the wording of policies, and the power of implementing policies rests with the state and local districts. Furthermore, teachers report not being adequately trained to teach ELL students. In conclusion, the researcher proposes finding ways to elicit more consistency from federal, state, and local districts to advocate for the educational success of English Language Learners.

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Effective leadership is a critical component to student learning and engaging parents of English Language Learners (ELL). The primary purpose of this instrumental multiple comparison case study was to determine the degree in which the Georgia Vision Project's recommendation, to be responsive to the cultural make-up of the communities they serve, has impacted two different high implementation school districts. The secondary focus of the research examined the influence of leadership practices on parental involvement in schools with high ELL populations. Awareness of viable cultural approaches for engaging ELL students and parents can be acquired by teachers during the pre-service or in-service training. However, this may be impossible if administrators lack cultural understanding themselves. Family members of English Language Learners often struggle to remain involved in their children’s academic activities due to their limited English proficiency and fear communicating with the staff. Consequently, administrators play a key role in creating effective professional development for teachers and welcoming school environments for ELL families. Interviews of district and school leaders, parent instructional coordinators, and parents were conducted. Supporting documents were also gathered. Dedoose was used to assist with the analysis and coding of the data collected using a general inductive approach. The data collected revealed the impact of the Vision Project implementation within each district. Also, several themes emerged from the findings 1) stable school district leadership, 2) consistent mission and vision implementation, 3) clearly outlined strategic goals and priorities, 4) frequent communication with internal and external stakeholders, 5) leadership development academies for succession planning, 6) specific organizational structure for central office and schools, 7) alignment of Vision Project educational components to the district initiatives, and 8) a commitment to restoring confidence in public education. The study contributes to the development of educational leaders in schools with diverse student populations. The findings reveal the necessity for school leaders to assess parents’ perceptions of their child’s school, given the impact parents can have on children’s attitudes about school, and the importance of supporting parental engagement. The success of students will require leaders to acknowledge the power of parents and community as important resources.

This report addresses the importance of discussing adolescent learners in regard with their anxiety about foreign or second language (L2) speaking performance. To find implications on how to help adolescents reduce or overcome speaking anxiety in the language classroom, the report reviews extensive literature on 1) the distinct adolescent features that contribute to the development of shyness and communication apprehension; 2) the concept, component sources, and impacts of foreign language learning anxiety; and 3) the causes and effects of L2 speaking anxiety in language learning situations. Based on the review, the report provides implications from studies about language teaching and learning practices to alleviate L2 learning and speaking anxiety. These suggestions focus on meeting adolescents' needs in terms of 1) improving self-esteem, 2) developing coping skills about anxiety, and 3) facilitating a safer and more supportive classroom environment. / text

The Interface Hypothesis (Sorace and Filiaci, 2006) conjectures that adult second language learners (L2 learners) who have reached near-native levels of proficiency in their second language exhibit difficulties at the interface between syntax and other cognitive domains, most notably at the syntax-discourse interface. However, research in this area was limited, in that the data were offline, and thus unable to provide evidence for the nature of the deficit shown by L2 learners. This thesis presents online data which address the question of the underlying nature of the difficulties observed in L2 learners at the syntaxdiscourse interface. This thesis has extended work on the syntax-discourse interface in L2 learners by investigating the acquisition of two phenomena at the syntax-discourse interface in German: the role of word order and pronominalization with respect to information structure (Experiments 1-3), and the antecedent preferences of anaphoric demonstrative (the der, die, das series homophonous with the definite article) and personal pronouns (the er, sie, es series) (Experiments 4- 8). Crucially, this work has used an on-line methodology, the visual-world paradigm, which allows an insight into the incremental interpretation of interface phenomena in real-time processing. The data from these experiments show that L2 learners have difficulty integrating different sources of information in real-time comprehension efficiently, supporting the Interface Hypothesis. However, the nature of the processing difficulties which L2 learners demonstrate in on-line processing was not determined by these studies, resulting in the question: are L2 learners’ difficulties a result of a limitation of processing resources, or the inability to deploy those resources effectively? A novel dualtask experiment (Experiment 9), in which native speakers of German were placed under processing load simulated the results previously obtained for L2 learners. It is concluded that syntactic dependencies were constrained by resource limitation, whereas discourse based dependencies were constrained by processing resource allocation.

There has been a rapid increase in the emergence of minority groups during the past few decades in the United States. Hispanics are the largest minority group that has people who speak English as a second language. The increasing proportion of English Language Learning (ELL) students has made it more difficult to maintain high learning standards. Furthermore, this increase has led to other problems such as the over and underrepresentation of ELL students in special education, high dropout rates and the underachievement obtained in standardized tests such us the Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS). For this reason, researchers have strongly emphasized the importance of studying self-regulated learning (SRL) as a critical component in the learning process as it is suggested to improve the academic outcomes of students. However, SRL has mostly been researched in middle class Caucasians but there has not been much research in relation to minorities or ELL students. Due to the paucity of research, the present study examined the relationship between SRL and academic achievement of ELL students. The study was conducted in a southern Arizona school district. The sample was comprised of 30 students attending seventh and eighth grades from a solicited sample of 130 students. The students completed the Motivated Strategies Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Results indicated that SRL is related to the academic achievement of students in reading, writing, and mathematics. Similarly, the components of SRL (i.e., motivation and learning strategies), especially motivation, were found to be significantly related to achievement as well. Additionally, the MSLQ was encountered to be a reliable instrument to be used with ELL students as indicated by the reliability indexes. The implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.