English is not the native language for more than two-thirds of students at Denver’s Goldrick Elementary School, which usually is an indicator for poor academic performance.
But Goldrick is beating the odds under principal Maria Uribe, who has developed a system that pushes academic achievement while getting students more fluent in English.
Student language-fluency levels are identified early and constantly assessed. Students are placed into programs that teach literacy in their strongest language with the understanding that learning the skill is more important than learning the language.
In Alma Guardiola’s second-grade classroom Wednesday, 12 students were instructed in Spanish on how to write a story summary. On the other side of the room, a dozen more got the same lesson in English.
The progress at Goldrick has caught the eye of a top U.S. Department of Education administrator who was visiting the school in advance of her keynote speech Wednesday at the convention of the National Association for Bilingual Education.
“I have seen many schools with similar demographics that weren’t as successful. But this school is successful,” said Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, U.S. assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education. “You know what the biggest issue is? How do we clone this school across the nation? That is the challenge.”
Hundreds of educators are meeting this week at the Colorado Convention Center to discuss bilingual education, one of the most vexing challenges and controversial subjects in U.S. education.
In Colorado, persistent achievement gaps exist between English-language learners and their English-fluent peers — more than 40- point disparities on standardized tests. And students whose primary language is not English are overrepresented in school dropout figures.
About 13 percent of Colorado students are English-language learners; Denver has the most — 13,639 students, or about 18 percent of the enrollment.
Denver is under a federal court order that mandates that Spanish-speaking children have the option to begin their education taking most of their classes in Spanish and switch gradually — within three years — to English.
In most other schools and districts across the country, courses are taught in English with support to help the less-fluent students understand — a method that officials from the National Association for Bilingual Education say doesn’t work.
“We have tried it for so many years, spent so much of our tax dollars, and we are still getting the same results,” said association executive director Santiago Wood.
