Raise the roof for adult English Language classrooms!

What do English language learners need to succeed at work, in college, and in life? That's a tough questions with few easy answers.

How many adult immigrants want to improve English language skills? How many adult immigrants need to improve their English? Do current adult education programs provide the language skills so students can enter and survive in community college classrooms? How can we improve the quality of English language classes in adult education programs?

OTAN opens new forum on the transition from adult education to community college.

The forum includes an outstanding collection of recent research studies looking at the numerous obstacles, program needs, and best teaching practices to help adult education – including ESL – student enter and succeed in mainstream college classes. Take a look!

Some of the clear conclusions include:

1. - ESL students can and sometimes do succeed despite many obstacles.
2. - A huge gap remains between students needs and current adult education programs
3. - Only a small percentage of adults who would benefit from English language courses attend free adult education courses in California
4. - ESL students face exceptional barriers and require additional resources
5. - adult education needs far more resources to meet its missions
6. - English classes need to teach broader, deeper language skills
7. - English teachers need far more support
8. - Current funding formulas fail to adequate fund English language programs
9. - adult schools should offer a wider range of courses at far more times
10. - adult education needs to provide more fulltime teaching positions
11. - funding shortages limit the ability of educators to meet student needs
12. - Students need to write and speak better to realize their goals
13. - English remains the passport to the American dream for immigrants

“California’s Commitment to Adult English Learners: Caught Between Funding and Need”, an excellent study written by Arturo Gonzalez for the Public Policy Institute of California (2007) also details these problems with considerable tact. Focusing on the outdated and inadequate funding structure, the report documents the conflict between large classes – needed for attendance – and quality language instruction. It also notes the tension between providing minimum educational services for California immigrants and the fiscal costs of exceeding their allotted caps for enrollment. The report warns that “Without a change in the funding formula, the conflict between funding and mission may result in a long-term decline in the quality of instruction and diminish the pace of immigrant integration.”

That’s very polite language for a tragic bottomline: our current adult ESL programs provide too little help to too few students for too short a time. The standards are too low, and the standardized tests only measure passive skills like listening and reading under the rubric of “life skills.” Far too many adult ESL programs currently fail to meet the student needs to master enough language to enter and succeed community college, earn enough money, or realize their American dreams. If current funding formulas don’t change, the huge gap between the official ambitions of adult education programs and the actual classroom realities will grow far worse.

Immigration, especially illegal immigration, remains a very hot and heated political issue – in California and across the United States. Yet helping immigrants, both documented and undocumented, learn English should bring everyone together. Immigrants want to join the national family and need to learn English. The current naturalization law mandates that immigrants “read, write, and speak English” before becoming citizens.

Let’s help adult immigrants take that huge step by expanding and deepening English language classes. English language learners win, English language teachers win, program administrators win, and California residents win when everybody shares a common language.

Let’s raise the roof on English language programs – in California and around the United States!