0.7 Gallegos, c., & Wise, d. (september 2011). leadership for  (Page 11/18)

Pearson correlations were conducted to examine the relationship between EL achievement scores from each year (2006-07, 2007-08, and 2008-09) and score of Early Advanced (EA) or Advanced (A) for each year (see Table 1). The results in each year were significant suggesting that as the percentage of students who scored at the Early Advanced and Advanced levels on the CELDT (California English Language Development Test) increased, so did the percentage of English learners who scored in the Proficient range on the California state standards assessment (CST). This is reasonable given that a language proficiency score in the Early Advanced and Advanced ranges indicates a significant level of language proficiency. Higher levels of academic language proficiency are needed for students to be able to fully participate in academic content instruction.

Note . ** p <.001

Pearson correlations conducted to assess the relationship between the achievement of ELs and the overall student population of the school showed that as the achievement scores of English learners went up, so did those of the overall school population (see Table 2).

Note . ** p <.001

A Bonferroni post hoc test conducted to determine where the differences lie in mean scores by year showed that the gap between the performances of the English learners and the overall scores of all students remained roughly the same (see Table 3). This finding regarding the achievement gap was similar to findings in other recent studies (American Institutes for Research, 2006; Jepsen&deAlth, 2005).

A significant negative finding of this study was that as the percentage of English learners at a school increased, the overall percentage of students at that school who achieved Proficiency on the CST decreased (see Table 4). In other words, there was a negative correlation between the percentage of EL students and overall school achievement. This was similar to findings by Fry (2008).

Note . ** p <.001

While overall achievement rates went down slightly when the number of English learners rose, reclassification rates, the rate at which EL students are reclassified to fluent English speakers, were unaffected by the percentage of English learners enrolled or by the overall achievement rates (see Table 5). In other words, even as the number of English learners increased and achievement scores were adversely affected, the reclassification rates did not change significantly as a result of either of these factors.