Data and ESOL Students
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Data and ESOL Students
I would like to add a few comments on retention and ESOL students.
We have recently heard a lot about "stopping out" and I think that can pertain to ESOL learners for many of the same reasons as ASE/GED learners - with the addition of issues such as stages of acculturation and/or home country responsibilities which may cause ESOL learners to withdraw for weeks or months and then possibly return.
I would also like to raise the issue of the mobility of the ESOL population. We see migration reports on immigrants and settlement trends and I often wonder how much of a difference in retention these trends makes when comparing ASE/GED retention rates with ESOL.
I think of the "stopover" trend we see sometimes in ESOL here in Baltimore, MD where non-native speakers will enter and only temporarily reside her before moving to an intended more perm ant location. This obviously has great impact on retention. When comparing ESOL programs statewide or nationwide, the "stopover" trend may negatively impact the retention rates of certain programs.
Another thing we see is "shift" or movement around the beltway (as we call it). We have major ESOL class sites at locations along the Baltimore beltway that roughly encircles the city and we see contraction and expansion at these sites based the movement of the ESOL population. We will see that a site may suddenly have low retention across ALL six or seven ESOL classes offered - even the classes with veteran/experienced teachers with a great track record of retention. In some cases, the same teacher is also teaching at another site and his/her class there is doing well at that site. Both of these things show that attrition is not likely a result of instructional issues.
When we see this contraction of a site with mid-semester attrition, we can sometimes predict that at another site we will experience a boom in registration the next semester. It depends on if it is more "stopover" (with learners leaving the area entirely) or just "shift" (learners relocating within the area). If it is the latter, learners who leave one site mid-semester will turn up to register the next semester at another site.
Suzi Monti
ESOL Curriculum Developer and Instructional Specialist
The Community College of Baltimore County
Center for Adult and Family Literacy
7200 Sollers Point Road E102
Baltimore, MD 21222
(410) 285-9476
Hi,
Shifts in ESOL population can also be attributed to change in employment opportunities and contraction in the availability of affordable housing. Massachusetts is suffering like many places in the country with a dearth of affordable housing. Rents have increased exponentially and the city where my program is located has increased enforcement on the number of people who can legally live in an apartment building. People then shift to another low rent area. Then they try to return to school. I only see this issue increasing as little is being done outside of community organizations to address this issue.
Toni F. Borge
Adult Education & Transitions Program Director
Bunker Hill Community College
Chelsea Campus
175 Hawthorne Street
Chelsea, MA 02150
Phone: 617-228-2108
Fax:617-228-2106
E-mail: tborge@bhcc.mass.edu
Suzi, given that much mobility in your students, I'm curious about your curriculum. Do you have a reasonably set curriculum that is consistent across sites? If that were the case, the movement would have fewer implications for student learning gains.
And do you "move" the student records and hours in class forward from one site to another internally?
The beauty of our on-line data bases in Pennsylvania is that students can't be duplicated in the system. Even if a student moves to a different program rather than a different site, his record is in edata and the new program and old one share the student equally. Both programs can put in hours, but only one can put in assessment information. The program in which the student is currently active is usually the "primary" program.
There are, frankly, some students who, because they are so motivated to learn English, are active in more than one program at the same time. It doesn't matter which agency does the testing--we usually use the best results for the official record. If our data base manager sees that we have better results than the primary agency, it benefits both of us to use that data. We might have the caught the student on a better day or our test might have more appropriate for that particular student.
Karen Mundie
Associate Director
Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council
100 Sheridan Square, 4th Floor
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
412 661-7323 (ext 101)
kmundie@gplc.org
Karen,
In response to your question about our curriculum, we do use the same materials (core books) across classes at the same level and while we have/encourage great flexibility to teach in response to student needs there is commonality provided by a framework of target skills or strategies to cover per level/per semester. This does facilitate the learning process if a student transfers within a semester or even if the student shows up the next semester.
As far as tracking, within our program and within a fiscal year we do pick up the students where they turn up assuming the identifiers are consistent. We also plan "sister sites" to encourage multiple enrollment to increase intensity/contact hours for students who desire it. We have the same issues with multiple test results in those cases but the information system we use seems to successfully handle that.
You mentioned students accessing more than one program and being able to track that. I am not sure if our statewide system in Maryland is able to do that (perhaps someone on the list can respond to that?). The issue of tracking can even become problematic within our program. Because of the lack of usual identifiers such as SS#s we have issues due to the use of multiple names or varied arrangement of names/surnames, reversals on dates of birth, etc. as can be common with ESOL students. We assign a number to each student but it is challenging to determine if we are dealing with the same or a different student sometimes. It can be detective work to try to sort it out. It would be interesting to know how often this impacts tracking.
Suzi Monti
Larry,
Could you tell us more about the ESL research on percentage of possible time attended? This is a new idea to me. Does it reflect greater intensity as opposed to lesser intensity for a longer duration – or do you think something else is going on? If your research is correct, there are certainly implications for how we structure instructional segments.
Sandy Strunk
Program Director for Community Education
Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13
1020 New Holland Avenue
Lancaster, PA 17601
(717) 606-1873
In light of Larry’s comments, I would like to share a program quality standard that we have been using in Connecticut. We call it the “utilization rate” or “% of available instruction used”. It is the percent of available class hours utilized by each student in the class. We aggregate this measure at the class level and the program level.
We have experienced some challenges with this measure though. We are able to account for late starters by pro-rating the remaining available hours based on that late start date, but it gets unwieldy to also account for students who exit early. This measure works well for classes offered on a set schedule but can be problematic for learning labs where the lab might be open for say 25 hours a week but a student is not expected to be there for the entire 25 hours; this could result in a low utilization rate though the students might be attending say 10 hours/week. At the other extreme, some classes/programs may show high utilization rates but may be offering classes that run for only 40 hours in a semester. I find that combining this utilization rate with an absolute average of hours attended gives a better picture of the participation and persistence of learners within a program.
I too would like to hear Larry’s thoughts on Sandy’s question. In my personal experience after looking at tons of data over the past 2-3 years from a variety of programs, I would expect that “intensity” (more instructional hours in a week) more than “duration” (more calendar days between class start and end dates) might result in greater learner attendance. For example, it is probably more likely that 20 ESL students will attend 100 hours each on average during a fiscal year if they are offered a class that runs 12 hours a week for 12 weeks than if they are offered a class that runs 4 hours a week for 36 weeks.
Another element that we are beginning to track more closely is retention across fiscal years. We know that many students don’t achieve their goals within one fiscal year. Therefore, we are using our data system to track and report on students who are new in the fiscal as well as those who might be returning to that program from a prior fiscal year.
What about recruitment? Do any programs/states look at the students served over the past six/seven years and compare that to say Census 2000?
Ajit Gopalakrishnan
Education Consultant
Connecticut Department of Education
25 Industrial Park Road
Middletown, CT 06457
860-807-2125
Fax: 860-807-2062
ajit.gopalakrishnan@ct.gov
Sandy,
A few years ago I did a study on adult ESL literacy students that focused primarily on instruction. But we also looked at retention. We found that the proportion of time an ESL literacy student attended (measure by hours attended over total hours class was scheduled) had a positive effect on oral English skills and reading comprehension, all else being equal (using a complex statistical model).
The possible reasons for this effect are intriguing and need more research. Because this measure showed an effect regardless of how many hours the student actually attended (or how many hours per week a student attended), my interpretation is that this measure is a measure of motivation (although I have no data or other information to check this). In other words, the student who continues to attend over time, despite all of the other competing demands on time, is one that is more motivated. This motivation helps learning.
I think if true, it does have implications for structuring instructional segments.
Larry Condelli
Good morning:
How interesting to hear from a range of institutions---I get so focused on my programs that it is interesting to hear from other types of organizations and structures.
For my students, motivation isn’t an issue at all. We have a lengthy wait list – depending on the level, students could wait as little as 6 months or as long as 2 years to get into our program. Consequently, they are pretty thrilled to finally be there, and eager to participate.
For my population, (adult ESOL learners---a large majority in the 25-44 age range) the issue is juggling demands on their time. The majority work at least one job (many work 2 or more) and have children in school. Our classes are in the evening, since over 90% of the population we serve work during the day. Many rush directly from work to class, and might be late due to mandatory overtime, or a family need that requires attention prior to attending class. Given the lack of access to adequate preventative health care that many of our students face, there are ongoing health problems for many. Add this to the occasional trip back to their native country for a death in the family, or some other type of family emergency, and frankly I’m amazed that they are able to maintain such a strong commitment to their studies.
Some of our research and data analysis have uncovered these issues-- still it remains quite a challenge to respond to these problems. We initially adjusted our program plan and schedule to allow for longer breaks during the holidays, when many students wish to return to their native countries. We also incorporate school vacations in our planning. When an individual student starts to have a problem, we meet with him or her to see how we can help. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes we are able to communicate with employers, and that’s been helpful for many students. Sometimes, we offer students a “leave of absence” to deal with pressing personal matters, and invite them to return when things are more settled. All of these strategies have evolved over years of looking at attendance/retention data, and discussions with focus groups. These strategies have had a positive impact, and students appreciate our responsiveness to their needs.
The first year that we implemented our “managed enrollment” (vs. open entry/open exit) model, our retention increased from 74% to 90%. Our attendance has increased from 68% to now over 82%. We all know how critical it is to keep students long enough for them to reach their goals…
Which brings me to my final point. We all serve so many masters---NRS, our funders (in my case DOE); our parent organizations (for me a community college) and we are constantly looking at data to justify our existence and demonstrate our effectiveness. Let’s be realistic, if we want to retain our funding, we have to show results—which is as it should be.
For us; however, when we look at our data, it is always with an eye to how we can better serve our students and respond to their needs. The difference is subtle, but powerful. It’s a lot easier to get staff and students on board with planning and change when they can see a direct result for our students than to respond to a bunch of charts and mandates from “higher ups”.
Luanne Teller
Luanne,
This is consistent with some research I've done with Forrest Chisman and several people at adult ESOL programs in community colleges. Managed enrollment not only increases attendance and learning gains, it also increases retention and enrollment in the next ESOL level.
Jodi Crandall
Hi Jodi:
Hmmm! I honestly never thought to look at how students are retained and progress during the following year/s...great thought! I am going to have to go back and look at this data to see if I can find any trends...thanks for the idea!
Luanne Teller
