Sweet 16

Even though ELL students are given special attention/instruction in learning English, their literacy curricula are significantly "dumbed down" (p.111 in Snake Oil) What will be the impact of this on their future success? Might this be intentional to keep them on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum?

As seen in Literacy as Snake Oil, while English language learners are given special attention to help them learn English and integrate into their new environments. However when it comes to literacy, ELL students receive a watered down curriculum. Many teachers believe that by doing this they are making it easier for the students to pass and succeed, when in reality they are failing their students, by not challenging them. It has been proven time and time again that student do best when they are challenged. By not providing the ELL students with a challenged curriculum it makes the students feel like the school doesn’t think that they can do better. Just because a student has a language barrier, it does not mean that they aren’t smart. In a course on differentiating instruction, I learned that any students in special education classes are also ELL/ESL students.
This “dumbed down” curricula can have a devastating impact on the success of ELL students. Some critics of watering down instruction even say that this is done intentionally to keep ELL students on a lower socio-economic spectrum. This can also be compared to the backwards reasoning of NCLB. A school that performs below standards, loses its much needed funding, meanwhile schools that are already achieving their goals are granted extra aid to further widen the success gap. Shouldn’t the underperforming school receive the extra funding so that they can succeed? Shouldn’t the ELL student receive the maximum support and best efforts in education to grant them success?
While this issue is a problem in our school systems, teachers need to provide all that they can to help in the development of their ELL students, so that they can receive the appropriate education. This can be done by bringing real life examples into the classroom, to help student bridge the gaps caused by the language or cultural barrier. Students could also benefit from textbooks printed in their own language to help them stay on track in their content classes. There is no reason that teachers of ELL students should take shortcuts and skim out on the content of a lesson simply because of language issues.