English Language Learners Case Study

In Philippa Strum in Mendez v. Westminster, Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez were farmers who initially had tried to enrol their children in a white school which happened to be a hundred miles north of Mexican border. Upon requesting their enrolment, they were turned away and asked to attend to a nearby Mexican Americans school. In response, Mendez and other distressed parents from the neighbourhood went to federal court in order to challenge the segregation where they did not claim it as racial discrimination since Mexicans were legally considered white. The aggrieved parent rather referred their claims as discrimination based on ancestry, therefore, proposed it as language deficiency which denied their children their 14th Amendment rights to

You’re probably referring to the 1972 Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe, which found that states can’t deny free public education to its residents on the grounds of their immigration status.

This case included several other cases involving schools that were segregated. Several students of Color found it unconstitutional to not be able to attend a white public school. This was in violation of the "equal protection clause". Eventually, the segregation of schools was declared unconstitutional. This case expanded civil rights movements and allowed black and white children to have equality in schools. The case Brown v. Board of Education overturned the 'separate but equal' approach to public schooling and also public restrooms, transportation, drinking fountains and restaurants which came after the Jim Crow Laws. In the 1960s Americans were given a promise to have "equal protection of the laws" which was proposed by the president.

• Test scores comparing ELL students and native speakers of English as well as number of ELL students identified as requiring special education services

"Making Sure That Schools Measure Up." Education Week, vol. 36, no. 16, 4 Jan. 2017, pp. 18-20. EBSCOhost. PDF. In this periodical article, Alyson Klein, reporter for Education Week, reflects on Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), an update to the K-12 education law, in the one year since it was passed in 2016. Klein discusses how the ESSA was designed to improve shortcomings of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the previous version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Klein also examines concerns over greater flexibility given to states and districts regarding issues such as standardized test, school choice, marginalized students. The Obama administration wrote how the accountability portion of the law would work, allowing states to pick their own goals, both a long term goal and short term goals. These goals must address students’ proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, and graduation

A few of the court cases and acts that changed the way for ELL students are Bilingual Education act (1968), Serna v. Portales Municipal Schools (1972), Lau v. Nichols (1974), Equal Educational Opportunities Act (1974), and Flores v. Arizona (2008). The Bilingual Education Act (1968) also known as Title VII, was establish to provide funding to educational programs, teacher training, development of instructional materials, and promotion of parent involvement. This act was created to prove that money should not be an issues when educating ELL students. The case of Serna v. Portales Municipal Schools (1972) helped get more get more Spanish speaking teacher into classrooms to help ELL students and develop more bilingual lesson plans. This case showed

The Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 is known for desegregating public schools in the U.S. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled “in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal had no place” (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954). It was the 1st major educational policy. The Court’s decision in Brown created not just desegregation strategies, but also instructional approaches such as Title I programs, magnet schools, and bilingual and multicultural education (Contreras & Valverde, 1994).

In the article, “The Education Inequality Struggle” published by The Huffington Post, Marian Wright Edlemen discusses a new act by Congress, The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that serves to replace the No Child Left Behind Act. The purpose of the No Child Left Behind Act was to add need federal accountability in regards to the desegregation and equalization of education along with fiscal accountability. However, the No Child Left Behind Act failed to address the scholarly performance of children. ESSA is designed to track student performance by traits known to affect education; race, gender, ethnicity, disability, and language. At the same time, individual states create plans for education that have to be approved federally. Based on these

In 1945, a California LULAC Council victoriously sued to merge the Orange County School System, which had been isolated in light of the fact that Mexican youngsters were inadequately dressed and mentally sub-par compared to white kids (Takaki, 378). In 1954, LULAC brought another historical case, Hernandez versus the State of Texas, to challenge the fact that a Mexican American had never been called to jury duty in Texas (Class Lecture, 11/30). The Supreme Court administered this as illegal. In the twentieth century, starting with the 1952 Hernandez v. Texas suit, the case started to turn gradually and unyieldingly (“A Class Apart”). That case prompted the first case contended in the United States Supreme Court by Mexican American lawyers.

Famous supreme court case that was led by Oliver Brown against the Topeka Kansas school board in 1954. He filed a lawsuit against them because they denied access to his daughter at a white school and he thought that it violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause in the fourteenth amendment. He said it violated the constitution because black schools and white were never going to be equal from the way people are treating each other. He went to the federal district but they rejected his claim because they thought it was equal enough to be constitutional under the Plessy doctrine and i quote,

Mendez vs. Westminster. About 80 years ago, one of the first court-ordered desegregations in California. This case was not your normal black vs white segregation that you hear about all of the time. This court case was about white's vs Mexican Americans. This began in 1931 when a court ordered a school district to stop segregating whites and Mexicans. In 1946, during the Mendez case, the federal court reached the same result. Because this was the first federal court case to desegregate whites and Mexicans, it is an important case to look at. Gonzalo Mendez was only seven years old when he became a defendant in this case. When the Mendez family moved to California their aunt took the kids and their cousins to enroll in school. When they got

America’s very foundations are built off the sacrifices of immigrants, but not until the 60’s did students with little to no fluency in English have rights to fair and equal education in government subsidised schools. Beginning in 1964, under the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, it became unlawful for agency receiving federal funds to discriminate on the basis of race. Following the win of the Civil Rights Act, three monumental court cases took place to further affirm the rights of ELL students. In 1974, when Chinese students brought a case against San Francisco in the Supreme Court Lau vs Nichols, students stated that they were not provided special help due to their lack of knowledge of English. A few years later in 1981, the case titled

My first day of school felt so strange as if I was banished to Mars. Or at least to some very far away place full of strangers where nobody speaks my language. Because indeed, nobody spoke my language on my first day of school. I was 6 years old and lost among people whom I couldn’t even talk to. How could this happen? I spent all of my childhood in Hungary, but it still felt like we just moved to another country right before me starting school. Although no such thing happened, I still blame everything on my parents.

By expanding ourselves past the comfort of the native tongue, we are able to create connections with other people. When learning another language, we may start to understand not only the language itself, but also comprehend new cultures, ways of thinking, and other people. From the very beginning of deciding to become a teacher, I knew I wanted to expand my ways of thinking so I positively benefit students of all cultures and language. I believe language learning allows people to view the world in different ways by becoming positively influenced by other cultures, people, and different ways of thinking. However, after deciding to become an ESL teacher, I truly believe that bilingual education is needed to help students develop and maintain high levels of proficiency and literacy in both their L1 and L2, while learning in the content areas. This is why I personally believe it is better for children to be raised bilingual instead of learning a second language later in life. One reason for this is that even though I was born in America, my parents wanted me to learn their language, which was Polish. Now, I am fully appreciative of the fact that my parents taught me Polish and placed me in a Saturday school where I was being taught both English and Polish. If I was taught Polish later in life, I think I would not use it to this day because I would not have made personal connections with the languages, as I was able to by being raised bilingual. There are many benefits of being raised bilingual instead of learning a second language later in life. It is important to understand that it takes on average 4-7 years to become academically fluent in a language; by raising a child bilingually, the children are able to use both languages more efficiently earlier than those students who learn a second language later in life. Since the child has been bilingual for a longer time, there are educational benefits commonly found. Bilingual children tend to have a higher concentration and are better at working through distractions while doing their schoolwork. Bilingual children also perform higher on average on tests that involve multi-tasking, creative thinking, or problem solving (Marian & Shook, 2012).

As our society continues to grow, the normality of traveling across the globe or connecting with people from all different ethnic backgrounds becomes more and more common. Social Media and the efficiency of travel have all contributed to this flourish in global connections and it is striving more now than ever. The many cultures of the world can now be shared with so many, but with that come the challenge of language barriers.