A national report finds students who are learning English as a second language lag far behind blacks and Latinos in academics. KPBS reporter Ana Tintocalis has more.
The Pew Hispanic Research Center looked at the achievement gap among minority students across the country. In California, non-native English speaking students lag about 20 percentage points behind black and Latinos in reading. There's a 12 point difference in math. That's a big deal, considering blacks and Latinos fall significantly behind whites and Asians in those subjects.
Researcher Rick Fry says English language learners may never post big gains because the group is constantly changing.
Fry : Once you're white, once you're African American, you're always white and African American. But that's not the way it works with English language learners. English language learners change status, they learn English and they leave the English language learners population.
Fry says those kids move through the school system easier. But, at the same time, there's hundreds of non-native English students with little or no education coming into the school system.
Ana Tintocalis, KPBS News.
