A new Pew Hispanic Center report finds not all California public schools are created equal when it comes to educating students who are learning English as a second language. KPBS Reporter Ana Tintocalis has more.
The study shows the majority of the state's non-native English speaking students attend campuses that are falling way behind academically. But researcher Richard Fry says what's interesting is that a school's poor performance is not because it has a lot of students with language barriers. Rather, the school itself breeds a culture of poor performance.
Fry: When you say they're low achieving schools, what we immediately think is 'Oh, well they're low achieving because of the English Language Learner students in them. But the white students, when they attend these schools as well, their proficiency falls.
Fry says the struggling schools tend have big class sizes, and located in poor inner-city neighborhoods. Conversely, he says the performance of English Language Learners improves considerably when they attend suburban schools with small class sizes.
Ana Tintocalis, KPBS News.
