Effects of Bilingual and English as a Second Language Adaptations of Success for All on the Reading Achievement of Students Acquiring English

Robert E. Slavin
Johns Hopkins University

 
Nancy A. Madden
Success for All Foundation

March, 1999

This research was supported by a grant from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education (Grant Nos. OERI-R-117-R90002 and R-117D-40005), and the Pew Charitable Trusts. However, any opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of our funders.
We would like to thank Katherine Conner, Allie Mulvihill, MaryLouise de Nicola, Renee Yampolsky, and Norris Eldridge, of the Philadelphia Public Schools, Marcie Dianda of the Southwest Regional Lab, Jerry Frye of the Modesto City School District, Carley Ochoa of the Riverside Unified School District, and Robert Petza, Rachel Nicholas, Larry Dolan, and Gretta Gordy of Johns Hopkins University for their help with this project.

Abstract

Two adaptations of Success for All, a comprehensive reform program for elementary schools, have been used with students acquiring English. One is a Spanish bilingual version, called Éxito Para Todos, in which students are taught to read in Spanish and then transitioned to English reading, usually in third or fourth grade. The other integrates English as a second language (ESL) strategies with English reading instruction. This paper summarizes the results of both of these adaptations for students acquiring English.

The effects of Success for All on the achievement of English language learners are, in general, substantially positive. In all schools implementing Éxito Para Todos, effect sizes for first graders on Spanish assessments were very positive, especially when schools were implementing most of the program’s elements. Even after transitioning to English-only instruction, Éxito Para Todos third graders performed better on English assessments than control students who were primarily taught in English. For students acquiring English receiving ESL instruction, effect sizes for all comparisons were also positive.

Students who enter school with limited English proficiency are among the most likely of all students to be at risk for school failure (August & Hakuta, 1997). These students score substantially worse than other language minority students in schools of equal levels of poverty in both reading and mathematics at third grade (Moss & Puma, 1995). They are retained far more often, and have many other difficulties. Ultimately, limited English proficient students are substantially more likely than other students to drop out of school; dropout rates average 42% for these students, compared to 10.5% for students who were never limited in English proficiency (McArthur, 1993). The educational difficulties of limited English proficient students are not entirely due to difficulties with English. These students are typically children of recent immigrants who suffer from the effects of poverty, mobility, limited capacity of parents to support their children’s success in school, and underfunded, overcrowded schools (August & Hakuta, 1997). Even after limited English proficient students become fully proficient in English, their school performance remains substantially lower than that of other students (McArthur, 1993).

For many years, debates about the education of limited English proficient children have focused on the question of language of instruction. While children are acquiring sufficient English language skills to function well in all-English instruction, should they be taught in their native language or in English? If they are taught in their native language, should they be transitioned as soon as possible, or maintained in native language instruction until their English proficiency is at a very high level? Reviews of research on this topic generally find benefits for native language instruction, followed by a gradual transition to English (e.g., Meyer & Fienberg, 1992; Ramirez, Yuen, & Ramey, 1991; Garcia, 1994). While there is considerable debate about this research, almost all investigators have found such bilingual programs to be at least as effective, or more effective, than English-only instruction from the outset (August & Hakuta, 1997; National Academy of Sciences, 1998). Despite this research consensus, bilingual programs are under considerable assault at the political level, particularly with the 1998 passage of Proposition 227 in California banning most types of bilingual programs.

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on the quality of instruction received by students acquiring English, in whatever language they are being taught. Among children receiving native language instruction, those who succeed in that instruction ultimately perform substantially better in English than those who do not (Garcia, 1991, 1994). Whether students are taught in English or in their native language, their success in learning to read is the most important factor in their long-term success in school. This is not to diminish the importance of native language instruction, but simply to note that while the language of instruction issue is being fought out on largely political terms, it is incumbent upon educators to develop, evaluate, and disseminate effective strategies for bilingual as well as English-only instruction for students acquiring English. As a practical matter, a very large proportion of English language learners will always be taught in English (if only because of shortages of teachers proficient in other languages, especially non-Spanish languages), and hopefully there will always be many English language learners being taught in their native language. We need effective strategies for both situations.

The renewed focus since the late 1980s on the quality of bilingual and ESL programs has led to numerous observational and descriptive studies of effective education for English language learners (see, for example, Fleischman & Hopstock, 1993; Leighton et al., 1993; Garcia, 1987; Tikunoff et al., 1991). However, few studies have directly compared outcomes of innovative bilingual or ESL programs to traditional programs (see Ramirez, 1986).

There is remarkably little research evaluating programs designed to increase the Spanish reading performance of students in bilingual programs. Calderón, Hertz-Lazarowitz, & Slavin (1998) evaluated a bilingual adaptation of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (BCIRC) in El Paso elementary schools starting in second grade. This program, based on a successful program originally developed in English for English proficient students (Stevens, Madden, Slavin, & Farnish, 1987; Stevens & Slavin, 1995), involves having students work in small cooperative groups. Students read to each other, work together to identify characters, settings, problems, and problem solutions in narratives, summarize stories to each other, and work together on writing, reading comprehension, and vocabulary activities. Students in BCIRC classes scored significantly better than control students on the Spanish Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) at the end of second grade, and as they transitioned to English in third and fourth grades they performed significantly better than control students on TAAS reading tests given in English.

While it is important to improve the outcomes of bilingual and English-only reading instruction for English language learners at all grade levels, there is a particular need to see that students are successful in beginning to read in the early elementary grades. Many students fail to read adequately by third grade and are then at risk for being retained in grade or assigned to special education or long-term remedial services, all of which are key predictors of ultimate dropout (Lloyd, 1978). Latino students, with one of the highest dropout rates of all ethnic groups (GAO, 1994; NCES, 1993), are particularly at risk if they do not read well.

If all students are to achieve their potential in school, all must begin with success in reading in the early grades. One program that has achieved a great deal of success in meeting this goal is called Success for All, a comprehensive model for restructuring elementary schools that focuses on prevention and early, intensive intervention. The program’s philosophy is that learning problems must first be prevented by providing students with high-quality instruction from prekindergarten or kindergarten onward, improving school-family links, and assessing student progress on a regular basis. When problems appear despite effective preventive measures, interventions must be applied immediately and intensively to solve them before they become serious. In particular, one-to-one tutoring is provided to first graders who are failing to read well. The English version of Success for All has been evaluated in comparison to matched control schools in nine school districts throughout the U.S. and found to be consistently effective on measures of reading, reductions in retention and special education placements, and other outcomes (Slavin et al., 1996a, b).

The first application of Success for All to English language learners began in Philadelphia’s Francis Scott Key School, which serves a high-poverty neighborhood in which more than 60% of students enter the schools speaking Cambodian or other Southeast Asian languages. An adaptation of Success for All was designed to meet the needs of these children. This adaptation focused on integrating the work of ESL teachers and reading teachers, so that ESL teachers taught a reading class and then helped limited English proficient students with the specific language and reading skills needed to succeed in the school’s (English) reading program. In addition, a cross-age tutoring program enabled fifth graders, now fully bilingual in English and Cambodian, to help kindergartners succeed in the English program. The performance of students at Francis Scott Key has been compared to that of students in a matched comparison school each year, and the results have consistently favored Success for All (for Asian as well as non-Asian students (Slavin & Yampolsky, 1991). The present paper reports the reading performance of the English language learners at Key and its comparison school as of spring, 1995, the end of the seventh year of program implementation.

In 1992, a Spanish adaptation of Success for All called Éxito Para Todos ("Success for All" in Spanish) was developed for use in Spanish bilingual programs. During the 1992-1993 school year Éxito Para Todos was implemented in one Philadelphia school serving a predominately Latino (mostly Puerto Rican) student body. The first year results showed the Spanish bilingual students to be performing substantially better than controls on individually administered tests of Spanish (Slavin & Madden, 1994). This paper reports the results for the third graders who completed their third year in Éxito Para Todos in 1996.

A third evaluation of Success for All with English language learners was carried out by WestEd, an educational laboratory in Southern California (Livingston & Flaherty, 1997). This study involved three schools. Fremont Elementary in Riverside, California, and Orville Wright Elementary in Modesto, are schools with substantial Spanish bilingual programs, and implemented Éxito Para Todos. The third, El Vista Elementary, also in Modesto, serves a highly diverse student body speaking 17 languages using an ESL approach. Students in all three schools were compared to matched students in matched schools. In each case, students are assessed in the language of instruction (English or Spanish). Earlier reports (Dianda, 1995; Slavin & Madden, 1995) showed substantial positive effects of both the English and the Spanish versions of the program. The present paper reports results on first, second, and third graders as of Spring, 1996.

An Arizona study compared first graders in two Success for All schools to those in three locally developed Title I schoolwide projects and one Reading Recovery school (Ross, Nunnery, & Smith, 1996). Finally, the largest study of Éxito Para Todos, in the Houston Independent School District, produced data both on the overall effects of the Spanish adaptation of SFA/EPT and on the effects of the degree of implementation of the model.

Success for All and Éxito Para Todos: Program Description

Success for All is a comprehensive reform program for elementary schools, especially those serving many students placed at risk. It restructures Title I staff and resources, plus any other available resources (such as bilingual, ESL, special education, or state compensatory education), to focus on prevention, early intervention, and long-term professional development, instead of remediation. With students acquiring English, two adaptatons of Success for All are used. One, Éxito Para Todos, used in Spanish bilingual programs, initially teaches reading in Spanish and then transitions children to English reading according to district policies and timetables. The other, used with speakers of many languages, incorporates research-based English as a second language strategies in the English curriculum. Specific elements of both program adaptations are described in the following sections.

Reading Tutors

One of the most important elements of the Success for All and Éxito Para Todos model are the use of tutors to support students' success in reading. One-to-one tutoring is the most effective form of instruction known (see Wasik & Slavin, 1993). The tutors at Fairhill, Fremont, and Wright, the schools using Éxito Para Todos, were Spanish bilingual teachers. At the schools using the ESL adaptation of Success for All, tutors were certified teachers paid for by Title I funds, plus ESL teachers from the schools’ staffs. Tutors worked one-to-one with students who were having difficulties keeping up with their reading groups. Students were taken from their homeroom classes by the tutors for 20-minute sessions during times other than reading or math periods. In general, tutors supported students' success in the regular reading curriculum, rather than teaching different objectives. For example, if the regular reading teacher was working on stories with long vowels or was teaching comprehension monitoring strategies, so did the tutor. However, tutors identified learning deficits and use different strategies to teach the same skills.

During daily 90-minute reading periods, tutors served as additional reading teachers to reduce class size for reading. Information on students' specific deficits and needs passed between reading teachers and tutors on brief forms, and reading teachers and tutors were given regular times to meet to coordinate their approaches with individual children.

Initial decisions about reading group placement and need for tutoring were made based on informal reading inventories given to each child by the tutors. After this, reading group placements and tutoring assignments were made based on eight-week assessments, which included teacher judgments as well as more formal assessments. First graders received first priority for tutoring, on the assumption that the primary function of the tutors is to help all students be successful in reading the first time, before they become remedial readers.

Reading Program

Students in grades 1-5 were regrouped for reading. That is, students were assigned to heterogeneous, age-grouped classes with class sizes of about 25 most of the day, but during a regular 90-minute reading period they were regrouped according to reading performance levels into reading classes of about 15 students all at the same level. For example, a 2-1 (second grade, first semester) reading class might contain first, second, and third grade students all reading at the same level. At the bilingual schools this regrouping was done separately for Spanish-dominant and English-dominant students; at Key and El Vista, the schools using the ESL adaptation, all students were regrouped according to reading level, regardless of language background. Regrouping allows teachers to teach the whole reading class without having to break the class into reading groups. It is a form of the Joplin Plan, which has been found to increase reading achievement in the elementary grades (Slavin, 1987).

The reading program emphasizes development of basic language skills and sound and letter recognition skills in kindergarten, and uses an approach based on sound blending and phonics starting in first grade. The K-1 reading program used in Éxito Para Todos, called Lee Conmigo ("Read with Me"), uses a series of "shared stories," minibooks that gradually introduce syllables, letter sounds, and sound-blending strategies in stories originally written in Spanish for the program. English-dominant students in all schools experienced Reading Roots, which uses the same instructional methods, but in English. Lee Conmigo and Reading Roots emphasize oral reading to partners as well as to the teacher, instruction in story structure and specific comprehension skills, and integration of reading and writing. They provide a rapidly paced, engaging set of routines that involve students in group response games that develop auditory discrimination skills, letter name and letter sound recognition and sound blending strategies based on the sounds and words used in the books. When they reach the second grade reading level, students use a form of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) with Spanish or English novels and basals. CIRC uses cooperative learning activities built around story structure, prediction, summarization, vocabulary building, decoding practice, writing, and direct instruction in reading comprehension skills. Research on CIRC has found it to significantly increase students' reading comprehension and language skills in English (Stevens, Madden, Slavin, & Farnish, 1987) and in Spanish (Calderón et al., 1998). The upper-elementary reading program is called Reading Wings in Success for All and Alas Para Leer in Éxito Para Todos.

Eight-Week Reading Assessments

Every eight weeks, reading teachers assessed student progress through the reading program. The results of the assessments were used to determine who is to receive tutoring, to suggest other adaptations in students' programs, and to identify students who need other types of assistance, such as family interventions or vision/hearing screening.

English as a Second Language

All schools had instruction in English as a second language (ESL). In the schools using the ESL adaptation, ESL teachers taught regular reading classes during a common regrouped reading period. In general, LEP children were integrated with non-LEP children in reading classes, and experienced the same instruction. After reading period, ESL teachers tutored individual students one-to-one or worked with groups of limited English proficient students. The emphasis of the ESL program in Success for All was on giving students assistance that is directly tied to success in the English curriculum. For example, ESL teachers used the same reading materials used in the classroom reading program. All reading teachers (not just ESL teachers) received manuals and training in ESL strategies, such as Total Physical Response, which they used in all classes containing ESL (and non-ESL) students.

In schools using Éxito Para Todos, ESL instruction was also closely connected to instruction in subjects in which students were being taught in English.

Kindergarten

All schools provided a full-day kindergarten for all eligible students. The kindergarten program provided a balanced and developmentally appropriate learning experience for young children. The curriculum emphasizes the development and use of language. It provided a balance of academic readiness and non-academic music, art, and movement activities. Readiness activities included use of integrated thematic units, and a program called Story Telling and Retelling (STaR) in which students retell stories read by the teachers.

Family Support Team

A Family Support Team in each provided parenting education and worked preventively to involve parents in support of their children's success in school. Also, family support staff provided assistance when there were indications that students were not working up to their full potential because of problems at home. For example, families of students who are not receiving adequate sleep or nutrition, need glasses, are not attending school regularly, or are exhibiting serious behavior problems receive family support assistance. Links with appropriate community service agencies were made to provide as much focused service as possible for parents and children.

Program Facilitator

A program facilitator worked at each school full time to oversee (with the principal) the operation of the Success for All and Éxito Para Todos models. Facilitators helped plan the program, helped the principal with scheduling, and visited classes and tutoring sessions frequently to help teachers and tutors with individual problems. They helped teachers and tutors deal with any behavior problems or other special problems, and coordinated the activities of the classroom teachers, tutors, Family Support Team, ESL teachers, and others. They organized data from regular eight-week assessments to help teachers make decisions about grouping, about needs for tutoring and other accommodations to students’ needs, and to check on the overall success of the implementation.

Teachers and Teacher Training

The teachers and tutors were regular classroom teachers, bilingual teachers, or ESL teachers. They received detailed teacher's manuals supplemented by two days of inservice at the beginning of the school year and several inservice sessions throughout the year on such topics as classroom management, instructional pace, and implementation of the curriculum.

Program Evaluations: Éxito Para Todos

Philadelphia—Bilingual vs. ESL

The bilingual version of Success for All, Éxito Para Todos, was first implemented at Fairhill Elementary School, a school in inner-city Philadelphia, starting in 1992. Fairhill serves a student body of 694 students of whom 78% are Hispanic (primarily from Puerto Rico) and 22% are African-American. A matched comparison school was also selected. Table 1 shows data on the two schools. From the table it is clear that the two schools were very similar in total enrollment, percent Hispanic and African-American, and historical achievement levels (from district records). The schools were also similar in the percent of students receiving bilingual instruction. In both schools about half of all students were in the bilingual program in first grade. Nearly all students in both schools qualified for free lunches. Both schools were Title 1 schoolwide projects, which means that both had high (and roughly equivalent) allocations of Title I funds that they could use flexibly to meet student needs.

A misconception about the instruction provided by the control group changed the meaning of this experiment from its original intention. The control group’s reading program was described by the district as a bilingual model emphasizing native language instruction. However, it turned out that the control group’s "bilingual" approach was more of a sheltered English model, with very little instruction in Spanish. This made the Fairhill experiment a comparison of Éxito Para Todos (in Spanish) to a sheltered English control group, mixing language of instruction with method of instruction.

Measures

All students defined by district criteria as LEP at Fairhill and its control school were pretested at the beginning of first grade on the Spanish Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). Each following May, these students were tested by native language speakers on three scales of the Spanish Woodcock (Bateria Woodcock de Proficiencia en el Idioma): Letter/Word Identification (Identificacion de Letras y Palabras), Word Attack (Analisis de Palabras), and Passage Comprehension (Comprension de Textos). Starting in third grade, almost all children had transitioned to English instruction, so students were assessed on the corresponding English Woodcock scales as well.

Results

A check for pretest differences on the Spanish PPVT found that there were differences in favor of the experimental group (p< .03). PPVT scores were therefore used as covariates in all analyses of covariance (ANCOVA). As shown in Table 2, Fairhill students performed far better than control students on all three Spanish measures (p<.001). Given that they were taught to read in Spanish and the control group was not, this is hardly surprising. More significant, however, were the differences in English reading performance. Fairhill students scored higher than control students on all three English reading measures. The differences were only statistically significant on Word Attack (p<.05; ES = +0.65). However, this finding is of considerable interest, as it shows that third graders taught well in Spanish were performing at least as well and often better in English than were students only taught in English. Of course, these students then had the substantial bonus of the ability to read well in Spanish. The small sample size and significant pretest differences make these results speculative rather than conclusive, but they are worthy of further investigation.

California Bilingual Schools

Data from first, second, and third graders in the three California Success for All schools were analyzed together by Livingston & Flaherty (1997), pooling data across schools in four categories: English-dominant students, Spanish-dominant students taught in Spanish, Éxito Para Todos, Spanish-dominant students taught in English, and speakers of languages other than English or Spanish taught in English. Three cohorts were followed. Data for a 1992 cohort are available for grades 1, 2, and 3; for 1993, grades 1 and 2; and for 1994, grade 1 only. The pooled results for the Spanish bilingual program are summarized in Figure 1 (adapted from Livingston & Flaherty, 1997).

Students in the two Éxito Para Todos schools in California scored higher than controls at every grade level in all three cohorts, as shown in Figure 1. Effect sizes across cohorts averaged +1.03 for first graders, +.44 for second graders, and +.23 for third graders. The analyses for second and third graders probably understate the magnitude of the differences. In line with district and program policies, students are transitioned into English instruction as soon as they demonstrate an ability to excel in English. Because of their success in Spanish reading, many more Éxito Para Todos than control students were transitioned during second and third grades. Therefore, the highest-achieving experimental students were being removed from the Spanish sample, making the performance of this group look lower than it was.

Houston (Bilingual)

The largest study of Éxito Para Todos, the Spanish bilingual adaptation of Success for All, took place in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Both Spanish and English forms of the program were being studied; only the Spanish results are presented here (see Nunnery, Slavin, Madden, Ross, Smith, Hunter, & Stubbs, in press, for a report of the full study).  The Houston study was unusual in several ways. In contrast to other studies (and to standard practice in implementing Success for All in dissemination sites), schools were allowed to choose how completely to implement the program. They could choose to implement all program elements, the reading program and tutoring without other elements, or just the reading program. The intention was to compare outcomes according to degree of implementation.

Measures

The study compared first graders in 20 schools implementing Éxito Para Todos to those in 10 matched schools also using Spanish bilingual instruction. Children were assessed on three scales from the Spanish Woodcock: Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension. Ten children were selected at random to be assessed in each school; after missing data were removed, there was a total of 298 Spanish-dominant students across the 30 schools with bilingual programs.

Results

The Success for All schools were grouped into three categories of implementation--high, medium, or low--based on such implementation categories as whether the school had a full-time, part-time, or no facilitator, the number and certification status of tutors, and the existence of a family support team. Among the bilingual schools, no school fell into the "high" category, primarily because few had certified teachers working as bilingual tutors. The medium-implementation schools, however, had many more paraprofessional tutors and were much more likely to have a full-time facilitator and a family support team than were the low-implementation schools. Otherwise, both sets of schools were very similar to each other and to bilingual programs in comparison schools. The Spanish-dominant SFA students were somewhat more impoverished than those in comparison schools, and had somewhat higher mobility.

Table 3 summarizes outcome data for the three sets of schools. Directionally, medium implementers scored higher than low implementers, who scored higher than controls.   School-level comparisons showed significant differences (p < .05) between both categories of SFA/EPT schools and comparison schools on Word Identification and Word Attack, and a marginally significant difference (p < .06) between medium implementation schools and controls on Passage Comprehension. Overall, effect sizes in comparison to controls averaged +0.24 for medium implementers, +0.17 for low implementers. These results, emphasizing the importance of completeness of implementation, mirror the results found for the English-dominant students in the Houston study (see Nunnery et al., in press).

Program Evaluations: English as a Second Language Adaptations

Philadelphia (ESL)

Beginning in September 1988, researchers from Johns Hopkins University began working with the staff at Philadelphia's Francis Scott Key Elementary School to implement Success for All in grades K-5. Sixty-two percent of its students were from Asian backgrounds, primarily Cambodian. Nearly all of these students entered the school in kindergarten with little or no English. The remainder of the school was divided between African American and white students. The school is located in an extremely impoverished neighborhood in South Philadelphia. Ninety-six percent of the students were from low-income families and qualified for free lunch.

Because of the unavailability of Cambodian-speaking teachers, Francis Scott Key used an ESL approach to its LEP students. The only adult in the school who spoke Cambodian was a bilingual counseling assistant.

Evaluation Design

The program at Francis Scott Key was evaluated in comparison to a similar Philadelphia elementary school. Table 4 compares the two schools on several variables. As the Table shows, the two schools were very similar in overall achievement level and other variables. Thirty-three percent of the comparison school's students were Asian (mostly Cambodian), the highest proportion in the city after Key. The percentage of students receiving free lunch was very high in both schools, though higher at Key (96%) than at the comparison school (84%). A few differences are worthy of note, however. The comparison school was larger than Key, with 1,128 students overall to Key's 622, and the non-Asian students at the comparison school were almost all African American, while 21% of Key’s students were white.

The data reported here are for all students in grades 4-5 in Spring, 1995. With the exception of transfers, all students had been in the program since kindergarten.

 Measures

At Francis Scott Key and its comparison school, all students in grades 4-5 were individually administered three scales from the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery (Woodcock, 1984): Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension. The Word Identification scale was used to assess recognition of common sight words, the Word Attack scale assessed phonetic synthesis skills, and the Passage Comprehension scale assessed students’ abilities to read and comprehend meaningful text.

Analyses of variance (ANOVA) were conducted on each outcome separately. Outcomes were characterized in terms of effect sizes, which are the difference between experimental and control means divided by the control group’s standard deviation. Grade equivalents were not used in any analyses, but are presented as convenient indicators of students’ absolute performance levels.

Results: Asian Students

The results for Asian students are summarized in Tables 5 and 6. Success for All Asian students at all three grade levels performed far better than control students. Differences between Success for All and control students were statistically significant on every measure at every grade level (p<.001). Median grade equivalents and effect sizes were computed across the three Woodcock scales. On average, Success for All Asian students exceeded control students in reading grade equivalents by 2.9 years in fourth grade (Median ES = +1.49), and 2.8 years in fifth grade (Median ES = +1.33). Success for All Asian students were reading about a full year above grade level in fourth grade (GE = 5.8) and in fifth grade (GE = 6.8), while similar control students averaged 1.9 years below grade reading level in fourth grade and 1.8 years below grade level in fifth grade.

California ESL Students

The California study (Livingston & Flaherty, 1997) included data on children who were acquiring English taught in English. These included both students in one Modesto school that did not have a bilingual program, as well as LEP students in the two schools (one in Modesto and one in Riverside) who were speakers of languages other than Spanish.

Results for Spanish-dominant students taught in English are shown in Figure 3. Like the results for students taught in Spanish, these comparisons show remarkable impacts for first graders (ES = +1.36), smaller ones for second graders (ES = +.46), and very small differences for third graders (ES = +.09). Again, the successful transitioning of students out of ESL classes reduced the apparent differences by third grade (because the highest achieving students are no longer receiving ESL services).

Other ESL Students

Results for speakers of languages other than English or Spanish (taught in English) are summarized in Figure 4. The patterns for these students are similar to those for Spanish-dominant ESL students, except that there were no differences for the 1994 first grade cohort. Averaging across cohorts, effect sizes were +.40 for first graders, +.37 for second graders, and +.05 for third graders.

Arizona (ESL)

The most recent study of the ESL adaptation of Success for All in schools serving many students acquiring English is a study in an Arizona school district (Ross, Smith, & Nunnery, 1998). This study compared first graders in two Success for All schools, three schools using locally-developed Title I schoolwide projects, and one school using Reading Recovery, a one-to-one tutoring program for first graders (Lyons, Pinnell, & Deford, 1993). Two strata of schools were compared. Stratum 1 consisted of very impoverished schools, in which 81% of students received free lunch and 50% were Hispanic. Stratum 2 consisted of less impoverished schools, with 53% of students receiving free lunch and 27% Hispanic.

Measures

Students were pretested on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and then posttested on the Woodcock Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension scales, and the Durrell Oral Reading Test. Analyses of covariance compared schools in each stratum to the other two schools in the same stratum, controlling for PPVT pretests.

Results

Table 7 (from Ross et al., 1998) summarizes the outcomes for Spanish-dominant students. In the highest-poverty schools (Stratum 1), Success for All students scored higher than the average of the two locally-developed schoolwide projects on all measures, but the difference was significant only for Word Attack. Hispanic first graders averaged at grade level (1.8), but the comparison groups were below grade level on all measures (mean =1.45). Results were similar for the less impoverished schools (Stratum 2); Success for All Spanish-dominant students scored significantly higher than the locally-developed schoolwide project and the Reading Recovery school on Word Attack, but there were no significant differences on the other three measures. The Reading Recovery and local schoolwide project schools did not differ on any of the measures.

DISCUSSION

The effects of Success for All on the achievement of English language learners are not entirely consistent, but in general they are substantially positive. In all schools implementing Éxito Para Todos, the Spanish bilingual adaptation of Success for All, effect sizes for first graders on Spanish assessments were very positive. The Houston study showed that this effect was more pronounced when schools were implementing most of the program’s elements. The Philadelphia evaluation showed that even after transitioning to English-only instruction, Éxito Para Todos third graders performed better on English assessments than control students who were primarily taught in English. For students in the ESL adaptation of Success for All, effect sizes for all comparisons were also positive, especially for Cambodian students in Philadelphia and Mexican-American students in California.

The findings of this research suggest many areas in need of further investigation. First, they point to a need for more in depth qualitative investigations of instructional practices in bilingual Success for All/Éxito Para Todos classes as well as in traditional bilingual first grade. A preliminary ethnography of Success for All and control schools has recently been completed (Prado-Olmos & Marquez, in press), but more work is needed in this area. In addition, it would be important to investigate the effects of the separate components of Success for All in bilingual and ESL classes and to relate these components to student outcomes. This is a component of the Houston study, which contrasted bilingual schools using the Lee Conmigo reading curriculum alone, schools using Lee Conmigo plus tutoring for first graders, schools using all components of Éxito Para Todos, and traditional bilingual control schools, but more research along these lines is needed.

More research is also needed to determine the effects of Éxito Para Todos over a longer time period and in a larger number of schools. However, the studies summarized here show the impact of Éxito Para Todos on Spanish reading, and show that these gains generally carry over into English reading. A form of Success for All integrating ESL and classroom instruction for English language learners taught in English was also found to be effective.

Both bilingual and ESL instruction are realities for hundreds of thousands of U.S. students. However the political debate about bilingual education turns out, it is time to begin to investigate instructional strategies able to ensure the success of students in reading, whatever the language of instruction. The research summarized here provides a step in this direction.

References

August, D., & Hakuta, K. (1997). Improving schooling for language-minority children: A research agenda. Washington, DC: National Research Council.

Calderón, M., Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Slavin, R. E. (1998). Effects of Bilingual Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition on students making the transition from Spanish to English reading. Elementary School Journal, 99 (2), 153-165.

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