“What Does Arizona’s ELL Population Look Like, and How Are They Doing” is available from ThinkAZ.
Arizona’s English-language learners do increasingly better on the state’s standardized academic tests during each of the first three years they participate in special programs to learn English, but their performance on those tests stagnates or declines if they stay in those programs for more than three years, a policy brief by the Arizona Center for Public Policy concludes.
The authors of the study say that such a finding shows that students don’t continue to benefit from special programs to learn English after a certain amount of time, which they argue has implications for how such programs should be funded.