ESOL Students in D.C. Area Narrow Achievement Gap - washingtonpost.com: English language learners have become star pupils in the Washington region, drawing accolades for top-performing schools that serve immigrant communities and showing standout results on state reading tests and national rankings.
From 2003 to 2008, gaps in the pass rates between English learners -- pupils designated as having limited English proficiency -- and other students narrowed by half on Maryland and Virginia state tests. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress ranked Virginia's English learners first in the nation for fourth-grade reading and Maryland's fifth.
In January, the trade publication Education Week reported that achievement gaps in reading for students of limited English proficiency were smaller in Maryland and Virginia than in most other states. According to D.C. data, English learners in the District's public schools perform at about the citywide average in reading, which is low but climbing.
The success of English learners in the region is partly a matter of where many of them live: Montgomery and Fairfax counties, achievement powerhouses that have trained their formidable resources on burgeoning populations of immigrant students. Montgomery has more than 17,000 such students, Fairfax about 34,000.
