DCPS seeing steady growth in ESL population
Oct. 3—Daviess County Public Schools continues to see a growth in the number of English-language learner students.
The district had 755 ESL students as of the beginning of September, said Jana Beth Francis, DCPS assistant superintendent of teaching and learning.
"In 2020, we had 593. In 2021, we had 616 and in 2022 we had 740," she said. "Those numbers are from January of those years."
The district has put an emphasis on paying for teachers to go back to school to receive an ESL endorsement.
"If you're a certified teacher, you can be endorsed to teach ESL students through a series of classes at the master's level or higher," Francis said. "We are seeing ESL students at 19 out of our 21 schools, so we need teachers all across the district who have the training to work with English-learners."
ESL students are tested in proficiency on a scale of one to six. Students who receive a one or two are entering and emerging; three through five are students who are developing, expanding and bridging; and a six means a student is proficient.
In Kentucky, ESL students only have to score a 4.5 to exit the program. Because of this, Francis said the district doesn't have a lot of students who reach a five because they are testing out of the program before reaching that level.
In 2020, 43% of ESL students had reached a one or a two. That number rose to 47% by 2022, in part because of an influx of families from Afghanistan who arrived in December 2021, a month before the testing was given, Francis said.
"When we got the Afghan students, a lot of them had been in school and had a lot of formal education and we realized we needed strong exit criteria from the newcomer program," Francis said.
The district worked on exit criteria over the summer to decide when a newcomer is ready to be in classes with support.
About 10% of kindergarten students and first-graders are English-learners, Francis said. That percentage equates to approximately 165 to 170 students.
The district has been working to launch a support tool, Lexia Learning, to provide additional assistance for ESL students in elementary schools.
"It's a computer-based enrichment program for English-learners that is a supplement to what they're getting," Francis said. "We still have Rosetta Stone and we use that for the high schoolers because it's a great conversational English tool."
DCPS has also been using Ellevation Math to support ESL students.
"Think about being in seventh grade and talking about functions and tables and you think a table is where you sit, but it actually means a chart," Francis said. "This program is another supplemental program and allows students to front-load the math vocabulary so when they're sitting in class, they understand it better."
Francis said DCPS is taking steps to provide consistency for ESL students throughout the district.
"We hired a district English-language coach that works across all 20 of our buildings and helps teachers meet the academic needs of English-learners," she said.
