Philly’s Spanish-speaking students lag in English language achievement

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

This story is about an achievement gap.

No, not the achievement gap — a term used to describe how white and wealthy students perform better on standardized tests than minority and low-income students.

This is an achievement gap you might not know much about, even though researchers have puzzled over it for more than a decade.

This one has to do with language.

We’re writing about it now partly because it popped up in a recent Philadelphia study, with new data pointing to its distressing magnitude.

Earlier this year, the Philadelphia Education Research Consortium released a study looking at English learners — or ELs — who entered the district as kindergartners in 2008-09. It tracked their progress through the end of 3rd grade because the city has a goal of ensuring that all students can read on grade level by the beginning of 4th grade.

Read the rest of this article at Newsworks