When the student arrived in New Orleans from Vietnam, as a high school sophomore, she spoke very little English. Despite making the honor roll at George Washington Carver High School, she repeatedly failed the biology and U.S. history LEAP exams, tests given in a language she had not yet mastered. After the third time, she dropped out of school.
It’s a familiar story to many immigrants, who make up a growing share of Louisiana’s public school students. The state’s overall high school graduation rate in 2019 was 80%, but for English learner students, it was 41%.
That gap is wider here than in other states, such as Texas, which has a larger percentage of non-native English speakers in schools.
But the overarching reason for the disparity, advocates told the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education earlier this month, is the LEAP exam, a standardized test that they say is a flawed measure of a non-native English speaker’s grasp on academic material. Louisiana is one of eight states that require students to pass standardized tests to receive a diploma.
The EXCELL coalition, a group of advocates from across Louisiana, is pushing a policy change that would let qualifying students complete portfolio work and be held accountable by a different exam, the English Language Proficiency Test, or ELPT. Texas and Florida have already adopted similar policies.
Students who come into the U.S. in 7th grade or later would be eligible.
“This is a civil rights access issue, and if we don’t move the needle on this we are denying kids accessible education and equitable opportunities,” Cheruba Chavez, a New Orleans-based education advocate, said in an interview.
Seven years to proficiency
Louisiana’s population of English learner students, or ELs, has more than doubled in a decade, growing from 1.66% in the 2011-12 academic school year to 3.84% in 2020-21. And state policy already recognizes that their English skills can impair their “ability to meet the state’s proficient level of achievement on state assessments.”
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