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Educators often refer to achievement gaps that occur between African American students when they are compared to Caucasian students, but with the influx of refugees from Africa, there are some schools that have a majority of students that are considered a part of the Black Subgroup, that are also receiving ELL services. This phenomenon impacts this particular subgroup because the nation’s largest immigrant and/or refugee population consists of Hispanic students and they have a defined group in NCLB. Does the performance of the ELL students positively or negatively affect performance in achieving AYP for specific subgroups? Does the roll of ELL learners influence outcomes on AYP? To answer these questions, one must make evidenced-based decisions that investigate from below the surface.

Schools with high ELL populations that include African students must identify and monitor the achievement of both groups when coupled within a large African American student community. Africans should be treated with the same degree of conscientiousness as minority, special education children because of the impact that those particular students have on achieving AYP. Perhaps a school has an achievement gap, meaning Caucasians score 15-20% higher on standardized tests than their African American counterparts. The school may also have a high African population that has recently migrated to the U.S. Does the performance of the African students have a positive or negative impact on the performance of the Black subgroup as a whole?

Case study 1

At a suburban high school, the Effective School-wide Discipline (ESD) committee kept track of discipline data. The team disaggregated how many referrals students had for different locations of the school, times of day, gender, ethnicity, etc. The ESD team tracked the referrals and analyzed the data but no patterns surfaced. The ESD team decided to look below the surface and go beyond the set requirements. The ESD team looked at the referrals by individuals and realized that 44% of the referrals came from only 5% of the students. This was alarming so collectively the group investigated ways to improve this pattern.

The ESD team decided to look for positive incentives. First of all, the team targeted that list of students who had recurring discipline problems and their grade level administrators called them in individually. The administrators told the student that they wanted to see progress with his/her behaviors and let the student know that they would be invited to a pizza party during their lunch at the end of the semester if the student didn’t get any more referrals. There were only about six students who made it through the next three weeks without getting in trouble and qualified for this reward but many of them did try to do better so the school’s discipline numbers began to decrease.

Next the ESD team looked at the timing and realized that March and May were the months with the most referrals so the team strategized on how to decrease the discipline during those two months. For March, the team did prize drawings. Any student who did not get a referral would have their name entered into the drawing. For May, the ESD team did a Student Staff Triathlon and those students who did not have referrals could attend and those who got in trouble during the month had to go to a designated room and do homework.

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Source:  OpenStax, 21st century theories of education administration. OpenStax CNX. Jul 08, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10727/1.1
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