Newcomer Immigrant Program Evaluation Report, 2016-2017. Research Educational Program Report
Author: Houston Independent School District (HISD), Department of Research and Accountability
Date: 2017-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Immigrants,English Language Learners,Acculturation,Student Needs,Adjustment (to Environment),English (Second Language),Second Language Instruction,School Orientation,Staff Development,Faculty Development,Student Personnel Services,Academic Support Services,Parent Education,Middle School Students,High School Students,Secondary School Teachers,Attendance Patterns,Dropout Rate,Language Proficiency,Student Behavior

There are approximately 68,000 students in Houston Independent School District labeled as &quot;English language learners&quot; (ELLs). Many of these students have the additional obstacle of being recent immigrants who have been in the United States for three years or less. In recent years, the number of immigrant ELLs in the district has increased dramatically, and the number of first year immigrants has increased by 177 percent since 2011-2012. Without proper instructional supports, these students are at risk of falling behind academically. In an attempt to address the needs of the most challenged of these recent immigrants, the district has implemented a Newcomer Program for immigrant ELLs in their first year in U.S. schools. This report summarizes data from this program for the 2016-2017 school year. The Newcomer Program in HISD is an English as a Second Language (ESL) based program designed to accommodate and educate newly arrived immigrant ELL students. The program assists new immigrant students to adapt to a new country, language, and school, and has been implemented in 14 high schools and 16 middle schools (referred to in this report as &quot;Newcomer campuses&quot;). The program does not provide a specialized instruction or schedule to newcomer students beyond what is offered to other ELLs. Instead, it focuses on providing needed support and resources to newcomer students and their parents, while offering specialized trading for teachers of newcomers. The main components of the program involve: (1) providing orientation to the new school, community and society; (2) intensive English language development via ESL methodology; (3) training for teachers and staff who work with first year immigrant ELLs; (4) support services (e.g., counseling, tutoring, career education, transportation, health services); (5) resource materials for students (hi-lo readers, Xtra libraries, Emerge kits); and (6) parent resources/education. Highlights of the report include: (1) A total of 2,244 newcomer students were enrolled at the 30 participating campuses (1,448 in high school and 796 in middle school). An additional 490 newcomers were at campuses that did not participate in the program; (2) More than half (55%) of these newcomer students came from three countries: El Salvador (611), Honduras (432), and Guatemala (211). The majority of participating newcomers were economically disadvantaged (71%) and Spanish-speaking (76%), and 91% of them were ELLs; (3) One hundred-fourteen teachers and 22 administrators and other staff attended Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) training offered by the district. Sixty-nine of these teachers were at participating newcomer campuses and the remainder at non-participating campuses; (4) Multilingual Programs Department staff provided support for the participating newcomer campuses; staff logs showed 1,050 outreach sessions with students and 239 orientation sessions for parents; (5) Newcomer students at participating campuses showed slightly lower English proficiency on TELPAS in comparison with newcomers from other campuses, and both newcomer groups were less proficient than ELLs as a group; (6) Eighty-four participating newcomer students had complete sets of pre/post test results on the district -developed writing assessment, and there was evidence that they improved their writing proficiency over the course of the year; (7) Newcomers showed larger pre/post lexile score gains (98 vs. 63 lexile points) on the Achieve 3000 reading assessment than non-newcomers; (8) Attendance rates for newcomers did not differ significantly from those of either other newcomers at non-participating campuses, or non-newcomer students in grades 6-12. Discipline date showed that newcomer students (hub and standalone combined) had a lower rate of disciplinary incidents than non-newcomers (14.93% versus 18.11%); (9) QTEL trainings did not appear to have any influence on the TELPAS performance of students whose teachers participated in 2016-2017, but there was some evidence that students of teachers who had been trained in 2015-2016 had somewhat lower performance; and (10) Finally, second-year immigrants who had been in the newcomer program in 2015-2016 did have higher rates of progress on the TELPAS, lower rates of disciplinary incidents in 2016-2017, and also had a lower annual dropout rate in 2015-2016. [To view the 2015-2016 edition of the report, see ED581874.]