How does state-required testing in English for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) affect immersion program integrity?
The requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation stipulate regular standardized testing in English to assess student progress from one year to the next. Some immersion schools, concerned about the need to demonstrate “adequate yearly progress” on the part of their students, have decided to modify some of their instructional goals. They may, for example, decide to prepare students for English-medium testing by drilling some of the English vocabulary that students will need to make sense of questions about math or science concepts. Normally, this kind of translation exercise would not be part of the classroom strategies that teachers use in an immersion setting. Other schools have decided to introduce formal study of English at an earlier grade level, typically starting in Grade 2 instead of later, thereby increasing the number of hours immersion students study English Language Arts and decreasing the number of hours spent on instruction in the immersion language. Even tho
