Marina Rodriguez and her son Dylan were among dozens of families gathered at the Harvest Elementary school cafeteria on a recent school night.
With a smile on her face, Rodriguez proudly said her 8-year-old son is excelling in his classes.
“He’s learning a lot more quickly. He’s talking more in class and at home. He’s just more comfortable,” Rodriguez said in Spanish.
And Dylan says he loves learning. His favorite subject is “math, because I don’t have to read or take notes,” he said.
Dylan isn’t the typical student. He’s an English learner – commonly referred to as EL. He and his mother were at the school that night for a presentation on how their school is supporting students like him.
Rodriguez, along with other parents in the cafeteria, were listening to the presentation through headphones, receiving translation from interpreters. Meanwhile, Dylan and other kids were bouncing on tables, their conversations switching between Spanish and English.
Five years out from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, San Joaquin Valley schools are still recovering from learning losses. The Central Unified School District in west Fresno is trying something new to improve learning outcomes - and it appears to be making significant progress.
Harvest Elementary serves a widely diverse student body. Out of 983 students, nearly one fifth are learning English as a second language. At home, students have familial backgrounds where they speak another language aside from English. Their families may speak Spanish, Punjabi, Hmong or Arabic as their primary language. About 35 languages are spoken districtwide, according to the district’s master plan for English learners.
According to school administrators, EL students at Harvest are progressing faster than before the pandemic. Data from last year’s English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC) reflected a 20% bump in progress in reading, writing, listening and speaking in English among this set of students, compared to scores from 2023.
Harvest Elementary Principal Todd Bennett said his goal is for all students to have as many opportunities as possible. He especially wants to see more English learners become fluent in the language so they have an opportunity to take elective courses in high school.
“Kids that are not English proficient are not getting to take other electives,” Bennett said. “They don’t get to take music, foreign language, all that kind of stuff. And then that really hurts them.”
New strategies rolled out across the district
The school is doing well now, but that wasn’t always the case.
In 2022, Central Unified conducted an equity review with the education research nonprofit The New Teacher Project to examine how its students were performing.
Tami Boatright, a Central Unified assistant superintendent, said that’s when the district saw significant gaps in learning for EL students compared to other groups. The review also found that African-American students, students with disabilities, and newly-enrolled students were underperforming.
“It really put a spotlight on what we needed to do in Central Unified and that things needed to change,” Boatright told CVJC.
The district started testing out new, experimental strategies to close those gaps – which included giving students more instruction in their native languages, adding additional aids in the classroom, and providing more after school tutoring for English learners.
The district also created the Multilingual Success Network, a coalition of administrators, teachers and family liaisons across a handful of campuses, to create new lesson plans and teaching methods to uplift students inside and outside the classroom.
“We're using that network to test out actions, initiatives at the school site so that if it is effective and it is sustainable, then we take that and we go district wide with it,” said Cindy Escandon, the district’s supervisor of EL and Migrant Services.
Administrators hopeful for future EL progress
The district now has a goal to boost EL progress across all sites by 20% each year, Escandon said. So far, it’s made significant strides.
“Students have shown greater confidence and they're more engaged in their learning. And the reason why is that they're playing an active role in goal setting,” Escandon said.
Alongside Harvest Elementary, nearby Justin Garza High School also saw more of its English learners score well in the LPAC exam last year.
William Saroyan Elementary School more than doubled the number of students who showed progress in their language learning, showing the greatest leap of progress in the district.
Joelle Mills, principal at Saroyan, said the school’s progress was a result of changing how the LPAC exam was administered.
Previously, the exam was proctored by the vice principal or certain teachers with specialized certifications to ensure standard testing environments. Mills says the school provided resources for its EL teachers to become certified, and now they are administering the exam to their own students.
“A lot of the students said that they felt more comfortable taking [the exam] with their own teacher,” Mills said. “That really is what made a difference.”
The school also is testing out giving students sample tests to get them used to the format of the exam, Mills said.
Central Unified administrators hope the improvement they’ve seen at Saroyan Elementary, Harvest Elementary and Justin Garza High School is replicated across all campuses.
“We have ambitious goals,” Escandon said. “Everything that we're doing is targeted, strategic and driven by data. I'm very excited about what the future holds.”
As for how growth continues this year, the district will have to wait for new test scores later this spring.