Picture your child’s classroom. You see dozens of children busy learning the day’s lessons. But look closer … some are quietly struggling. They want to learn—they just can’t speak the language. For these kids, mere words are tall hurdles. Learning subjects like math or English brings two challenges: first understand the teacher, then the subject.

This isn’t a small or isolated problem. It’s a nationwide concern, especially in diverse cities like Houston. In HISD alone, there are more than 100 “first” languages spoken and 26 percent of its 208,000 students are bilingual or English as a Second Language (ESL) learners.

What happens to these kids? Do they fall behind the rest of the students in their class, or do they slow the rest of the students, or both? Very likely, it’s the former—ESL students tend to have much lower literacy, retention, and graduation rates.

So why should this matter to you? Let’s look at Houston’s Hispanic population. There’s no question that Hispanics will represent an increasing proportion of the wage-earning population in the years to come, yet they have the lowest graduation rates of any ethnic group. Ensuring their success in school, from elementary through college, is crucial to our city’s economic future.

That’s why UH researchers are working to find better ways to teach our kids. The nationally acclaimed Texas Institute for Measurement Evaluation and Statistics—better known as TIMES—is a vital resource in the nation’s drive to improve the ways we teach our children.

IS THERE A RIGHT WAY?

One of the hot-button issues in education today is English-only education versus bilingual education. The answer—though not as black-and-white as the debate—lies in the classroom, says TIMES director and Professor of Psychology David Francis (Ph.D. ’85).

“The real issue is how to provide better instruction in both English-only and bilingual teaching models, because each has a role to play,” he says. “We need to educate our educators and give them better teaching models and best practices.”

But in developing better teaching models, the results are rarely clear-cut. Take a current study: TIMES is testing experimental versions of bilingual and English-only instruction against traditional versions of both models in Brownsville ISD.

While the study will yield an effective teaching model for Brownsville, it may not work in Los Angeles or even Corpus Christi. An effective teaching model is based on the area, its culture, the languages spoken, and the realities of school budgets and staffing—a single classroom could have several first languages.

Another reality—the value of bilingual instruction is not clearly defined. Current research suggests that teaching in a child’s first language offers small to moderate benefits in the child’s learning.

“The way we teach our children needs to be based on research,” says Francis. “We know that we need English-only instruction. No matter what we find with regard to the benefits of bilingual education, we have to develop better English-only teaching models for those situations where bilingual education is not possible.”

POWERFUL PARTNERS

UH is not alone in searching for better ways to teach our kids.

The U.S. Department of Education is searching for answers, as are university researchers from Harvard and Yale. And national research laboratories such as the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C., are among the many looking for a better way.

They have another common tie—they’re partnering with UH to improve education. In many cases, these prestigious institutes seek TIMES’ counsel in research measurement, evaluation, and statistics. Basically, TIMES is a national resource for educational research.

“Our partnership with TIMES lends credibility to the quality of our work,” says Diane August, senior research scientist at the Center for Applied Linguistics. “Their high standards have served as a cornerstone of our research for the past five years.”

Such high standards haven’t gone unnoticed. The U.S. Department of Education recently awarded TIMES a $9.9 million grant to create the National Research and Development Center for English Language Learners. The center will team UH with researchers from Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, California State University at Long Beach, The University of Texas, and the Center for Applied Linguistics.

“Our strength lies in our collaborations with leading substantive researchers, where we contribute expertise in measurement, evaluation, and statistics,” says Francis. “We want to improve what we know about human learning and behavior through application of advanced quantitative methods.”