English Learners in Chicago Public Schools: A New Perspective

More than 76 percent of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students who begin kindergarten as English Learners (ELs) become proficient in English by fifth grade. Outcomes showed that students who achieved English proficiency by eighth grade (78 percent), performed academically as well as or better than their peers who began school proficient in English or were native-English speakers.Previous studies about ELs have reported data on active English Learners-defined as those students who have not yet reached proficiency on a state English test-at a specific moment in time. This study, for the first time, analyzed the long-term trajectories of 18,000 CPS students who began kindergarten as ELs and followed their progress all the way through eighth grade.