Dan, you have raised some critically important questions. NRS data indicates that only about 36% of ESL students "complete a level" each year. This is cause for concern, because the same data show that the vast majority of ESL students are at the lowest levels of proficiency and have low levels of education in their native countries. However, the NRS data is not definitive for a number of reasons -- such as low rates of re-test in many programs, the use of tests that do not measure the full range of English language skills, and the fact that data is reported only for a single year (students may persist in programs long enough to achieve much larger learning gains).

As a first step toward finding out more about the learning gains and persistence of ESL students, Jodi Crandall and I worked with the faculty and staff at 5 highly regarded community college programs to use student record data as a means of determining both learning gains and persistence rates. At several of the colleges we were able to track the learning gains and persistence of students for as long as seven years. At most of the colleges, the measures of learning gains used was completion of one or more additional levels AS THE COLLEGE DEFINED THE LEVELS. Both the definition of levels and the standards of completion took account of test scores (of the sort reported to the NRS), but they also took account of other measures of student achievement (including proficiency in all core ESL skills). 

Needless to say, our findings were fairly complex and cannot be adequately set forth here. In summary, however, we found that at most 30% of students persist for 2-3 college terms and complete more than 2-3 levels over a seven year period. More than 40-50% of students do not complete a level or complete only a single level at any time over a seven year period. Although we could not be sure, it appears that low level students were more likely to persist than higher level students. About 10-15% of adult education ESL students enrolled in credit ESL at these colleges, and the number who eventually enrolled in academic credit courses was in the single digits. 

We also found that all the colleges we examined employ strategies that significantly improve the rate of learning gains and retention. Among these were high intensity/managed enrollment classes (more than 3-6 hours per week), strategies to encourage learning outside the classroom, appropriate uses of echnology for instruction, co-enrollment of adult education ESL students in vocational programs taught in English, curricular designs that insure instruction is relevant to the interests of students (such as Frerian approaches), enriched guidance/counseling/support services, setting high expectations, and VESL programs. Unfortunately, only small numbers of students have access to most of these strategies at most colleges, because they are far more expensive on a per student basis than is standard ESL instruction. Conversely, it appears that large numbers of students would like to make the committment to enhanced programs, if they were available. 

The results of our research were published by the Council for the Advancement of Adult Literacy (under the auspices of which the research was conducted) in February as the report " Passing the Torch:Strategies for Innovation in Community College ESL." This is available at the CAAL website: www.caalusa.org. CAAL will be publishing more of the data we gathered later this spring. 

Among the "take away" messages we gathered from our work were: 1) The use of longitudinal (multi-year) data and holistic assessments of learning gains are essential for understanding and improving the effectiveness of ESL programs. In many programs it is feasible to gather and use longitudinal data in this way, but few programs do so due to a variety of perceived constraints and/or a lack of support for data analysis by their host institutions. 2) Research can be very helpful in program improvement, but it requires a substantial committment on the part of programs to gather relevant data and tease out its lessons on an on-going basis. Programs should receive far more support for this. 3) It is posible to greatly improve ESL program outcomes using a variety of strategies, but these require a larger investment in instruction per student -- an investment that we believe is well worth the cost. 4) Numbers do not speak for themselves. For example, low rates of learning gains must be read in the context of the goals that both students and programs set for ESL instruction. It may be that some portion of students legitimately wish to use ESL programs as an initial platform to learn SOME English, and that their learning gains after separating from programs are substantial. Too little is known about this. Conversely, we found that the more students learn, the more ambitious their learning goals become. Because numbers do not speak for themselves, it is all the more important for individual programs and state agencies to invest in the use of research for program improvement and to ACTUALLY USE IT for therse purposes. Too often over-burdened ESL faculty and staff consider research an after-thought. They need the time, encouragement, resources, and training to development "continuous program improvement" models to their work.                                    
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