Thread by @joelhenghartse

Here's a thread with more thoughts about my nascent "missing ELLs" project (feel free to ignore this thread if you don't care about ESL education or Vancouver BC!) #bced:

47% of Metro Vancouver residents have a mother tongue other than English.

There are 219 schools in BC that allegedly have "zero" English language learners. Many are outside Metro Vancouver, but fully 100 are in Metro Van:

36 are in Vancouver
17 in Surrey
7 in Langley
7 in Burnaby
7 in North Van
7 in Richmond
6 in Abbotsford
5 in West Van
3 in Coquitlam
4 in Delta
1 in New West

in theory, neighbourhood demographics can vary, and having a non-English mother tongue doesn't "make" you an ELL...

So one of my current questions is "what is it that causes a student to be designated as an ELL, and why are there 100 schools in a city where almost half the people half a non-English mother tongue that say none of their students meet the definition of ELL?"

I'm not even including schools that get no gov't funding here (many of which have mostly int'l students) - just public schools and private schools that are eligible for funding and therefore could 'officially' designate Ss as ELLs if they wanted to.

The only way that to measure ELLs at the aggregate level is if schools report them via something called Form 1701. 100 schools in Metro Van choose not to, for reasons that are not totally clear, but that doesn't mean they don't have students who need English help.

It does mean that in the public eye, and in really the only place the public can access this -- the Fraser Institute Rankings -- it appears as if these schools have "zero ESL students." Whether by accident or design, this becomes part of the school's public image.

Maybe choosing not to "label" multilingual or emerging bilingual Ss as ELLs is progressive, or maybe it's part of a goal to appear more "elite," or maybe it's due to neglecting students' needs. I don't know. But I want to learn more about what's going on here! (/end for now)

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