Every year we see a select group of bilingual students that do not progress in Spanish academics.

This becomes an issue throughout the years because students who do not excel in their own language often have difficulties grasping a second language and testing in fifth grade is in English. As a team, we have been searching for a solution to this issue. The suggestion our principal made is to have those students waivered and entered into the English program at the beginning of second grade. These students would receive a collection of services that would be included in the school budget. The purpose of this project is to analyze fifth grade student data to see if there were any anomalies that could indicate a problem and therefore, a solution. I collected an enormous amount of data from the LEP students in fifth grade. I used our districts student information database, our schools reading program database, and pulled each students academic folder. Data that was collected included: Current TELPAS ratings Reading Lexile Whether students had approved or denied bilingual services Entrance date into the country Entrance date into Houston ISD Teacher and school information for grades K-4

I entered all data in a spreadsheet and sorted and color coded the information looking for patterns and anomalies. I then sorted students by their lexile level and grouped them in three categories: at or above grade level, just below grade level, and significantly below grade level. Lexile ranges for these three categories are 700 1281 which is considered at or above grade level, 450 699 which is considered just below grade level, and 0 449 which is considered significantly below grade level. Analyzing the data collected led to the following observations. Of the 150 fifth grade students, 62 students are LEP Spanish students. Of these 62 students, 37% are categorized as at or above grade level and of those students 40% were categorized as advanced. 61% of the LEP Spanish students are categorized as just below grade level and of those students 53% had special circumstances such as new students to the country, students that entered after second grade, and waivers denying bilingual education. 39% of the LEP Spanish students are categorized as significantly below grade level and of those students all were new to the country, in special education classes, or had intervention assistance documentation in place.

In conclusion, I felt that more research is necessary. The entire fifth grade student population should have been analyzed the way the bilingual students were analyzed and compared to the bilingual data that I collected for this project. It is reasonable to start a program like the principal suggested but data needs to be collected throughout the years to see if it is a beneficial solution. The only information that seems to be helpful is of four students that have been at our school for their entire academic lives. All four students started in the bilingual program and were considered low achieving in their own language. Two of the students were waivered and moved to English classes where they were retained after the first year. The other two students were kept in bilingual and not retained. The two students that left the bilingual program have reading lexiles at the top of the just below grade level category. The two students that stayed in the bilingual program have reading lexiles at the middle of the significantly below grade level category. The data that would prove major significance is the results from the fifth grade STAAR test but that data will not be available until next year. I feel that either retention and/or removal from the bilingual program would have benefited these students.