ELD students are taking fewer ELD classes

The English Language Development department had some changes this year, moving more students learning English into non-ELD classes.

ELD students will be put into more non-ELD classes because the school is now using a new strategy, the village model, which means they’re using a community led, social-relation, and language exchange method. Instead of having two ELD classes now, students will have one regular English and one ELD class. 

“We hope that this change will help,” said assistant principal Ronaldo Florez. 

Out of 2,400 students at Douglas, 587 have been in the ELD program, 161 are being monitored but haven’t tested out but now they’re juniors and seniors, 467 are currently in the program and 55 have said no to the program. 

The main motive for this change is to get the EL students graduation rate up because in 2023 and 2024 the EL students had the lowest graduation rate, less than 67 percent of the EL students graduated. The students who are going to feel the changes the most are the ELD 1 and ELD 2 students who are in language intensive mainstream classes because they are the ones that have the chance to learn a subject that they won’t have before because of ELD but the high level ELs won’t feel the change as much. 

“I think my ELD teachers are very helpful and I like ELD the most,” said freshman Merry Myint.