THE No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is due to be reauthorized by the US Congress this year. With numbers of non-English-speaking students in US schools soaring, the much-criticized law is being credited with improving understanding of their needs and how to teach them, the Guardian has reported.

Enrollments of students with limited proficiency in English, called English language learners or ELLs, have increased dramatically in recent years. Many schools that previously had little or no experience with such students now have an influx. Whether measured by state tests required under NCLB or by the US National Assessment of Educational Progress, English language learners lag far behind their fluent English-speaking peers in both maths and reading proficiency. Therefore, school systems face great pressure in working to educate ELLs amid the push for standards-based school reform.

Education experts say that for English language learners in particular, the law has had some benefits. Because NCLB requires such students to be tracked as a subgroup, educators now weigh more seriously what is working, what is not working, and what could work with ELLs.

Kathleen Leos oversaw implementation of NCLB for English language learners as the director of the Office of English Language Acquisition of the US Education Department before switching to the private sector in 2007. She believes NCLB has helped states make great strides in creating an infrastructure to support English learners. When US Former President George W Bush signed the legislation into law in 2002, “for ELLs, there was no state that had a uniform system that addressed language development needs and access to the content for ELLs”, Leos said.

She believes the key to a strong state program is for English language development standards to be aligned with the standards set for academic content and for the curriculum for English learners also to be aligned with those standards. In addition, all teachers who work with ELLs must be equipped to teach language development and content at the same time.