82 THE EFFECTS OF A SECONDARY NEWCOMER PROGRAM AND SECONDARY NEWCOMERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF UNITED STATES SCHOOLING Anmarie Garcia, EdD Journal of K-12 Educational Research 2021, VOL. 5, ISSUE 1 www.dbu.edu/doctoral/edd Immigration is and will continue to be a hot topic in the United States of America. The untold story of immigration is of children who enter this country with the hope of attaining an education. Students of all ages enter this country to obtain an education; the current study focused specifically on students who began their education in the United States in the secondary school setting. Students who enter schools in the United States during their adolescent years have the obstacle of acquiring the English language at a slower rate than students who enter the United States at a younger age. Through language acquisition during adolescence also needs to come content learning that enables secondary newcomers to be successful academically in order to gain credit and meet standards on state assessments to graduate high school in the state of Texas. English Language Learners (ELLs) enrolling in public schools in the United States of America have been steadily increasing in numbers. In 2015, ELLs represented 18% of the total population of students enrolled in Texas public schools (Seidlitz et al., 2016). Within this population of ELLs, there were more than 120 languages spoken by these students (Seidlitz et al., 2016). ELL students are faced with the challenge of learning academic content while acquiring the English language. Teachers are obligated to provide a learning environment in which ELLs gain both academic content and language, while administrators must ensure that teachers have the necessary resources and training to support ELLs. A bigger problem arises when students enter school at the secondary level and time is limited to acquire language along with content in order to meet requirements to graduate. Secondary newcomers have a larger challenge because of the time constraints to acquire necessary credits and meet standard on the state required assessments in order to obtain a high school diploma. The current study took place in a North Texas School District that had created a program to address the needs of students who enter the country with no or limited English enrolled on a secondary campus. The secondary newcomer program of the current study provided students with smaller class sizes for all core subjects and devoted half of the school day to English language acquisition. The current study compared the perceptions of students who participated in the secondary newcomer program with those students who did not participate in the newcomer program, along with the results of one of the end of course (EOC) exams that was required for high school completion in the state of Texas. The required exam that was included in the current study was the English I EOC. The results of the current study found that both the participants and non-participants of the secondary newcomer program had positive perceptions about their experiences in U.S. schools. However, the non-participants significantly outperformed the program participants on the EOC exam required for high school completion. Students entering the country to enroll in the secondary setting of public school with no or limited English face the hurdle of needing to acquire the English language in
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