Cultural Heritage Bilingual Program Performance Report: English STAAR, Iowa Assessments, and TELPAS, 2014-2015. Research Educational Program Report

The Cultural Heritage Bilingual Program (CHBP) was developed for English Language Learner (ELL) students from language groups not served by current bilingual programs in the Houston Independent School District (HISD), which are designed for Spanish-speaking ELLs. The largest group of students in this category consists of ELLs whose home language is Vietnamese. Currently, CHBP is only implemented for native Vietnamese speakers at Park Place Elementary School. This program is an early exit bilingual program serving students in grades prekindergarten through 5. Students enrolled in the CHBP program receive 45 minutes of daily instruction in Vietnamese, during which Vietnamese literature, culture, and history are taught in the students' native language via listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Combined with this is an intensive program of English language development using ESL instructional techniques for language arts and all content subjects. This report contains summaries of student performance including the following: (1) Student enrollment by grade level; (2) State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) reading and mathematics (percent of students who met standard and percent making progress); (3) Iowa Assessments mean normal curve equivalent (NCE) scores for total reading, total language, total mathematics, science, and social science; and (4) Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS) percentage of students scoring Advanced High, and the percentage of students making gains in proficiency.