Making Meaning, Doing Math: High School English Learners, Student-led Discussion, and Math Tracking

Mathematics is not just memorized facts, but rather it is understanding how to approach and solve problems, and problem solving requires linguistic proficiency. Too often, English learners' (ELs) relatively low math performance is dismissed due to their supposed "limited" English proficiency. Taking this perspective, a constructivist approach suggests that content-area discussions should improve EL students' math performance. To test this hypothesis, we use nationally representative data from the Educational Longitudinal Study:2002 to examine the relationship between students' reported participation in math discussions and their 10^th grade math performance (GPA), considering both course placement and linguistic status. While we find reported participation in student-led discussion to be positively associated with math performance for all students, we also find that EL students report higher participation in student-led discussions only in low-level math placement. This pattern suggests that for EL students, participation in student-led discussion may actually be necessary to counteract the limiting nature of low-track placement. We argue that although EL students appear to benefit from student-led discussions in these contexts, until school systems begin to address the overrepresentation of EL students in low-level coursework, instructional experiences alone will do little to improve their overall achievement.