If, for example, one English learner scores 85 on a test and another only 40, but the first has been in the US two years and the second only two months, we would not consider the first to be more successful.

No control for poverty

The Arizona report did not consider the effect of poverty, as well as other related factors, such as parental education (MacSwan, 2004a).

Poverty has a huge impact on standardized test scores; students who come from low-income families score lower on tests and do less well in school in general (White, 1982). The reasons for this include the obvious material benefits of higher income, i.e. nutritional, shelter, etc., as well as cognitive benefits: Children from higher income families have far more access to reading material, in school, at home, and in their communities (Neuman and Celano, 2001), which translates into higher attainment in reading. They also have better educated parents who are more able to help them with schoolwork.

English learners from higher income families have additional advantages over English learners who do not come from high income families. Economically advantaged children who enter school in the US after first grade have typically had quality education in their primary language in the country of origin. This means they have had two of the three elements of effective bilingual programs: subject matter instruction in the first language, which helps make instruction in English more comprehensible, and literacy in the first language, which accelerates the development of literacy in English.

Research confirms this advantage: Language minority children in the US who come from higher income families are reclassified as fluent English proficient more rapidly than those from lower income families. Grissom (2004) reported that for English learners in California who were in grade 2 in 1998, 27% of those who came from low-income families (received free or reduced lunch) were reclassified as fluent English proficient by grade 5, but 46% of those from higher income families achieved this level. I found the same relationship in Krashen (1996) for reclassification rates for schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The National Center for Education Statistics (1997) reported that in the US in general, English learners in schools serving more economically disadvantaged children were more likely to be in bilingual education programs than those in schools serving fewer. In schools with 20% or more receiving free or reduced lunch, 45% of English learners had some kind of bilingual education, but in schools with less than 20%, only 18% of English learners had bilingual education.

Nevertheless, Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction Horne (Horne, 2004) claimed there was no reason to believe that differences in poverty existed between the groups.

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