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An R&D approach to the educational challenges 
of the growing Latino population in the United 

States’ “New South” 
By Dr. Pedro Portes 

 portes@uga.edu 
Dr. Rolf Straubhaar 

rolf@uga.edu  
Dr. Paula Mellom 

pjmellom@uga.edu  
Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education 

University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 

 
The authors here outline three evidence-driven school-based initiatives of 
the Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education at the University 
of Georgia: an afterschool program, culturally-responsive pedagogy training, 
and a longitudinal study of Latino students. All these initiatives focus on 
improving educational outcomes for Latino students throughout the state. 

Keywords:  Latino students, New South, culturally responsive pedagogy 
 
 

The Latino population within the U.S. has in recent years grown more 

quickly than any other ethnic group and attracted considerable political 

attention. According to the most recent census (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010), the 

U.S. Latino population increased by 15.2 million between 2000 and 2010 — a 

1                                                                      GATESOL in Action, Vol. 1, Fall 2015 
 

mailto:%20portes@uga.edu
mailto:rolf@uga.edu
mailto:pjmellom@uga.edu


number that represents more than half of the total U.S. population growth 

during that same period. Due to demographic and economic trends for the 

next decades, English Language Learners (or ELLs) now represent 9.1 percent 

of the U.S. student population (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014). 

Since 77.2 percent of those ELLs are Spanish speakers, predominantly from 

Latin America (National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, 2010), it is 

safe to say that an increasingly large number of U.S. schoolchildren are 

Spanish-speaking Latinos. In states like Georgia in the so-called “New South,” 

these students are confronted with not only the linguistic challenges of 

learning English, but with a teaching workforce that is considerably under-

prepared to succeed with ELLs and often predisposed against Latinos. On the 

other hand, evidence-based alternatives are available that can turn this crisis 

around, and these need to be disseminated. 

Our purpose here is to show how this crisis can be averted in a systemic 

fashion, one that can help improve the educational infrastructure for not only 

Latino ELL students, but their peers from all other marginalized groups. After 

identifying key challenges, we show a glimpse of some of the action steps that 

our research has proven effective in transforming Latino underachievement in 

the New South, and which could easily be scaled up at the K-12 level 

throughout the country. 

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The Origins of Latino Underachievement 

 While not all Latinos are ELLS and not all ELLs are Latinos, they 

comprise the large majority of students living in poverty that are taught in 

ways that produce significant gaps in learning outcomes and college 

opportunities. Research has shown that structural inequalities are present 

when comparing Latino and majority student achievement: in 2009, the 

National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that non-Hispanic white 

fourth grade students outperform Latino fourth grade students by 21 points 

in mathematics and 25 points in reading (U.S. Department of Education, 

2011). In 2002, similar assessments provided similar results, showing that 

low-income students considered at risk (including Latino students, both those 

who were born in the U.S. and those born abroad) were graduating from high 

school with between a three and four year deficit of content knowledge in 

reading, mathematics and science (Portes, 2005). No reforms to date appear 

designed to turn this severe problem around, a problem that (to hearken back 

to the language of a previous era of reform) truly places our nation at risk 

(Gardner et al., 1983). 

 Part of this gap can be explained in socio-linguistic terms: previous 

research has shown that Latinos in this system typically require four to six 

years of instruction in order to develop sufficient capacity in academic English 

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to fully participate in and benefit from regular instruction (Thomas & Collier, 

1996; Valdés, 2001). However, this linguistic difference is exacerbated by a 

startling lack of U.S. public school teachers trained to work with ELLs—that is, 

the research shows that most teachers speak no languages other than English 

(Howard, 2006), do not possess certification in teaching English to Speakers 

of Other Languages (ESOL) and have received little professional development 

in that area (National Center for Education Statistic, 2013), and often hold 

negative, deficit-focused attitudes towards Latino students and other ELLs 

(Walker, Shafer & Iiams, 2004). These deficit attitudes only serve to hamper 

the psychological and academic development of Latino students (Portes & 

Salas, 2010), and scholars such as Walker, Shafer & Iiams (2004) argue that 

this hostile school climate for Latinos will only worsen as the number of 

Latino ELL students continues to increase. 

 This state of affairs presents the U.S. public education system with a 

serious challenge: can we provide sufficiently high-quality teaching and 

learning to effectively help Latino ELLs transition into U.S. schools and 

perform to the best of their abilities therein? We at the University of Georgia’s 

Center for Latino Achievement and Success in Education (or CLASE) argue 

that this problem can be effectively addressed for years to come on the basis 

of a single, simple presumption: that by progressively improving teacher 

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effectiveness through training in evidence-based student-centered strategies, 

those teachers certified through CLASE programs become able to leverage 

change in their schools and districts as instructional leaders, within the New 

South and throughout the country.  Here we will outline particular ways in 

which CLASE has expanded the knowledge base regarding effective policy and 

instruction for Latino ELLs, and has the capacity to further prepare both pre-

service and interested teachers and administrators in those evidence-based 

best practices. We end with related recommendations for policy makers, who 

we hope are aware of the larger implications for our society if we do not take 

advantage of the human resources inherent in the burgeoning Latino student 

population. 

An Evidence-driven Instructional Model 

 Given the previously mentioned academic gaps between Latino ELL and 

majority students, there is an urgent need for the development and expansion 

of pedagogical models that more effectively promote the academic 

achievement of Latino ELLs. In an effort to address this need, the research 

team at CLASE was awarded a multi-year federal grant from the U.S. 

Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to evaluate the 

efficacy of the Instructional Conversation (IC) pedagogical model on ELL 

achievement. This study, designed as a randomized controlled trial, tests 

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whether teacher training in the IC model improves both the academic 

achievement and cognitive development of elementary-level ELLs in high 

poverty schools in North Georgia. In this research model, we randomly 

assigned 147 third and fifth grade classroom teachers, spread out over three 

cohorts, into treatment and control groups. These teachers were spread out in 

47 low-income elementary schools in a combination of rural, suburban and 

urban parts of North Georgia. The treatment group received multiple, in-depth 

in-person trainings in the IC pedagogy, and then had frequent support from IC 

coaches throughout a full academic year (whereas the control group only 

received the standard professional development provided by their school and 

district administrators). Following this “practice” year, in which the teachers 

focused on mastering the IC pedagogy, we then followed them for a second 

“experimental” year in their classrooms with regular visits, videotaping and 

analyzing their instruction and monitoring their students’ academic output 

(primarily in the form of standardized test scores), in which we measured the 

impact of the IC training on student achievement. 

 The hypothesis tested by this study was whether the IC pedagogy, a 

purposefully student-centered, culturally relevant pedagogy, could positively 

impact the academic achievement of low-performing Latino students in 

Georgia. The IC pedagogy primarily consists of a regularly-occurring 

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instructional session in small groups, similar to a guided reading group. While 

these sessions are teacher-led, teachers purposefully try to intervene in the 

conversation as little as necessary—prior to an IC, the teacher trains their 

students in how to participate in a teacher-facilitated, mature conversation 

focused on academic content and leading towards an academic goal (such as, 

for example, differentiating between fact and opinion). Each IC session 

typically includes between three and seven students, and should take about 

twenty minutes. During this time, students discuss exemplary content, such as 

practice sentences, math problems (in the case of a math-focused IC), or other 

sample questions which test their knowledge of a previously taught concept. 

The students then discuss each example, debate possible answers and the 

merits behind them, and come to a consensus. The teacher, ideally, only 

intervenes to get students back “on track” if the consensus is leading towards 

an erroneous conclusion, and as the IC is used more and more frequently, the 

premise is that students will become better and better at maturely carrying on 

an adult conversation regarding academic content and connecting it to their 

daily lives. 

 To give a clearer picture, we here provide a concrete example of an IC. 

This lesson is from an elementary fifth grade classroom in the Metro Atlanta 

area which we observed regularly for two years as a part of our study. 

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Snapshot of an IC 

Seven fifth grade students sit in a circle on the floor of their classroom. 

As the other 25 students in the class work quietly in independent groups at 

other centers, their teacher takes a sentence printed on a strip of paper that 

has been cut from a worksheet and reads aloud, “Because Tia’s Bugatti was in 

the shop.” Then she lays the strip on the floor in the center of the circle.  The 

students, without needing to be told by their teacher, immediately begin 

discussing the phrase, working together to decide if it is a fragment, a run-on 

sentence, a compound sentence, a complex sentence or a simple sentence. 

They state their thoughts and listen to each other’s ideas, agreeing or refuting 

by offering evidence to support their opinions: “I believe it’s a fragment 

because it begins with because,” says one student.  “I respectfully disagree,” 

says another student. “A complete sentence can begin with because, but this 

one doesn’t have a main idea. I mean what happened because the Bugatti was 

in the shop?” “I respectfully agree with Marco,” says a third student, “this 

sentence is a fragment because it isn’t a complete thought, do you agree 

Elias?” A thin boy in a red jacket, who has been watching and listening 

intently, leans in and responds, “I agree, this sentence is fragment, because it 

not have whole idea.”  After all the students in the group have voiced their 

8                                                                      GATESOL in Action, Vol. 1, Fall 2015 
 



thoughts and come to a consensus, they place the paper strip on the pile 

labeled “fragment,” and the teacher reads another sentence. 

In the 20 minutes that follow, the teacher makes very few comments, 

only asking facilitating questions to help the students clear up 

misconceptions. For instance, they debate at length whether the clause “Ms. 

Hill ate” is a complete sentence or a fragment. The teacher, who has been able 

to use this discussion for formative assessment, explains that a complete 

sentence just needs a subject and a verb and that sometimes a two-word 

sentence can be very powerful, e.g. “I am.” Nevertheless, she praises them, 

recognizing that they think that the sentence must be a fragment because it 

lacks the detail they have grown used to seeing and using as they prepare for 

the state writing test.  

This dynamic, with children politely discussing with each other using 

academic language, and polite turn-taking, would be perfectly normal and 

expected in a “gifted” classroom. However, this group of children, several of 

which were ELLs, including Elias, a newcomer who had no English when he 

arrived 4 months before, were placed in this particular teacher’s class because 

in addition to being an exceptional teacher, she is a former Marine and the 

principal knows that she can “handle” the roughest of kids enrolled at their 

Title I school in Metro Atlanta. These are the kinds of children who may not 

9                                                                      GATESOL in Action, Vol. 1, Fall 2015 
 



normally be given the opportunity to engage in this kind of high level 

academic discourse in an average classroom. But, given the tools and practice 

afforded them by the Instructional Conversation model, these children 

regularly and consistently use thought-out, polite discourse that spills over 

into their hallway, lunchroom and playground interactions. Through these 

Instructional Conversations, the children are not only learning content and 

developing cognitive and language skills, but equally importantly they are 

learning how to interact with one another, voice their thoughts in appropriate 

ways, and listen carefully to their peers to seek understanding, reach 

consensus and resolve conflict. 

Proven Results of IC Implementation 

 Through this on-going study, CLASE has found that students taught by 

IC-trained teachers outperform their peers across most core subject 

standardized achievement tests (including ELA, math, reading, science and 

social studies) after controlling for other factors such as prior achievement 

and English language proficiency. In terms of cognitive development, students 

taught by IC-trained teachers also scored higher than students from similar 

backgrounds on psychological assessments of cognitive ability and self-

esteem (Mellom, Nixon, Gokee, & Portes, 2012).  

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 In addition to improving cognitive and academic outcomes for students, 

through analysis of teachers’ personal journals and notes during their 

training, CLASE has also found that IC training improves teacher attitudes 

towards their ELL students, creating a more welcoming classroom climate in 

which to learn. 

 When rigorously-designed research studies produce such results, the 

models in question merit expansion. While several cohorts of Georgia teachers 

have been trained as a part of this larger study, on the basis of these results 

CLASE has also expanded to work with individual school districts to train 

their teachers in these same proven IC pedagogical techniques. By investing in 

transforming teachers through current and future pedagogical training, and 

thus creating “expert teacher cells” in schools throughout Georgia of teachers 

capable of sustaining  and sharing more effective ELL pedagogies with peers, 

CLASE expects to see an impact on student achievement and development that 

extends well beyond the scope of the current study.  

Expanding the School Day through Effective Afterschool Programming 

 In addition to studying pedagogical models that can improve the 

instruction students receive during the school day, CLASE has also committed 

long-term to evaluating the most effective methods of expanding instructional 

time. Previous research has found that a difference in academic learning time 

11                                                                      GATESOL in Action, Vol. 1, Fall 2015 
 



(Aronson, Zimmerman, & Carlos, 1998) between Latino ELLs and their 

majority peers accounts for a significant portion of the achievement gap 

between these groups (Madrid, 2011). 

 One means of providing additional academic learning time is through 

tutoring programs, which previous studies have found to be effective in 

improving literacy (Elbaum, Vaughn, Hughes, & Moody, 2000; Ritter et al., 

2009). However, unfortunately most afterschool tutoring and mentoring 

programs use the same less-effective pedagogical models used during the 

school day (Lauer et al., 2006). The CLASE tutoring and mentoring program 

sets itself apart by operating on the philosophy that “more of the same” is not 

sufficient for addressing the serious achievement gaps facing Latino ELLs. 

Instead, the CLASE program has for several years utilized a model focused on 

student centered learning that has been found to improve student 

performance while leveraging college student participation and training 

(Mira, Portes, Mellom & Moreno, 2012). More specifically, CLASE’s afterschool 

program trains tutors in culturally relevant pedagogical techniques, including 

the same IC pedagogy which the aforementioned study found to be effective in 

raising Latino student achievement throughout North Georgia. While the 

impact of this program over nearly a decade of implementation is still being 

analyzed, previous analyses of individual cohorts found that students in the 

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program outperformed their in-school peers on standardized tests in math, 

and to a lesser extent, in language arts (Mira, Griffin, Simmons, & Portes, 

2014). This program, like CLASE’s entrée into teacher training at the school 

and district level throughout Georgia, is also ripe for expansion and scaling 

throughout the New South with community-higher education partnerships.  

Studying the Development of Latino Students:  

A Longitudinal Pilot Project 

 Beginning with the students in its tutoring and mentoring program, 

CLASE has begun a larger study in which the children of Latino immigrants 

will be followed throughout their educational careers, so as to more 

accurately document the difficulties and successes which immigrant children 

as a group experience in school settings in the New South. In our model, each 

ELL student is matched with a college mentor/ tutor for each semester they 

are in the study. While yet in its infancy, including only a few cohorts, such a 

longitudinal study is unprecedented in the current literature and provides an 

integrated way to improve school outcomes and the economic future of all in 

this region. This is because both initiatives can impact and benefit both Latino 

ELLs and other groups of students. 

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Conclusion 

The longstanding gaps resulting from current instructional and reform 

efforts call for innovative and longitudinal responses that improve policy, 

practice and particularly pedagogy. This is vital to recognize as higher 

standards are here to stay that call for more stringent pedagogical standards 

and extra learning time for those who most need assistance after school. The 

University of Georgia’s Center for Latino Achievement and Success in 

Education sets itself apart by longitudinally studying both the educational 

trajectories of ELLs and the effectiveness of policies and pedagogies that can 

positively impact those trajectories (See Portes, 2014; Portes, Salas, 

Baquedano-López & Mellom, 2014). Through those studies, as documented 

here, CLASE has both provided evidence regarding effective policy and 

pedagogical models that could be brought to scale for the benefit of Latino 

ELLs nationwide, and developed its own capacity as a teacher-training 

institution that can help to implement that expansion. 

  

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