Three years ago, Kala­kaua Middle School set out to develop a program that would provide a less intimidating environment for non-English-speaking students new to Hawaii, some of whom come with no previous formal education experience.

The model the Kalihi school developed, piloting it over two years before launching it in earnest this school year, puts newly arrived students with few English skills in a "newcomer center," where they spend a year getting intensive English lessons and learning how the American school system works.

In that first year the newcomer center students don’t attend mainstream classes with their English-speaking peers or change classes for different subjects. Instead, they learn all of their core subjects from one teacher, like in elementary school.

Then, in their second year, students do change classes but stay with their English Language Learner cohort, learning alongside each other from teachers with specialized training. Only in their third year are they put in the mainstream.

The model, based on similar programs on the mainland, has shown early anecdotal success in helping ELL students make a smoother transition to the often scary world of middle school, said Kalakaua Middle and complex-area officials, who are looking at the possibility of replicating the newcomer center model at other Hono­lulu secondary schools with large populations of ELL students.

"This year we’re really able to see this is working," said Kalakaua Middle School teacher Miki Gou­veia, who helped develop the newcomer center and teaches in it. "We actually know what we’re supposed to do now. The teachers are a little more confident in the curriculum."

Kalakaua’s newcomer model comes as the Department of Education is planning to ramp up its focus on achievement among ELL students, whose numbers have been growing in recent years.

Last school year there were 19,709 ELL students in Hawaii public schools, making up about 11 percent of all public school students. That’s an increase of 22 percent from the 2007-08 school year, when there were 16,132 English language learners in Hawaii schools.

ELL students have historically struggled on annual state assessments and, last school year, performed worse in reading than the year before.

Just 28 percent of ELL students statewide were proficient in math last school year (from 25 percent the year before), and 27 percent were proficient in reading (from 37 percent). (Kalakaua Middle, similarly, saw an overall decline in the percentage of ELL students, including those in its newcomer center, who tested proficient in reading.)

Andreas Wiegand, the DOE’s ELL educational specialist, said the department plans to put more emphasis on helping ELL students as part of a broader strategy to boost achievement among all students. He said the DOE is looking to beef up training for teachers on strategies for assisting ELL students and is also studying national models that have shown promise.

"It’s really getting the ELL teacher and the content teachers to collaborate to make sure that they’re paddling the same canoe and that the language that ELL teachers are trying to develop ties into the content," he said.

He added while the newcomer center at Kalakaua is an innovative approach, it’s too early to tell whether it’s a model that could be taken statewide, especially since it hasn’t translated into higher test scores.

Kalakaua Middle Principal Lorelei Karasaki acknowledged the school has "a lot of work to do" to boost achievement among ELL students.

But she said she is confident the newcomer center can help improve student achievement, by developing a "school within a school" that allows students to learn in a safer, less stressful environment, where they’re not afraid to speak up or make a mistake.

"They need to feel safe," she said.

Enrollment at Kalakaua Middle stands at about 1,050 this school year, and roughly 8 in 10 students at the school qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch, a key indicator of poverty.

Meanwhile, about half of Kalakaua Middle students are learning English as a second language, and a third are not English-proficient and require ELL services.

"We’re an ELL school," Karasaki said. "We feel that we’ve got to build a solid foundation."

There are about 127 students in Kalakaua’s newcomer center, 47 of whom are in their first year — learning intensive English and getting an introduction to key content standards.

Karasaki said many elementary schools already have robust ELL models: Some teach students learning English in mainstream classes, and others teach them apart from their peers in "newcomer classes" so they can get more help.

But secondary schools, she said, have had a harder time assisting students learning English as a second language, in part because of the typical middle and high school model, where class sizes are often larger and where students learn each subject area from a different teacher.

Secondary schools in Hawaii customarily place ELL students in mainstream classrooms, offering them extra support as they learn English, an approach that critics contend too many times forces students to "sink or swim."

On the other hand there has also been criticism of the newcomer center approach. Some say it segregates and potentially lowers school expectations for ELL students.

"There is research to show that … you don’t necessarily want to segregate" ELL students, said Wiegand of the DOE. "If you are doing a newcomer program, it has to be for a short period of time to … allow them to fully access the content and curriculum. In these newcomer centers, if you’re not really ramping up their English proficiency, that content gap is actually going to increase."

He added that newcomer centers are for those "level-one students who really are going to be completely lost (in a mainstream setting) no matter how good the teaching is."

Calvin Nomiyama, Farrington-Kaiser-Kalani complex-area superintendent, stressed that students at Kalakaua’s ELL program get the "same rigor, the same expectations" as their peers in mainstream classes.

He added that the model might not work at all schools, and requires lots of teacher training and additional resources.

The idea behind the newcomer center is not to separate ELL students, he said, but to better prepare them to move into non-ELL classes.

At Kalakaua Middle on a recent morning, Gou­veia was teaching language arts to her newcomer center students. The class is reading "The Outsiders," and Gou­veia was asking them to make connections among characters and think about key literary terms.

The students struggled over some words, and Gouveia helped them by rephrasing questions and asking them to think over their answers in groups. In the newcomer center, students are allowed to speak to one another in their native language if it helps them or another student understand.

But students don’t always speak the same language: Gou­veia has eight different languages in her classroom of about 25 students.

Over the course of the day, she teaches students English, science, math and social studies, along with central concepts such as understanding teacher expectations and embracing multiculturalism.

She said many of her students come with little to no previous experience in a formal school setting.

Fellow newcomer center teacher John Take­uchi said it’s a daily challenge to make sure he is getting through to students.

"Our job is super hard," he said, laughing. "I love it."