The rules have been changed yet again; this week, the federal government announced that test scores of recent immigrant students (who don't speak English) would no longer be a factor in the determination of whether a school is meeting the academic progress yearly targets:
Federal education officials said the changes reflect a willingness to respond to protests from states and school districts that the rules for English learners are unreasonable. There are 5.5 million English learners in U.S. schools...
"We are listening to their issues and ideas for improvement as the law continues to be implemented," Education Secretary Rod Paige said in Washington. "Our goal is to provide the maximum flexibility while remaining faithful to the spirit of the law."
Not surprisingly, the change is welcomed by many:
In the Coachella Valley, more than 24,200 students are learning to speak English in the valley’s three school districts, according to the California Department of Education’s most recent survey.
Seventy percent of Coachella Valley Unified School District’s enrolled students aren’t fluent in English. About 32 percent of Palm Springs Unified School District’s students are English learners; and 30 percent are learning English in the Desert Sands Unified School District.
The change announced Thursday in the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind program is expected to relieve pressure on these districts and on other public schools with immigrant populations, which until now have been required to test newcomers in reading and math before they have had a chance to learn English.
Critics of the program say the law essentially has forced failure on schools with large immigrant populations.
The NYTimes has more:
The change is expected to relieve pressure on public schools with immigrant populations. Until now, those schools had been required to test newcomers in reading and math during their first year in this country, before many of them have had a chance to learn English...
Under the law's strict provisions for demonstrating adequate progress by each subgroup of students — English-language learners, disabled students, minority students and the poor — almost 30 percent of American public schools have been labeled "in need of improvement."
Education Department officials said they did not know how many of the schools would have escaped that designation if today's rules had been written into the original law...But Ron Tomalis, an adviser to Education Secretary Rod Paige, said that in some states where department officials had analyzed test results, the list of subpar schools could shrink by 20 percent to 25 percent.
Under the changes...students who do not speak English will have a year — during which they will presumably learn the language — before they must take the standardized tests in reading and math. Schools may administer English proficiency, language arts and math exams to immigrant students.
This information isn't yet up on the NCLB/Education Reform page at Whitehouse.gov, but I assume some official press release will be up soon. The Republicans are already rushing to praise the changes, though:
U.S. House Education & the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner (R-OH) and Education Reform Subcommittee Chairman Mike Castle (R-DE) today praised the U.S. Department of Education for a new policy that will give states and local schools flexibility in assessing limited English proficient (LEP) students without compromising on the rights of such students to learn English under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)...
According to a recent national survey, Republican leaders noted, 81 percent of Hispanic Americans support using standardized tests to decide whether students can move from one grade to the next, and large majorities of both African-Americans and Latinos support using such tests to "identify areas in which students need extra help and teachers could improve." Ninety-two percent of Hispanics agree it is "very important" for immigrants' children to learn English in school. Support is strongest among those born abroad. (Hannah Gladfelter Rubin, "Survey Finds Hispanics Support Schools, Testing," Education Daily, January 30, 2004)
"This policy comes two months after the Education Department finalized a similar rule on students with special needs that will also help to ensure good schools are not wrongly identified by states as needing improvement," said Boehner. "Many of the law's skeptics ought to stop and take a look at these rules and policies, and recognize they provide significant flexibility to states and schools without compromising the ability of disadvantaged children to access a quality education. They are reasonable and fair, particularly in light of the billions in federal education funds states are receiving to implement the law's requirements."
Update: As I mentioned above, the change is seen as a good thing by many educators, but Reform K12, hardass that he is, disagrees:
A valid issue is the whole matter of federal regulations in education, and whether they are "fair" to schools, and this can be discussed elsewhere.
But we feel very strongly that it is a mistake to separate children into classes, and then to treat those classes differently. Although it may seem that it is making the system more fair, really the kids may end up on the short end.
One reason why so many immigrant children have trouble learning English is for the very simple reason that schools don't take the task very seriously. We have a host of ideologically-driven programs which are designed to either embrace the child's home culture or language (or Spanish, even if the kid's Vietnamese!)
These programs are euphemistically titled "bilingual education" and most do little to help a kid learn English.
Teaching English isn't rocket science, all you have to do is talk to the folks that are already successful in teaching immigrant children (you'll find they're quite satisfied with an immersive program, coupled with intensive English instruction, including teaching the rules of grammar, heaven forbid).
Exempting these English Language Learners won't speed up this process any.
Posted by kswygert at February 20, 2004 10:06 AM