How do you pass No Child Left Behind, when you don’t speak English? So asks a Cleveland reporter who visits a pre-K-8 school where 55 percent of students are immigrants and refugees and 30 percent are in special education. (Great Schools says it’s 18 percent for special ed, which must overlap with the group that’s not fluent in English.)
Inside the school’s brick halls is a miniature gathering of the United Nations. Bosnian students walk in single file to gym class with Puerto Ricans and Albanians, while Ukrainians and Burundians take sips off a drinking fountain.
The school has failed to make “adequate yearly progress” for six years in a row and faces consequences of some sort if it fails again this year.
So due to a simple law, the entire staff at Joseph Gallagher may soon be fired because some 11-year-old named Nzeyimana can’t use the word “prowl” in a sentence.
Actually, the school has come very close to meeting its targets; scores are improving. If the school misses again this year, the district can try a variety of strategies short of reconstituting the staff. Despite its many low-performing schools, Cleveland hasn’t replaced a school staff in 11 years.
The reporter implies students’ test scores count a few months after they get off the plane from Somalia or Romania, rather than a few years. He quotes teacher Keri Waring, who complains “the test is geared for the kind of children congressmen know — those raised with money whose parents read to them at night and enforce lights-out at a reasonable hour.” It’s Ohio’s test and it’s designed to ensure that all students — not just the advantaged — are learning. In English.
No plan can fix the endemic problems of poverty, parenting, and kids who don’t understand the language you speak.
The school can’t fix poverty; it can do little to change the ways parents raise their kids. But surely it can teach English. If the current plan isn’t working very well, it would make sense to modify it or try something else. Students, even poor African refugees like Nzeyimana, can make progress from year to year.
This may be apocryphal, but I thought that in districts where rewards were given for progress, that schools liked immigrants — or at least some of them.
Get a bunch of FOB Chinese or Ukrainians and their test scores start low. Two years later, Voila! Big test score gains.
Of course, not all immigrant groups can be relied upon to make solid academic progress..
What do you mean by a student’s “passing” NCLB?
Schools can teach English, and kids can learn English. But it takes time, usually at least a couple of years. And if you study language acquisition, you learn that there are many factors outside the classroom that influence it–a good predictor is not actually intelligence, but how the kid feels about being here. Many kids, most by far, embrace their new language, even if they’ve been dragged here kicking and screaming. Those who continue to sulk, though, take a lot longer to pick up English.
I don’t know what measures are used in the rest of the country, but some of the tests in New York are just awful. The city test pretty much passes everyone. I test kids by asking their names, where they come from, and how long they’ve been in the United States. Sometimes kids who can’t tell me their names are assigned to intermediate, or even advanced classes. I’d say verbal communication is an absolute necessity, a deal-breaker by any standard, but many tests I’ve seen ignore it completely.
That’s preposterous. It’s like qualifying doctors to do operations because they’ve read books about them.
Anyone know where being able to use the words hunter, hare and hound in a sentence made a difference in your fate?
I don’t know about using the words hunter, hare and hound in a sentence, but being able to speak English has been somewhat helpful, although it’s becoming less helpful in Texas.
We need more immigrants from everywhere so we can Balkanize our country and implode.
I think teacher Kari Waring, if quoted accurately, has the handle: this is yet another law drafted by Congressmen for those who are just like them.
A family friend, who retired about three years ago after three decades or so of teaching, the last 10 years in one of San Jose, CA’s poorest districts, had a better handle: what, really can a teachdr, or a bilingual aide, do with children of illegal migrant workers who show up in March or early April, speaking virtually no English, and attending — with serious attendance gaps — the second, or perhaps third school of the current academic year?
These kids speak essentially no English; they are obviously well behind grade level; in all likelihood they’ll not be back in the fall. What is to be done? Can anything of substance be done at the elementary school level?
And friends, that is exactly the problem faced by many California school districts. I suspect a great many districts in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas face the same problem every week.
But the government, thru NCLB, seems to think it is the problem of the individual school.
Bill
School districts are “government” as well, as are the schools embedded within them and both seem to do equally poorly teaching poor kids even without the problem of transiency.
When I was working on my ESL certification the accepted timeframe for developing an academic understanding of a new language was 5 – 7 years depending on the person.
In 1900, there were plenty of immigrants who came to the U.S. without much ability to speak English. There were also plenty of social problems, extreme poverty, and not much of a “safety net.
If the people who run our public schools today had been in charge then, they would have said that educating these kids was impossible and that they could not be blamed for the failure to do so.
I read the article, as well as doing some fact checking on the Ohio Department of Education website. According to the report card for Joseph Gallagher, 50% of students are hispanic and only 20 % African American (which, I believe would include both American born and foreign born). Yet the article focused primarily on immigrants from African nations. The report card also showed that the problems meeting AYP were not unique to ESL students. They were really scattered all over the map.
Also on the Department of Ed website was a good bit of information on testing of ESL students. It is not clear whether or not there is truth in the statement that “after one year” students are expected to pass the regular test. There is a testing program that looks like it measures many levels of second language competency–and provides second language education beyond the time at which students are deemed capable of receiving instruction in a regular classroom. I note that the tests are available in both Spanish and English and versions for translation into other languages. It also looks like there are provisions for accommodations for ESL students as needed.
The article also talks about the number of students with disabilities–suggesting that of 250 such students, 50 are “profoundly retarded” and get alternate testing that “doesn’t count.” Not true–alternate testing does count. But that is a very high percentage. Makes one wonder if those students are being funneled to this location from around the city, or if Cleveland is playing with the numbers (I think that they have had some basic counting problems before).
While it may make a good story to suggest that good hardworking teachers are about to be fired because they can’t make Nzeyimana fluent in English quickly enough, the facts are not supportive. One, the “progress” the article claims that the school has made is spotty at best–according to their report card. Two, NCLB doesn’t require that teachers be fired. It does include restructuring (including teachers related to an identified problem, if present) as a final step in a progression of responses. The more important journalistic question might be, what have been the responses to date–and what have been the results?
I’m assuming your a teacher Foster and know the “inside scoop” on these things.
Richard…I’m not a teacher. Art you asserting that no one can have a valid opinion on anything unless he is a member of a profession directly involved in it?
Do you have an opinion on military matters? Have you ever been a general or admiral? Do you have an opinion on economic policy? Do you have an economics degree or an MBA in finance?
In Nazi Germany, if you could not form a sentence using the words hunter, hare and hound, you were deemed an imbecil and sterilized or worse.
David Foster writes: “If the people who run our public schools today had been in charge then, they would have said that educating these kids was impossible and that they could not be blamed for the failure to do so.”
Suggesting that the school system of old was somehow superior? Like comparing the Model T to the Prius. Schools today are vastly different organizations with vastly different content, methodology, goals, laws, ethics, – operating in a different context, with different constraints… I could go on and on.
Chances are this view of that past is based on some true stories – like those of all my relatives who immigrated in the early 20th century and arrived speaking no English. Yes, the system worked for them. But there are plenty of other stories you may not be considering; the system did not welcome all comers and treat people equitably. I’m confident that today’s teachers are more knowledgeable about how to help students of widely ranging backgrounds and skills, and more willing to do so. They(We) are better trained in subject area content and in understanding the relevant cognitive and psychological theories that support learning. Back then, there was greater segregation, rigid tracking that was openly based on race, patently culturally-biased IQ tests (visual questions based on knowledge of gramophones and lawn tennis??) corporal punishment and shaming, little if any data about drop-outs – and many more viable options for uneducated or undereducated laborers.