Learning the Language

Florida Governor Charlie Crist vetoed a bill this week that would have decreased the number of in-service hours in the area of English as a second language required of reading teachers who work with English-language learners.

"I am concerned that this reduction may impede these students' academic, social, and cultural progress," he said of the measure in his June 28 letter explaining his veto. The bill would have reduced the amount of required professional development to 60 hours from 300 hours. (I've taken the link to the veto letter from the Institute of Language and Education Policy site.) Gov. Crist also mentioned in his explanation of the veto that he'd received a letter from the Florida Hispanic Legislative Caucus expressing concerns about the bill.

Rosa Castro Feinberg, a retired associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Florida International University, told me today she is "ecstatic" that the Republican governor rejected the bill. She thinks it would have lessened the quality of education for English-language learners in Florida. As the manager of a listserv affiliated with the Sunshine State TESOL of Florida, Ms. Feinberg was a leader in a campaign to convince the governor to veto it. See my earlier post, "Florida Teachers Disagree on Amount of Preparation for Reading Teachers."

However, Constance Higginbotham, the president of the Clay County Education Association, a group that worked to get the bill introduced and approved by the Florida legislature, said she is disappointed that, in her view, "Gov. Crist did not listen to reading teachers." She said in a phone interview today, "He listened to Hispanic groups. There are 247 languages spoken in the state of Florida--and he contacted only the Hispanics."

She added: "When I send my children to school, I want them to have an expert in whatever subject they are studying. I don't think every teacher needs to be certified in [English as a second language]. I want a math teacher who is certified in math. I want a reading teacher who is certified in reading."

This policy debate about how much training regular teachers should have to work with English-language learners will continue to pop up in various states, I think.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

They're not "new" any more, but under the "What's New" section of the Institute for Language and Education Policy site are two videos produced by a teacher decrying how New York state was required by the U.S. Department of Education to stop using its English-language-proficiency test instead of the regular reading test for some English-language learners. If you've been following this blog, you know that Virginia was also required to make the same change in testing policy.

Cristian Solorza, who says on one of the videos that he is a native of Argentina and a dual-language teacher in the state, doesn't think it's fair that English-language learners have to take New York's regular reading test after they've been in the country for only one year. He believes it takes them five years to acquire the English skills that would give them a fair chance to do well on the test. He says he's "having some difficulty with the accountability portion of the formula" for ELLs under the No Child Left Behind Act.

"No Child Left Bilingual Part I" was created in January and previews the change in testing policy, and "No Child Left Bilingual Part II" was produced in March and relays how students fared with the switch in tests used. Though the videos present only one side of the debate, they contain catchy commentary, and I got the impression that Mr. Solorza reads widely about education policy affecting English-language learners.

June 29 update: Mr. Solorza sent me an e-mail message noting that last September he left teaching and became an instructor in the dual-language department of the graduate school of Bank Street College of Education in New York City. He is an adviser to dual-language students and teaches courses in language acquisition, bilingual curriculum, and dual-language literacy.

July 2 update: I just found a press release from the New York Board of Regents from May saying that despite the change in testing policy of ELLs in New York state, "the performance of ELL students [in grades 3-8] dipped only modestly in each grade, a better result than many predicted."

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember the $21 million in federal fines that the state of Arizona racked up more than a year ago because state legislators and Gov. Janet Napolitano couldn't agree on how to meet a federal court order to adequately pay for the education of English-language learners? An appeals court later decided the state wouldn't have to pay the fines.

But the legislature isn't out of hot water yet, according to an article published today in the Arizona Republic. Lawmakers adjourned last week without resolving the issue, and the federal judge in the long-running case, Flores v. Arizona, has rejected their request to provide a stay on the order that told them to fix the problem by the end of the legislative session.

See my earlier post, "Another Chapter in the Saga Over How to Pay for ELL Programs in Arizona."

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While on vacation--and kayaking down a Maryland river--I unexpectedly met some English-language learners and heard about an innovative extracurricular program they participated in at a Baltimore high school. A fellow paddler kindly gave me some paper so I could conduct interviews and bring this blog item to you.

The five ELLs were from Digital Harbor High School and were taking part in a kayaking and camping trip down the the Patuxent River organized by a local environmental group, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, that my husband and I also participated in. For the teens from Morocco, Mexico, Vietnam, and Liberia, the Patuxent River Sojourn was the culminating activity of a semester-long program at their school that weaves together lessons in English and environmental awareness.

The Patuxent River Sojourn aimed to educate us participants about the value of the river and its bordering forests and wetlands. The frog and toad choruses at night from the marsh were phenomenal. I spotted a beaver for the first time in my life.

Lori Edmonds, a doctoral student in language, literacy, and culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, designed the program at Digital Harbor High School and connected the students with the opportunity to join the Patuxent Sojourn as the final activity for the school year. She calls it Language through Environmentally Active Programs, or LEAP. Since January, she and another graduate student from her university had been teaching English lessons with an environmental theme after school one day a week and on some Saturdays. The students took swimming and kayaking lessons. They tested the quality of water in the Baltimore Harbor and wrote a letter to Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon recommending how to improve the health of the water.

The students also interviewed their parents or relatives about how people in their home countries care for the environment. On the river trip, they gave a presentation. Particularly interesting was a short speech by Tu, a 16-year-old from Vietnam. (Ms. Edmonds asked me not to use students' last names.) Tu, who goes by Troy in an English-speaking crowd, said that in rural villages in Vietnam, people don't want to cut down trees--he said that some Vietnamese believe their ancestors' spirits reside in trees and, if they are set free, they will haunt nearby villages, causing crop failure or other catastrophes. How much more wilderness might be preserved in the United States, I reflected, if people believed that misfortune would be brought to them if they cut down trees.

Ms. Edmonds said she based her extracurricular program for ELLs on two instructional approaches. She drew from the work of one of her professors, JoAnne Crandall, about the importance of content-based instruction--the idea that students learn English best while engaged in learning a subject. The other is that teachers should build upon students' "funds of knowledge," which Luis C. Moll, a professor at the University of Arizona, has emphasized.

The program at Digital Harbor High School was paid for with $12,000 from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I haven't been so influenced by my workaholic peers inside the Beltway that I can't take a vacation. I'll be on break for two weeks, starting June 8, so don't look for any new entries on this blog until the week of June 25. Vacation for me means taking a break from technology--computers and telephones--as well as from reporting. I'll do that on a 5-day paddling and camping trip down the Patuxent River in Maryland.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some of you have e-mailed me to say that the first time you ever posted a comment on a blog was on Learning the Language. Thank you for trying something new, so that other readers and I could learn from what you have to say.

Here's something else to try--Webcasts about research on English-language learners co-sponsored by CREATE and SchoolsMovingUp, an initiative of WestEd. (CREATE stands for the Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners.)

On June 14 at noon, Diane August, a senior research scientist at the Center for Applied Linguistics, will review findings about ELLs from the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. I'm thinking the Webcast could be an agreeable alternative to reading the 669-page volume--or at least a big help in knowing what to focus on in reading the actual study. (A 15-page executive summary is also available.)

Harvard University education professor Catherine Snow is set to give a Webcast on "all-purpose academic words" on Sept. 6, and Jana Echevarria, a professor of education from California State University-Long Beach, will offer one on the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, a way to infuse the teaching of English into instruction about academic content, on Nov. 8. More information is here.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Twenty-one of the 41 valedictorians of Boston high schools this school year were born outside of the United States, according to a June 3 article in the Boston Globe. The newspaper has posted a gallery with a photo and short quote from each valedictorian online. Among them is Nagina Khudaynazar, the valedictorian of City on a Hill Charter High School in Boston, who was born in Afghanistan, fled a civil war, and moved to the United States six years ago. "It was really hard for us to start a new life in America, especially not knowing English," she says in a video, "Plans for Success," that is linked to the gallery and features nine of the students.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A report released yesterday by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center shows that the test scores of English-language learners will have to be improved A WHOLE LOT, if that group of students is to meet federal mandates under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Richard Fry, a senior research associate for the center, who authored the report, notes that while he examined test scores from the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress, rather than those from the various state standardized tests used for accountability under NCLB, the scores on the nationwide test give a good indication of where ELLs stand.

In math, for instance, 48 percent of such students in 4th grade scored "below basic" on the NAEP in contrast with 11 percent of white students who did so. The gap was much larger between ELLs and white students in 8th grade. In math, 71 percent of ELLs in that grade scored "below basic" in math while 21 percent of white 8th graders had that same score in math.

The achievement gap for reading between ELLs and white students is also large. Seventy-three percent of 4th-grade ELLs and 71 percent of 8th-grade ELLs scored "below basic" in reading. By contrast, only 25 percent of white students in 4th grade and 19 percent of such students in 8th grade scored "below basic" in that subject.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Through a notice in today's Federal Register, the U.S. Department of Education is seeking recommendations on how to develop a framework states can use to evaluate the quality of their standards and tests for English-language proficiency. The deadline for submitting recommendations is Aug. 1.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, states were required to create standards for English-language development for students who were new to the language and to come up with assessments to gauge their progress in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. English-language learners in K-12 must be tested each year in their progress in English. Last summer, when I wrote about this topic, all but six states had implemented comprehensive English-language-proficiency tests. (Also, see my earlier post about how California has not yet created an English-language-proficiency test to assess reading and writing for English-language learners in kindergarten and 1st grade.)

The Education Department makes a point of saying it invites not only technical experts in standards, assessment, and language-development to provide recommendations, but also parents, teachers, administrators, researchers, and others.

If you've been muttering under your breath about the time it takes to administer these tests in your school or complaining about questions on your state's English-proficiency test that you think aren't relevant, here's your chance to make your views heard.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For the 25th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe--which obligated public schools to enroll children regardless of their immigration status--I spent three days last month reporting in Tyler, Texas, where the case originated. The ruling was issued on June 15, 1982.

I relished the opportunity to step back in history and interview residents of Tyler about their memories of the case. I talked with four residents who are natives of Mexico and, as undocumented children, were some of the plaintiffs. I also spoke with James Plyler, the former superintendent of Tyler schools, whose name is on the case; John C. Hardy, the lawyer who, at age 32, argued the Tyler side of the case at the U.S. Supreme Court; and Michael McAndrew, an advocate of Hispanic immigrants at the time of the case. My story about the impact of the Plyler ruling and the immigration debate in present-day Tyler was published this week.

I was focused on Tyler, so I never interviewed Peter Roos, who in the late 1970s and early 1980s worked for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which filed the complaint in a federal court in Texas that led to the case. Mr. Roos represented the plaintiffs in Plyler v. Doe.

It turns out that Michael A. Olivas, a law professor at the University of Houston, has written a scholarly chapter about Plyler v. Doe, in a 2005 book called Immigration Stories, that provides a lot of details about MALDEF's perspective in the case. Mr. Olivas writes: "MALDEF had carefully selected Tyler as the perfect federal venue for arguing its case: progressive judge, sympathetic clients, a rural area where the media glare would not be as great." And in looking back at how MALDEF was able to win the case, Mr. Olivas observes: "...good fortune appeared to have intervened at all the key times..."

Also see my earlier post, "A Foundation Magazine Looks Back 25 Years to Plyler v. Doe."

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This weekend, I lingered over a story by Tara Bahrampour in Sunday's Washington Post about the relationship between Ameer Abdalameer, an English-language learner from Iraq, and his English-as-a-second-language teacher, Felix Herrera, at Wakefield High School in Arlington County, Va., schools. "Lessons in Shared Scars of War" tells how 14-year-old Ameer left his home in Iraq because of war and how Mr. Herrera served in the Iraq war as an Army reservist.

The nuances in the story--how Ameer makes verbal jabs in Mr. Herrera's presence that show the pain the boy has experienced in the war, and Mr. Herrera's reassurances that he has his students' interests at heart and that, no, he didn't kill any Iraqis--reflect the fact that the reporter spent several months observing Mr. Herrera's classes. She portrays a complex relationship between a teacher and student who are making the effort to reach out to each other and learn from each other. It's not easy because of the differences in their perspectives and cultures.

I've gathered from observing dozens of ESL and bilingual classes across the country that the emotional support that teachers provide to newcomers to U.S. schools is every bit as important as the educational content delivered to them. And it seems many teachers get into this field because of the potential to learn so much about the world through their students.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Isabel Allende, David Ho, Eduardo Najera, and Orlando Patterson are immigrants whose stories are available free on DVD through the Merage Foundation for the American Dream in Newport Beach, Calif. Paul and Lilly Merage--immigrants from Iran--set up the foundation three years ago to inspire young immigrants to do well and to inform Americans about the contributions of immigrants, according to the foundation's Web site. The DVD series is accompanied by teachers' guides.

The foundation is also giving awards this month to honor four other immigrants for their contributions. They are: Shirley Tilghman, the president of Princeton University; Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo!; Jack Rosenthal, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist; and Francis Deng, who was once Sudan's ambassador to the United States and from 1992-2004 was the Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons.

If anyone gives the foundation's materials a try with English-language learners, let me know if they strike a chord.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)