Village Voice article illustrates ELLs' struggle to find the right schools

Posted by Philissa at 8:29 AM

Many of us know that kids with limited English proficiency have limited high school options. But it's a lot easier to understand what that means to immigrant kids and their families after reading Jessica Siegel's article about Ralph Antony Toussaint, who arrived from Haiti in August at age 16, in the Village Voice's education supplement this week.

For weeks this past fall, Ralph Antony and various members of his family ping-ponged around Brooklyn, encountering obstacles at the enrollment center and finding that several schools suggested by the DOE were too crowded to take another student or lacked the special English language instruction that a new immigrant would need. Eventually, it took the help of an advocate to get Ralph Antony admitted into overcrowded Clara Barton High School, which has a Haitian Creole dual language program.

No one should have to spend five weeks finding a high school, but at least Ralph Antony finally landed in a school that was right for him. A DOE spokesperson told the Voice, "If a school is sent a student from the enrollment center, the school should take him or her." But several of the small high schools to which the enrollment office directed the family rejected Ralph Antony because they couldn't provide him the services he needed. Last year, Advocates for Children Director Kim Sweet explained to the Citywide Council on High Schools that the DOE requires kids with special needs to go through the regular high school admissions process without having any assurance that their match will have the services they need. The DOE's thinking in this situation appears to be similar, and kids who need English language services lose out.

(Incidentally, I know that I read this article last fall I read an article on the Voice's website — and for a while I tried to find it again to link to it, but it was gone. I guess holding articles for six months is one way New Times is cutting the Voice's costs. It's too bad, because articles like this one deserve to be seen.)

Dual language coverage on the rise, too

Posted by Philissa at 7:54 AM

Insideschools must have started a trend with our recent article about dual language programs citywide — two daily newspapers have profiled the programs this week! Yesterday, the Daily News noted that Khalil Gibran will be "just 1 in 70" dual language programs (although it will not be dual language in its first year). Today, the New York Times takes a look at this fall's influx of French dual-language programs, many of which were started with the help of the French Embassy and the organization Education Francaise a New York. Everyone agrees that it's terrific when students achieve fluency in a second language, with one parent telling the Daily News that she turns heads at cocktail parties when she mentions that her son, a student at Amistad Dual Language School, speaks fluent Spanish.

DOE's translation department working in overdrive

Posted by Philissa at 11:00 AM

An article in today's Times takes a look at the difficult job of providing translation services to schools and parents. Even with a stepped up translation unit that can now handle the city's eight most frequently spoken languages, the DOE can't meet all of the demand for translation services, especially if the many principals who "don't even know the unit exists" start to take advantage of it.

It sounds hard enough to spread 40 translators across all the work that must be done for the 42 percent of kids whose parents aren't native English speakers. On top of this, translators must invent new words in their languages to explain the DOE's frequently changing jargon, much of which is only barely intelligible in English.

Klein: ELL students will wait longer before taking tests

Posted by Unknown at 10:02 AM

Yesterday NY1 reported on Chancellor Klein's new plan to allow English Language Learner (ELL) students more time before requiring them to take standardized tests. Whereas ELL students currently have to take the tests during their first year in school (even students who haven't yet been in the States for a full year), Klein plans to change that requirement, exempting those students from required tests for their first two years.

While I think Klein is probably correct to exempt ELL students from state tests, since those students hardly need to spend time taking exams that won't yield meaningful results, I can't help but be skeptical about Klein's motivation for the change. ELL test scores are, of course, far below the citywide average, especially the scores of ELL students during their first two years of NYC public education. Therefore removing them from the test pool will probably result in a significant jump in test scores, giving the mistaken impression that test scores have greatly improved. With the end of Bloomberg's administration in site, and mayoral control of the city's public schools sunsetting in 2009, I can't help but think this measure could be a last push to show test gains under the Bloomberg-Klein reforms.

Of course, I could be wrong-- one could avoid the misleading test results by removing from past averages the scores of first- and second-year ELL students when calculating improvement statistics. Then the statistics would truly track how the same types of students were performing from year to year-- comparing apples and apples-- which is the only way to accurately measure the effects of school reform over time. We'll see if the DOE takes this step, or if instead they forgo statistical accuracy for the sake of political gain and claim credit for a test gain that never occurred.