The headline that caught my eye this week was "U.S. Finds Programs For ELLs in Arizona Violate Civil Rights" by Mary Ann Zehr. According to the article there is a legal battle which started in 1992 when parents from the Nogales, Arizona, school district filed a lawsuit arguing that programs for ELL students were deficient. What is going on in Arizona is interesting to me because it could have implications for how English Language Learners are educated nation-wide. I find it shocking that this court case has been going on for eighteen years!
The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights identified two practices in Arizona that they say violate federal law: 1. Arizona has simplified the Home Language Survey schools give to parents to help identify students that need to be tested for ELL services. (It was reduced from three questions down to one.) 2. The English Language Proficiency test does not accurately evaluate whether ELL students are proficient "in each language domain" before they are moved from ELL services and whether these students are "able to participate meaningfully in Arizona's .... educational programs."
Another issue that was mentioned is that for the past two school years, Arizona has required that ELL students be separated from other students for four hours each day to learn English skills. Questions have been raised about whether these four-hour English Language Development classes violate the federal Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. There are concerns that a four hour a day pull-out model is a form of segregation and that ELL students are being denied access to academic content and curriculum. The article I discussed in my second blog post identified a lack of access to the regular curriculum as one common feature of schools that were not effective with ELL students.
One interesting aspect about what is going in in Arizona, if I have correctly understood this article, is that critics seem to feel that school districts in Arizona are violating ELL students' civil rights in two ways. First of all, they are under-identifying ELL students with an oversimplified Home Language Survey and then graduating them from English classes before they are actually proficient. It was suggested that these two practices were being done to save money. Secondly, school districts in Arizona are in hot water for "over-serving" (my terminology) ELL students by requiring that they spend four hours a day in English Language classes. I am again left wondering what ELL specialists recommend and what the research tells us about effective methods for teaching English Language Learners.
Both of my children are native speakers of English, and they are attending a Spanish immersion, dual-language program at a public school. We have been extremely pleased with the education they are receiving. Approximately fifty percent of their classmates are native speakers of Spanish. It has been my understanding that dual language programs benefit ELL students by allowing them to learn and cover academic content in their native language, while also developing their English skills. The model for the dual language program starts out with 90% of instructional time in Spanish in Kindergarten. By the third grade, 50% of the instructional time is in English and 50% is in Spanish. I am wondering why we do not have more dual language programs around the country. These types of programs can help us provide ELL students with a meaningful, valuable education and enrich the educational experience of native English speakers as well. I hope to observe in several different local schools that work with ELL students as part of my 90 observational hours.
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