A teacher wrote this comment in response to a post asking why English language learners, who barely know any English, are required to take the state English test.
I agree, it is painful to watch our English Language Learners struggle with these ridiculous tests, tests which label students 1,2,3,or 4. I have worked with refugees, many of whom arrive with little or no formal education, for over 20 years in what I consider to be one of the best schools in Buffalo. They, like all students, are much more than 1,2,3 or 4. The kids are remarkable in how they adjust to the cultural, academic, and linguistic demands of school. Their families are supportive and very appreciative of the what the school does to help them and their children. The staff is incredibly dedicated and rallies our school community to help provide many of the basics for our students’ and their families – clothes, food, boots, household items, books, school supplies, etc.
We have over thirty languages represented among our students, most are considered “low incidence languages” such as Burmese, Karen, Nepali, Somali, MaiMai, Karenni, Chin, Turkish, Kinyarwanda, and the list goes on… Some of our classrooms are over 70% ELL – English Language Learners. Of those non-ELLs in our school, many were English Language Learners who have tested proficient in years past or they come from homes of English Language Learners. The teachers are tuned in to the academic and language needs of these kids and provide safe, supportive, engaging, yet demanding environments for these students to learn and grow. There is not a teacher there who would trade a student in front of them for more “4′s.”
These immigrants have added to a culturally rich community, and have introduced their neighbors to amazing and interesting food, art, music, and traditions. Many of the students go on to great success in high school and beyond. Each June, when the local paper publishes pictures of all the local high school valedictorians and salutatorians, our former students are among them, English Language Learners who with enough time and support achieve great success. The operative word there is time.
Most research suggests that it takes 5-7 years (minimum) for English Language Learners to reach academic language proficiency – and that is for students with formal education in their first language. For all the “data” rage, it amazes me that this fact continues to be ignored by policy makers.
What does the state say? New York State labeled us a “PLA – Persistently Lowest Achieving” school in the first round of PLA schools. Why? Because we didn’t make AYP in ELA for our English Language Learners. Based on what? The N.Y. State tests.
Isn’t that obvious? The tests are used to label our kids as failing, our schools as low achieving, and our teachers as ineffective.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If they read the data and then acted appropriately, then that would mean that they actually care about students. Since they don’t care, then the students are forced to take tests that they are not prepare to take.
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I don’t understand your hastily-written (it’s “prepared to take,” not “prepare to take”) comment. Are you suggesting that the teacher who wrote this comment does not care about her students? Are you suggesting that she did not prepare her students for state exams? Are you suggesting that she and other teachers acted inappropriately to data, i.e.: the results from NY State English exams? Are you suggesting that they acted inappropriately BECAUSE they don’t care about their students and WANTED to see them score poorly?
If the answers are no, no, no, and no; then what is it that you are trying to say?
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I took his “they” in the post and New York State. Thus, it is NY that is non caring. I don’t think the poster was criticizing the teacher.
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What RL said. Also, it’s generally bad form to rag on typos and brainos in a blog comment post. I guess if you’ve never made one yourself, you can throw the first stone.
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no…I’m not suggesting anything…I’m saying the politicians that make-up these stupid laws don’t care about students. They only want to serve their own selfish desires.
The teachers are then forced to work within those laws, even it is bad for students.
I apologize for the typo in my previous post.
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In NY State teachers are required to have an MA in order obtain a permanent teaching license. I earned my MA in TESOL – teaching English to speakers of other languages. In my second language acquisition course, we studied the work of Jim Cummins who identified the difference between Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). Many children are able to become proficient in BICS, but mastering CALP is a different story. Read the following definition of CALP and you will see how damaging Coleman’s “no context, close reading approach” and these high stakes tests are to ELLs. I spend most of my time in the classroom building background knowledge so my students will be able to read academic texts.
http://www.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/Best%20of%20Bilash/bics%20calp.html
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)
CALP is the context-reduced language of the academic classroom. It takes five to seven years for English language learners to become proficient in the language of the classroom because:
non-verbal clues are absent;
there is less face-to-face interaction;
academic language is often abstract;
literacy demands are high (narrative and expository text and textbooks are written beyond the language proficiency of the students); and
Cultural/linguistic knowledge is often needed to comprehend fully.
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Was it with NCLB that the idea that a student should be able to tackle any academic task after 2-3 years came in? I just remember being appalled at the thought of someone assuming that you could be literate in another language in three years.
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I’m too old. I guess by the time we got to NCLB the time to proficiency had been whittled down even further.
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Yes, it was with NCLB. The rationale, as it was interpreted for me by an administrator, was that ELLs don’t have the luxury of waiting 5-7 years, and therefore by putting the testing pressure on the students, it would light a fire under the teachers $#()*Q to prepare the students. Of course, we all have seen how well that strategy worked under NCLB, so now, let’s ramp it up with Race to the Top.
What galls me is the assumption that teachers were not instructing students. Such ignorance of second language acquisition theory continues, unchecked.
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There is an appalling lack of common sense that seems to be evident in the decisions made. It leaves me speechless.
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While NYS State Ed deserves lots of criticism the requirements in regard to who has to be tested are set by NCLB – English language learners after one year must be tested under fed regs – the Regents have applied for a one year waiver – to move the testing to kids who have been here two years – the feds will probably deny the request. The same fed reg applies to students with disabilities – only students in the lowest 1% may be excluded.
Civil right organizations support the fed rules arguing that are ELLs and SWDs are not tested there would no incentive to improve the skills of these sub groups.
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And King, on more than one occasion, has threatened to destroy this school. He either wants to close the school and scatter the children throughout the Buffalo schools or do a turnaround plan where half of these phenomenal teachers are fired.
So what about these dedicated teachers who provide the only stability the children know? This school provides special services to assist these children with special needs. No they are not special ed, but they have their own unique problems which cannot be solved by placing them in a general population. When they have acclimated, then they can transfer to another Buffalo school where their work ethic and eagerness to learn allows them to excel.
It was a school with a large number of ELL students which Governor Cuomo chastised when he rudely criticized the BPS.
Then King had the false idea that since these children would “never” be college ready (based on the test scores), vocational education must be the solution. He gave these high school students the opportunity to sign up with the Erie County BOCES Center (a unique experience since the Buffalo Schools does not participate in BOCES due to their own vocational ed programs). The head of the BOCES system is a darling among the state leadership and the money received from the Buffalo District coffers was helpful for the running of his programs. This looked like a win win situation, but the reality of teaching the children a trade using potentially dangerous equipment when they couldn’t speak or understand English, was not the expected triumph. There were no interpreters for the myriad of languages represented – a feature of the International School. Many ended up dropping the course, to the relief of their instructors who struggled teaching classes containing language and cultural barriers.
None of this answers the real question – Why? Why do we need to test these students who cannot pass the exams at this point in their education. Give them a chance to catch up. Create a special exam – if you must test them. Oh yes, we already have such exam requirements for graduation from high school, we call them Regents Exams. If the students can pass five of them, then they graduate. Is that not enough of a challenge?
Exempt them from all these unnecessary elementary school assessments which they are literally unable to pass. Making them take a test in, to them, a foreign language which they cannot read, is cruel and unusual punishment. If they had the resources, I would encourage them to sue the state for child abuse.
(Of course, ultimately we want the state to exempt ALL our children from these exams, but today’s battle is for our ELL students in Buffalo and elsewhere throughout NYS.)
The saga continues . . .
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And I am not referring to the Spanish speaking populations from Puerto Rico, Mexico, or South America. There are several schools in Buffalo who cater to these populations.
Refugees pose a unique challenge above and beyond the immigration issue.
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This post really resonated with me. Of all the things I have missed during my first year of retirement, the ESL students are at the top of the list. What fantastic children they are! I too taught at a school known for its multi-cultural character. There were 53 languages spoken there, and, until recently, our UN celebration would bring tears to your eyes. Unlike when I first started teaching, when most foreign language students were the children of grad students at Syracuse University, for a long time now the children have been the victims of war and famine, many either born in or raised for years in refugee camps. They have seen unspeakable horrors, and the cretins who run the New York State Education Department want them to take tests, and be proficient, or be punished. Have they no brains? It’s obvious they have no hearts. My last year of teaching, with 26 students in an inclusion class, there were 6 children who were neither immigrants nor classified with special needs. But all were incredible, even without a “4”. I want John King to go to South Sudan for a year, live in the horror that these children did, and then take a test in one of the many languages spoken there. How you going to do John? I see a big fat “1” for you. Many we can shut you down and reorganize your department, using common sense and compassion instead of greed as the motivation.
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While there is no formal examination for a public servant to be metered/evaluated on their compassion and humanity, there is an experiential one. It entails how they do their job, and whether they listen and respond to the feedback given by those affected by their policies.
By that metric, Cuomo, King, Tisch, et. al. fail miserably, and should be Left Behind.
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I’ve been sitting here running the faces of my ESL and ELL students past my face…my reaction to the stupidity is visceral. Except for a short time subbing in a multicultural district, most of my ESL students were Latino. As they were also classified as special ed, some correctly-some not, my high school students were challenged well beyond what most of us could hope to overcome. Almost three years out of the classroom and I still feel my nostrils flare and my jaw set.
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Reblogged this on Scarlet Rialto.
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I am a native English speaker. In 3rd grade, I wanted to learn Spanish, so my parents enrolled me in a Spanish class at a local community center. That is when I began my lifelong love of language learning, especially Spanish. It was my major in college, and I ended up teaching bilingual ed for 22 years to Spanish speaking children. I say all this to point out I am considered a highly-qualified Spanish speaking teacher. After all these years of studying the language, I still prefer to know the context and background knowledge of material I read in Spanish. I learn more and am better able to explain what I have read. Why would we expect ESL students to do close reading in English without context or background knowledge? Isn’t understanding and learning the objective in school? How many English speaking children could take a similar test in Spanish? Or any American monolingual adult, for that matter? It appears to be another attempt to get rid of our immigrants. Time and background is what ESL students need. We owe them no less!
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The mind set is that these kids are deficient. Also, disposable, other, inferior. These judgements are made by people who are monolingual and complain that when they travel abroad, no one “speaks English”.
For most of my career, I was a bilingual (Spanish and English) teacher. I also taught ESL, Spanish as a world language and Spanish for Native Speakers. Shortly after transferring to the high school where I finished my career, I was asked in the corridor, by a colleague, why I was always speaking to those “Spanish” kids in Spanish. She believed that they needed to speak more English, so they could learn it better. I pointed out that my role in the school was as a teacher of Spanish and that I was engaging all my students in the language as often as I could. It was a difficult concept for her, as she seemed to believe that I was somehow diminishing the kids’ ability to speak English. (Of course encouraging a feeling of self-worth and reinforcing their identities as bilingual learners was of no importance.)
A few months later, the same person asked me whether I was raising my own 3 kids to be bilingual. I assured her that I was and she was quite approving. I guess that only higher SES kids should be bi- or multi-lingual!
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