Arthur Goldstein teaches English as a second language to high school students in the borough of Queens in Néw York City. He is outraged because the Néw York State Education Department has decided to cut ESL instruction by integrating it into subject matter instruction.
He writes:
“Beginners, since I started in the eighties, have gotten three periods a day of instruction. Intermediate students got two, as did advanced. Proficient students, those who tested out, usually got one period but sometimes got another to help them along. Because placement tests are usually total crap, because they gave the same one for decades, and because some kids guess well for no reason, I’ve often seen kids at high levels come back for help.
“NYSED knows everything, though, and has determined we have to stop coddling these kids. So now, for one period a day previously devoted to English, all ESL students in NY will take a subject class. They can either take this class with a dually licensed teacher, for example a math teacher with an ESL extension, or it can be co-taught by two teachers–one ESL and one subject teacher.
“This is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard in my life, but it will save money that can be devoted to tax breaks for billionaires. Therefore Merryl Tisch and Andrew Cuomo can have a laugh over a Grey Goose martini at the next gala affair in which their paths cross. So it’s all good for them…..
“Certainly more colorful than, “I’m studying English.” But aren’t you supposed to be studying English? Not really. Not anymore. It’s Core, Core, Core, and no more of that touchy-feely crap. Renowned Common Core genius David Coleman says no one gives a crap how you feel or what you think, and if he says it, that ought to be good enough for anyone. If his life is one of tedium, drudgery, and humiliation, why shouldn’t yours be too? In his defense, however, I actually don’t give a crap how he feels or what he thinks.
“And why should I? He knows nothing about language acquisition. Nor does NYSED. What do they care that it takes three years to learn a language conversationally, that if varies greatly by individual, or that it take 5-7 years to learn academic English? NYSED says screw, “My name is _____,” and let them all study the holocaust.
“Maybe they don’t need to know, “My name is ____” because if these kids get the jobs in which the reformy Walmart family wishes to dump them, they’ll wear name tags anyway. But while tags tell people what their names are, it’s still unlikely anyone will question them about the holocaust while seeking out that 9-gallon jar of Vlasic pickles. By degrading jobs that require actual introspection, like teaching, while offering bargain basement standardized nonsense like this, we actively degrade our children and their future.
“It’s unconscionable that the demagogues in charge of education would take one moment away from our English Language Learners. Whoever thought of this belongs in prison with Silver, Skelos, and Cuomo, And Tisch too.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Was this part of the waiver or RttT programs? I recall reading that in order to get a waiver or apply for RttT the state had to integrate the ELL instruction into the mainstream curriculum. Am I mistaken? Are other states experiencing this as well?
California has been integrating ELL instruction for a number of years, there must be other states doing it too.
This has been a trend for some years across states. However, in many cases I do not feel it serves newcomer ELL students well at the secondary level where the academic vocabulary and disciplinary writing are more complex.
There are various opinions as to the best approach for language acquisition. In my experience, I have watched ELLS grouped with other ELLS for most of the day take years to learn the language (I had one student from Haiti who learned Spanish but not English). Meanwhile, I had two ELLs (one from China and one from Russia) who were placed on our academic team and only had 1 period of ELL instruction, learn English in a year – they learned so much faster than those who were grouped together. I don’t think this is a hair-brained scheme, I think it is just another way to view best practice.
I think we are getting into a bad habit of blaming everything on the common core. Although I realize that politics plays too large a role in education these days, in the end, we are trying to do what is best for children. We do know that what we have been doing isn’t enough – we need to change things to figure out what works. It is a bad idea to poison people’s minds against change until we have done it and determined that it doesn’t work. We certainly cannot continue to do the same old, same old.
I am an ESL teacher in Albany NY and I feel the same way. the new regulations are not for the student or the teacher they are for politicans. We were told at a meeting with people from State Ed. that we are not going to place H.S. students with baby materials in front of them. We are going to use a H.S. textbook of the appropriate level to teach from. There are real problems with this policy our H. S. ESL are students are a very varied group. We have a large group of students at the H.S. level for whom this is their first experience going to school. We also have some Iraqi students who come from families where both parents have a Phd. These students are doing very well, the others are dropping out like flies. It is another example of the top down regulations that are becoming the way business is done in NY State. No imput from teachers who actually work with these students or what they think would aid in teaching these children. We are looking for a one size fits all education, and it does not work.
Helen Olchak-Otero – I am an Albany parent. Is this a new rule, and does it mean that programs like the sheltered ELL program at Hackett will end? The way I understand it, that program puts kids with extremely limited English schools in separate classes much of the day where they learn BOTH English and content. I also heard at the most recent honor roll reception that 25% of the kids in this program made honor roll. That really stuck with me because most of these kids have been exposed to English for only a few months, and, like you said, many came here without full literacy in their own language, never mind English.
What can I, as a parent and a taxpayer do? I feel like the Albany District has had a lot of success with ELL students, especially given the hardships many of them face before coming here, and I don’t want to see some stupid SED hubris ruin that. (Yeah, I’d like to see the folks at SED come to a completely new country where they don’t know the language after seeing relatives killed by in front of them by rebels or the military, suffering malnutrition in refugee camps, learning a new culture, and then be on grade level in a year or two in their new country in the new language.)
extremely limited English SKILLS, not schools!
I agree. If it’s not broke, why fix it? My guess is it is cost cutting measure. Rolling content into ESL cuts positions. They should know that ESL teachers will not be certified in most content areas. I wonder how long they expect to have the ELLs in these separate classes. It may result in more isolation for them, if they wind up being separate and unequal.
retired teacher – In our district it really depends on the skills of the kids. Elementary school age kids pick up the language really fast. Kids who arrive here in middle school tend to stay in the sheltered program for 1-2 years. Many of them have never been to school for any appreciable time, so the program also includes other study skills that we usually take for granted in kids this age.
Walmart is a scourge. I once thought America was an ideal blend of commitments to both capitalism and democracy. Walmart, however, has tipped the scales in favor of unbridled capitalism by crushing the levers of democracy. Walmart’s (Walton Foundation) influence on public education is an unfortunate development for America’s children. Showing massive allegiance to the dollar and little if any to developing humans, this group’s inroads into government-run schools should be an alarm bell to the protectors of democracy. The push for standardization in everything regarding public education has led to New York’s destruction of ESL, and the Walton Foundation’s fingerprints are all over it.
It seems that we are going back to the pre Lau v. Nichols ruling which decided that English Language Learners get special help due to their lack of English skills. By trying to get away cheap, New York State is once again denying English Language Learners the special help they require. There is no way a content teacher with a fly by night extension certificate can meet the needs of 30+ students, some of whom are English Language Learners. What we are going back to is the marginalization of students who can’t speak English. I see lawsuits on the horizon.
Bad Moon?
I agree. I have a master’s in ESL and taught in New York for many years. Without training and planning for such a change, this has the potential to be a waste. It sounds like a cost cutting measure, rather than an academic one. I hope by calling it “core,” they don’t try to get rid of ESL teachers, who stand the best chance of make it work. I think the governor’s actions actions are suggesting to the immigrant communities that they are less worthy than other students. He knows many of the parents are not in a position to complain.
It is obvious to me that this is just another example of the sabotage talking place all across the United States that’s designed to cause public education to fall apart and fail so the corporate reformers can justify in the media why they are taking our children away from their parents control.
In Miami we used to have subject area teachers who were certified in ESL. So you would have a separate social studies class for English Language Learners with a trained teacher. Now the only class where the students are separated and given a teacher with ESL certification (actually most of them don’t have much training either, they just got fooled into signing a waiver) is their Language Arts class. This year I have classes of over 30 where half of the class is ESL level 1 and they don’t speak any English. I don’t have a support ESL instructor and I don’t have any materials in Spanish. I was told just to give them Fs if they don’t do any work. I try to group them together so they can help each other but then they never stop talking in Spanish and the English teachers in the class get angry. After trying to address a group of Spanish speaking students in Spanish, a parent complained to administration that I was teaching the course in Spanish. I can’t win. These students will never pass the state exams. Now you need to be able to read in English even for the math tests because of the word problems. But school districts don’t care because many of them are illegal and their parents will never come forward and complain to the school system. Some of them manage to make it, but many are already illiterate in Spanish, let alone English.
What Miami is doing should be illegal! It is another version of sink or swim, just like schools did a hundred years ago.
ELL’s are a varied group. I doubt politicians understand this. When I was the testing coordinator in a south Los Angeles school, I became aware that our Advanced ESL students were scoring higher than our native American students. At one point, I asked that a student who had moved to L. A. from New Jersey and had strong reading skills be placed in the Advanced ESL class because it would be the most academic English class she could take. The Advanced ESL students had academic educations in their native language, were motivated, and had the requisite social skills for learning in groups. She said her father would be upset, so I asked her to explain she would be a teaching assistant.
The last school in which I taught, the ESL students were mostly born in the U. S., had spoken another language at home before kindergarten and were still learning academic English in the seventh and eighth grade. Several of these students had learning disabilities.
The difference in teaching the two different groups is light years apart. With the first group, which I taught as Intermediate ESL ( a two hour session daily) the students participated in a one-hour sustained, silent, English reading session daily while I taught one of their illiterate classmates to read. For the second group, 15 minutes of sustained silent reading was difficult to hold.
Remember not all students learn in the same way on the same day, learning is exponential not incremental, and what is learned day one may not connect cognitively until day 2,160. That is why yearly testing on norm referenced tests are ignorance in action.
You are so right. All ELLs are not the same. Some have a good academic background, and others have little or no formal education. Before NYS takes such a bold step, they should make sure the school staff is trained in SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol). It is their best hope to get the job done, and they will need lots of materials as well. As for the beginners, they would be wise to teach them basic language first or those with very little education will be lost as they will get little comprehensible input from the class. This is my take on it as a retired ESL teacher with 36 years of experience. New York has some amazing ESL teachers that will do their best to make it work.
This is all about eliminating ESL instruction. We all know the playbook: Fail the teachers. Get rid of them. Eliminate the subject area. Who needs art? Who needs music? Who needs ESL?
Reblogged this on education pathways and commented:
We need to support English Language Learners as their playground English turns into academic English–not pull the rug out from under them.
My main concern lies in the proposal to award supplementary ESL certificates to general education teachers. This cuts ESL positions, and leaves our ELLs without the supports they needs. The requirements for these certificates do not provide candidates with the information and courses they need to successfully understand ELLs and advocate properly for the student’s needs. A candidate would only need to complete or be enrolled in a course to be eligible for the certificate. Three credit hours are not enough to provide all the information regarding linguistics, cultural sensitivity, regulations and advocacy that a teacher candidates would need to teach ENL successfully. Although the teacher would eventually need to complete another course in methods in ESL (or bilingual) teaching, a total of two courses is still not the equivalent of a undergraduate or graduate degree in TESOL (or Bilingual Ed). The candidates would also eventually need 2 literacy courses. To replace a teacher with a full certificate with a teacher that holds one of these supplementary certificates is disrespectful to teachers who hold proper certification as well as our students. These teacher candidates will not even experience fieldwork, let alone student teaching with ELL populations. The lack of experience with these students and interactions with a cooperating teacher will cause the teacher to be ill prepared to deal with the complex task of educating ELLs.
No other specialty allows for a similar pathway. Teachers can not become special education teachers, content area teachers, art, P.E. or music teacher, speech therapist, reading teacher, Sign Language teacher, media specialist with one course. How, in turn, is it acceptable to grant certificates to teachers with only one TESOL or Bilingual course? These teachers are not even required to have finished the class, they only need to be enrolled. Unless similar pathways are available for all areas, this is a direct attack on ESL/ENL teachers and our students. Our students deserve to be serviced by teachers who are aware of the complexities of teaching ELLs.
These supplementary certificates are being awarded due to the “shortage” of teachers due to these new regulations. If the new regulations had been thought through more and been created with feedback from districts, NYSED would have been aware of these concerns and worked with the SUNYs and CUNYs to increase TESOL candidates. Awarding certificates to any teacher with one ESL course is NOT the answer. This does not provide ELLs with the proper supports they need. This would never be allowed in the case of special education teachers. Students with 504 Plans and IEPs need specific services and supports implemented by teachers with training, coursework and fieldwork/student teaching. The awarding of certificates for special education would not be allowed, how then, can we allow it to happen to ELLs who also need specific supports.
In my district and I suspect throughout my state, ELL students are denied special education services because is fears that they gat services due to their ELL status. It takes twice as long for these students to get the needed support. I worked with a five year old student whose parents were deeply concerned about her learning abilities. She was unable to communicate in her native language. I know of others who cannot even get tested until they become six or more years behind because of the fear that they will be unfairly placed in special ed.