Learning English, and not
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Starting next month, the DOE will test English Language Learners at every grade level to assess their progress toward English proficiency — measurements critical to each school’s Progress Report, and to non-native speakers’ success on Regents exams and eventual graduation. To date, the news is grim, with fewer ELL students graduating high school in 2007 (the most recent data available) than in 2005. Even then, only 26.5 percent, or just over one in four, language-learners graduated in four years. Less than one in ten 2007 ELL graduates earned a Regents diploma.
At a contentious hearing on Friday in the Bronx, services for language-learners took center stage — and earned the derision of Assemblywoman Carmen E. Arroyo, who accused the DOE’s Maria Santos of flat-out lying about increased resources for ELL students since the institution of mayoral control.
The New York Immigrant Coalition highlighted two dire ‘data points’ that deserve wider mention: First, only 5 percent of ELL 8th graders scored Level 3 — at grade level — on the statewide English Language Arts exam, a statistic that doesn’t bode well for high-school success. They also noted that the numbers of high schoolers plummet after 10th grade, when “nearly half of ELLs disappear from school rosters.” (Once students turn 17, they are not legally obliged to attend school. The NYIC says many are pushed out of school, drop out, or are redirected to GED and transfer/alternative high school programs.)
The Times‘ current focus on immigration in the nation’s schools and a report today on local success stories – that small fraction of kids who have made it to higher ed — should not mask focus on the 150,000 public school students who are not native speakers, or blunt attention to their profound needs, or the DOE’s responsibility to provide language, as well as academic, education.
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