VivirLatino

NY State Test Takers : Don't Know English? Too Bad!

08:37 H | Topics: Bilingualism - Children - Education - Language - New York

As if New York State students, regardless of home language, didn't have enough to worry about with the increased use of high-stakes testing that makes or breaks the grade, now the heat is on students with limited English. The rule used to be that if a student was in an English as a Second Language (ESL) program for three years or less, they were exempt from taking the English Language Arts (ELA) exam, one of the tests used for promotion in New York State schools. AP is reporting that this is no longer the case. Now any student who has had at least one year of ESL services will be required to take the ELA. I can hear the English only crowd cheering. The sad fact is that the ESL program in New York State doesn't work.

How do I know? Besides the growing number of statistics pointing to the fact that students of color (including non-English speakers like immigrant Latino children) are dropping out of school at sometimes twice the rate of their white, English speaking counterparts, I have a child in the New York City public school system , a child who was trapped in the ESL system for a year, not because she could not speak English but because she was Latina.

The majority of ESL services in New York City are pull out services, meaning children are pulled out of their regular classroom anywhere from once to three times a day at least twice a week. Those students that are pulled out lose valuable lesson time in the classroom, lesson time that (let's be real here) is made up of alot of test prep.

Sounds like this latest New York State plan is a way to get more No Child Left Behind dollars and in the process leave ESL children way behind.

Via / R News

Image Via / Essential Schools

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