NABE News Digest

#2005-8
October 26, 2005

The News Digest, an occasional publication for NABE members, features current articles of interest to bilingual educators. Information provided and opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors. No endorsement by NABE is implied. If you would prefer not to receive the News Digest, please click here to unsubscribe.

Official: Give No Break On Tests For Immigrant-Heavy Schools
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings wants the government to resist giving schools with high immigrant student populations breaks from federal testing requirements. Spellings said she's working on minor adjustments to the requirements but noted the purpose for raising the bar each year is so that educators and students are forced to find ways to meet higher goals. This summer, Spellings convened a group of 12 to 15 advocates, researchers and educators to investigate and recommend how best to serve children with limited English skills. A handful of changes are expected, such as allowing newly arrived limited-English speakers to be exempt from the reading test. But Spellings said the changes will be limited.
Charlotte Observer, October 23, 2005

Ethnic Media Vote 'No' on Prop. 74
On Nov. 8, voters will have a chance to decide the future fate of California's teachers. Brought to the ballot by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Proposition 74, which would change the probationary period for teachers, has been sharply debated by both sides of the political spectrum, and within California's ethnic communities. Chinese educators in San Francisco held a protest against Prop.74 on Oct. 13. Their primary concern is that the initiative would make it increasingly difficult to find high-quality Chinese-speaking and bilingual Chinese-English teachers to fill positions.
Pacific News Service, October 23, 2005

Language Handicap Hurting America
Almost every aspect of ordinary life seemed trivial after the September 11 attack. The devastation in New York was aimed at the United States, but its effects were international. The victims of the World Trade Center included people from more than 60 countries, and the response to the attack will be international. We need to be able to communicate with our partners and realize how important knowledge of the foreign language would be. Cooperation with other nations to establish an international antiterrorist coalition involves more than just the English language.
The Seoul Times, October 19, 2005

Students Show Few Gains Since 'No Child'
Math Up Slightly, Reading No Improvement
Despite a new federal educational testing law championed by the Bush administration, scores among fourth and eighth graders failed to show any improvements in reading, and showed only slow gains in math nationally during the past two years. "Let's put it this way," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, "reading scores were flat and math scores on the rise before No Child Left Behind, and reading scores are flat and math scores are still up after No Child Left Behind. It's impossible to know whether NCLB had an impact -- either positively or negatively."
Washington Post , October 19, 2005

Vetos Upset Some Voters
Governor Says No to Bilingual Ed, License Bills
"Termination" of support for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by a growing number of Latino voters and those who support issues of importance to the Latino community could result due to his disapproval of two bills. On Oct. 7, the governor's office announced he would not sign into law SB385, which would have allowed students the chance to gain English proficiency within three years. Supporters of the bill say students need those three years to master English. They believe immigrant students do much better in the long term if they are allowed to ease into English-only studies and to initially take tests in their mother language.
Ventura County Star , October 14, 2005

Language Gap Grows
The vast majority of schoolchildren who can't speak English well enough to pass proficiency tests are mostly segregated in a relatively small number of schools. Limited-English students also tend to be poor and live in households where little, if any, English is spoken, compounding the challenges for schools at a time when many of them are struggling to meet new federal academic standards, according to the studies by researchers at the Migration Policy Institute and the Urban Institute, two nonpartisan research groups in Washington, D.C. Between 1980 and 2000, the share of limited English speaking students nationally in pre-kindergarten to Grade 5 rose from 4.7 percent to 7.4 percent, while the share in Grades 6 to 12 rose from 3.1 to 5.5 percent, according to the studies.
The Arizona Republic, October 12, 2005

Students and Teachers Struggle to Meet English Immersion Goals
Two years after Massachusetts public schools launched the required English immersion classes for thousands of immigrant children, many students and schools are struggling to meet the one-year time limit specified by the law, according to a recent report from the state Department of Education. The law was designed to fundamentally alter the way non-English speaking children were taught. Teachers address these students almost entirely in English, as required by the new law. But most administrators said they still have teachers who have limited-English students in their classes, but have not received the training they need to properly teach these students.
Boston Globe, October 2, 2005