Arizona weeding out teachers that can’t speak English correctly
By Dennis Wyatt
Managing Editor
dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
209-249-3532
Managing Editor
dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
209-249-3532
UPDATED May 3, 2010 1:05 a.m.
Three cheers for Arizona.
No, it Is not for the infamous illegal immigration law that gives local police in Arizona the responsibility to verify immigration status if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that the person they have stopped for an infraction is in this country illegally.
Instead it is for the Arizona Department of Education for grasping the meaning of a passage in the federal No Child Left Behind Act and actually enforcing the provision. In a nutshell, the federal law requires schools that accept federal funds must teach students who are learning to speak English be instructed by teachers who are fluent in English.
Arizona has told locals school districts that they must remove teachers whose spoken English is ungrammatical or heavily-accented from classes where students are still learning English.
Critics claim it is part of the anti-immigration sentiment they contend is sweeping Arizona. If you’re so inclined to jump on that bandwagon consider these statistics for a minute. The Arizona Department of Education indicates that 46 percent of the students in kindergarten and second grade in that state are English language learners. It drops to 24 percent in third through fifth grades, 16 percent in sixth through eighth grades, and 14 percent in high school. Overall, 150,000 of the 1.2 million students in Arizona public schools are learning to speak English.
Teachers who can’t pass the muster have two options - they can take classes to improve their English or, if there is a position available switch to a classroom where there are not English learners. If they can’t do one or the other then they’re history.
Arizona hired hundreds of teachers in the 1990s whose first language was Spanish as part of a bi-lingual program that the voters axed in 2000. The teachers had to then stop teaching in Spanish and do so in English. Many of those teachers, by the way, were recruited out of Latin America.
There is little doubt continuing to teach kids of immigrants in their parents’ native language is a detriment. California proved that when they dropped bi-lingual classes - again by voter edict. Within several years test scores and other performance measures showed a marked improvement in
No, it Is not for the infamous illegal immigration law that gives local police in Arizona the responsibility to verify immigration status if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that the person they have stopped for an infraction is in this country illegally.
Instead it is for the Arizona Department of Education for grasping the meaning of a passage in the federal No Child Left Behind Act and actually enforcing the provision. In a nutshell, the federal law requires schools that accept federal funds must teach students who are learning to speak English be instructed by teachers who are fluent in English.
Arizona has told locals school districts that they must remove teachers whose spoken English is ungrammatical or heavily-accented from classes where students are still learning English.
Critics claim it is part of the anti-immigration sentiment they contend is sweeping Arizona. If you’re so inclined to jump on that bandwagon consider these statistics for a minute. The Arizona Department of Education indicates that 46 percent of the students in kindergarten and second grade in that state are English language learners. It drops to 24 percent in third through fifth grades, 16 percent in sixth through eighth grades, and 14 percent in high school. Overall, 150,000 of the 1.2 million students in Arizona public schools are learning to speak English.
Teachers who can’t pass the muster have two options - they can take classes to improve their English or, if there is a position available switch to a classroom where there are not English learners. If they can’t do one or the other then they’re history.
Arizona hired hundreds of teachers in the 1990s whose first language was Spanish as part of a bi-lingual program that the voters axed in 2000. The teachers had to then stop teaching in Spanish and do so in English. Many of those teachers, by the way, were recruited out of Latin America.
There is little doubt continuing to teach kids of immigrants in their parents’ native language is a detriment. California proved that when they dropped bi-lingual classes - again by voter edict. Within several years test scores and other performance measures showed a marked improvement in