Portland cleared to get federal funds for English as a Second Language restored
By Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian
May 11, 2010, 2:52PM
Portland Public Schools, which was subjected to a rare cutoff of federal funding for its English as a Second Language program, has been cleared to have that funding restored after convincing state monitors that it has fixed or will fix chronic failures to meet federal standards.
Despite repeated written notices to fix serious flaws in its ESL program over several years, Portland continued not to offer English language learners in every school full access to grade-level instruction on the core curriculum and daily research-based instruction to learn English, state monitors found.
Other problems included uneven standards for deciding when students were ready to exit the program and putting some teacher assistants, rather than certified teachers, in charge of teaching students learning English, the state said.
This spring, the school district submitted complete and convincing written plans to better train teachers and teaching assistants, to rewrite school schedules and to upgrade its methods for determining which students are ready to exit the program, the state declared.
The district accomplished that during a trying time for its ESL department. Diana Fernandez, the head of ESL and immersion education, says in a complaint filed with the state that the school district is trying to fire her for poor performance but that it really is trying to get rid of her because she is
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