Wednesday, December 14, 2011

New website ignores progress of English language learners | EdNewsColorado

New website ignores progress of English language learners | EdNewsColorado:

New website ignores progress of English language learners

This article was submitted by Andrea Mérida, a Denver school board member representing southwest Denver

The ballyhoo over a new school grading website piqued my interest, so I surfed over toColoradoSchoolGrades.com to check it out. After all, the power partners that have coalesced around the website’s development and launch know how to make a splash. And why wouldn’t I be interested in the fact that they’ve taken the pains to offer information in Spanish?

After just a few searches for some of the schools in my southwest Denver subdistrict, however, I see that this website is still using more of the same accountability blinders that punish schools and kids for their English-proficiency differences by trying to lump them all into the same bucket as native and fluent English speakers.