Three Cheers for Virginia!
The five year old No Child Left Behind Act had come up against some strong disagreement since it’s conception. However, not until now has anyone really challenged it. The Virginia Department of Education is looking to exempt its students who struggle with English from taking the national reading test.
Immigrants who have been in the U.S. a short time “are simply unable to take a test written in English and produce results that are meaningful in any way,” said Donald J. Ford, superintendent of the Harrisonburg city school division.
The state of Virginia has realized the unfairness of having non-English speaking students take a written English test. Any score taken from it would be completely inaccurate and humiliating for the individual students. Therefore the state decided to not issue this test to this population even though the US Department of Education has refused their request for exemption. The Federal Government has even threatened to take away funding if the state fails to comply with “the law’s standard clause”.
The five-year-old federal law is scheduled to be rewritten this year, and lawmakers have said they will try to change the rules for recent immigrants and special-education students. The aim is to inject more common sense into the law while sticking with its promise to leave no child behind his or her peers.
Instead of waiting for the bureaucracy to take effect, Virginia has decided to take reality into account right away. They looked at the fact that many of their students (39%) are immigrants who do not have anything close to proficiency in English, many only at the beginning stage of the language. From this, the city of Harrisonburg, along with many others, has decided to withhold the standard test from those who do not have a good understanding of English.
Those boards have passed resolutions saying they will continue to evaluate all students’ reading proficiency, but will only administer the state’s grade-level Standards of Learning tests to students who have an adequate grasp of English, as determined by teachers and staff. Several school divisions said they will continue using an alternate test to measure progress in non-native English speakers.
This, of course, outrages Margaret Spellings, the US Education Secretary, who believes that Virginia is being completely insubordinate. She is the one who deemed the testing provision as “the law’s Standards Clause, a necessary measure to counter ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’”. However, officials in the state of Virginia’s education system believe that Spellings is being the ‘bigot’ here.
Similar disagreements will arise in other states that have many students who aren’t proficient in English, said Reggie Felton, lobbyist for the National School Boards Association. The association has asked that the federal education department grant each state flexibility “for real-life situations to ensure that the test is valid and reliable for each student.”
In Arizona, where there are many Latino immigrants, school officials also are grappling with testing language learners.
“We believe that English language-learner students come to school with different levels of competency,” said Panfilo Contreras, executive director of the Arizona School Boards Association. “They may not be proficient in their own language, let alone English.”
Educators who are exposed to these diverse settings are the ones who truly see where NCLB act falls short. Yet it is their cries for help that go unanswered by the federal government. Politicians have begun to realize that NCLB needs to be modified in order to accommodate real-world situations. However, they are not making any strong suggestions towards positive change. They see the gaps between different populations but do not know how to effectively change the outcome of the education system. Yet, if they would only look at things a little differently they would have many more answers. The state of Virginia’s request for exemption is not a law-breaking, anti-federal government act; it’s simply trying to it’s part to help the students of America—English speaking or not.
“Va. schools criticize No Child Left Behind rule for English learners”
Associated Press
Feb 19, 2007
CNN.com
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