Good article NCLB and Testing LEP Students

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

  SCHOOLS DECRY TESTING SETUP
 Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- March 17, 2004
                 by Mary MacDonald

Education officials have relaxed testing requirements for immigrant 
students who do not understand English, but some principals and teachers 
say the change doesn't go far enough.

Georgia will require students with limited English proficiency to take 
the state's curriculum exam next month, but their scores won't count if 
they arrived in school this year.

It is a more humane approach to holding schools accountable for the 
progress of immigrant children, principals and teachers say. Still, they 
think a one-year grace period isn't enough for the children because many 
come from rural, poor or war-ravaged countries. They often are 
illiterate in their first language.

It is unfair to require students to take standardized exams in a 
language they cannot comprehend, and then hold their teachers and 
schools accountable for the results, said Sandy Thompson, who teaches 
English to immigrant students at Elkins Pointe Middle School in Roswell.

"It's demeaning and frustrating," she said. "It would be like you being 
given a test in Korean."

The new flexibility in testing immigrant students is a result of a 
sudden change in stance at the U.S. Department of Education. The agency 
also recently has relaxed rules for teacher preparation and for testing 
special education students under the No Child Left Behind Act.

The federal education reform law, now in its second year, requires 
schools to track and improve the test scores of groups of students, 
including children who are learning English as a second language.

Georgia allows teachers to read the test to these students. But they are 
the same exams as for English-speaking students, and the state requires 
non-English speakers to reach the same testing goals.

Federal authorities would have given these children a break from the 
testing in English/language arts entirely for their first year, but 
Georgia has a state law that requires children to be tested annually.

In a letter to school system superintendents, state School 
Superintendent Kathy Cox said she was trying to get an amendment that 
would allow school districts to take full advantage of the federal 
flexibility. The state department declined further comment.

The federal changes followed months of lobbying by states and school 
systems, which have criticized No Child Left Behind for setting 
unrealistic expectations for some of the most disadvantaged students.

Jane Coomer, principal at Chattahoochee Elementary School in Gwinnett 
County, has students who come from India, China, Japan, Korea and 
Vietnam. About 13 percent of her students are learning English.

Coomer said the state should initially test the children only in math, 
then follow with exams in other subjects.Students who are learning 
English should not have the same threshold for improvement as native 
English speakers, she said, "so we are actually giving them a chance to 
show what they've learned, as opposed to frustrating the daylights out 
of them."

In Fulton County, Elkins Pointe Middle failed to meet state expectations 
for student performance under the federal law last year because of its 
scores of special education students and students whose English skills 
are limited, said Principal Vivian Bankston.

It was one of 730 schools in Georgia that failed to meet testing goals 
last year, though state officials could not say how many were tripped up 
by the performance of students with limited English.

At Elkins Pointe, almost 6 percent of her students have limited English 
proficiency. Bankston has had difficulty convincing parents of 
prospective students that the school's overall scores can be misleading 
because they include the test results of immigrant students.

She hopes the new grace period makes a difference in how her school is 
viewed.

"As a school, it artificially lowers our scores."






http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/0304/17testing.html