Crunch Time for Arizona’s English Learner Program Looms

By Jim Small

Two-dozen third-graders are sitting in a Holmes Elementary School classroom, staring at computer monitors. The soft clicking of mouses and the tapping on keyboards is punctuated by yelps of excitement, as the students conquer one aspect or another of their educational video games.

There’s an overt, nervous excitement shared by the students, as they finish the final day of classes before the beginning of spring break. Their principal, Darlene Johnson, also is nervous, but her anxiety is rooted in a complex and long-term problem that has nothing to do with free time and fun.

When the next school year begins in August, the computer lab may be no more. The room is one of several that may be cannibalized to add seven new classrooms to implement the state’s new model for teaching English to students who speak a different native language. The English language learners program calls for at least four hours of intensive English instruction each day.

Other rooms that may be on the chopping block accommodate the Mesa school’s band and orchestra, a reading intervention center and an adult-English program. Some of the programs might be moved, others eliminated.

“I will have to transfer people, relocate people and programs, and that would be hard,” Johnson said.

Meanwhile, the school district with the highest percentage of English language learners expects to be burdened more by a need to train teachers than to find adequate classroom space.

“Our mainstream happens to be the English-language-learner population,” said David Martinez, superintendent of Cartwright Elementary School District in west Phoenix. “Implementing (the model) may be easier here.”

The Cartwright district’s 9,834 ELL students account for 48 percent of the district’s enrollment. Nearly 350 teachers will be leading the structured English immersion (SEI) classes next school year, but only 40 have been trained so far. Martinez said it will be a “tremendous challenge” to bring the rest of the teachers up to speed on the instruction model.

That challenge was compounded last month when the Arizona Department of Education announced it would no longer provide training on the SEI model for the state’s teachers, as it had originally hoped to do. The department will still provide some training, but the bulk of it will now be done by the districts themselves, at their own expense.

Doing so will be difficult, not just because of the cost, but because of the timing, said Cindy Segotta-Jones, assistant superintendent of educational services for the Cartwright district. Because end-of-the-school-year testing is just beginning, the training will have to be done on nights and weekends.

“It’s pretty short notice to do the turnaround,” she said.

The bottom line, school administrators said, is that the success of the ELL program will hinge on the resources the state decides to provide to the schools.

Incremental costs

School districts were asked by the state Department of Education to submit requests for additional money they felt would be necessary to implement the program. But district-level administrators were already complaining about what they expect to be a lack of money.

The objections grew louder when the Department of Education announced it would ask the Legislature for a fraction of the amount requested by the districts.

On Jan. 23, a day before school districts could apply for funding, the Arizona School Administrators Association held a Capitol press conference to announce it would cost upwards of $300 million to implement the SEI model. They pleaded for lawmakers to provide enough money to hire language specialists, to purchase new books and other materials and to find enough classroom space.

When the requests were tallied, 249 school districts and charter schools had requested about $275 million from the Department of Education. Of that, $90 million was approved — mostly for new teachers — and the department requested an additional $40 million from the Legislature to satisfy a provision in the law that requires school districts use some revenue from bonds and taxes to offset ELL costs.

Mesa Public Schools Superintendent Deb Duvall said the final amount isn’t enough and doesn’t come close to meeting the needs of Arizona schools to implement the SEI model.

“I think that there should have been some consideration given to the fact that, when you add hundreds of teachers, you need some space to put them,” she said. “The Department of Education lacks understanding or respect for the planning process that goes on at schools to implement it.”

But Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said the Department of Education merely followed the law when it approved the district requests and calculated additional money that would be needed from the Legislature.

The law, Horne said, requires money to be provided to cover only the “incremental costs” of implementing the model; that is, only what is required above and beyond the current instruction given to English-proficient students. Many districts requested far more money than they need, he said.

“We’re not going to give (a district) three teachers for five students each,” he said.

On March 3, Horne announced that he had requested $40 million from the Legislature, saying that one district had asked for money to hire 90 new teachers without providing an explanation for the number. He said the district needs only 13 new teachers, according to calculations of the Department of Education.

The department made its determination by comparing the number of teachers with the number of English language learners in that district.

Additional money for textbooks was denied, Horne said, because money for textbooks already is provided for all students.

And more money for additional classroom space also was denied — not necessarily because it isn’t needed, but because the task force that devised the model decided classroom space should be an issue for the Arizona Schools Facilities Board.

However, Horne said districts requested money to hire teachers at an average salary of $43,000. But because many districts likely will hire young teachers at a lower salary, there will be some money left over for things such as renting temporary trailers for more classroom space.

Beyond funding

The debate over the SEI model reaches far beyond funding — or, at least, beyond the controversy over the Department of Education’s funding request.

For Horne, changing the way Arizona schools teach English to the 130,000 ELL students is a matter of right and wrong. The days of students’ reaching high school without understanding English need to become a part of the state’s past, he said.

“I consider it a moral duty to teach these kids English,” he said. “What happened in the past was a scandal.”

But school administrators are skeptical the SEI model will lead to significant improvements. Johnson, the principal at Holmes Elementary, said separating the English-speakers from the ELL students removes role models for students who are trying to learn a new language, something she believes will hinder their progress.

“I don’t have any research to back it up … but I wonder if their (English) acquisition would be slower,” she said. “I know mine would be.”

She and other school supervisors view the model as a philosophical change from the established method, which immediately integrates foreign-speaking students into classes filled with English speakers.

The Department of Education, though, rejects the notion that intensive English instruction is any different philosophically from the established goal of ELL programs: teaching students to speak, read, write and learn in English.

“I don’t see this as a legitimate philosophical disagreement because the (law) says in so many words the kids have to be in sheltered English immersion, and only when they’re proficient do they get mainstreamed,” Horne said.

Instead, the schools want to preserve the status quo — they receive extra money for ELL students until they pass the AIMS test – - because they don’t want to lose the additional money ELL students bring in, Horne said.

John Stollar, the state’s associate superintendent for accountability, said: “Schools want to keep the kids in the same (system), which is what they’ve been doing for the last 30 years. But that hasn’t been making kids proficient in English.”

Segregation redux

Martinez, the superintendent of the Cartwright district, is disturbed by what he sees as a return to segregation. Placing all of the foreign-speaking students — a vast majority statewide are Hispanic — in separate classes harkens back to the days when his father could swim in the public pool only at certain times, he said.

He said the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is “going to have a blast with” the new model and could rule that school districts are violating the civil rights of students.

Cartwright Governing Board member Lydia Hernandez said separating the English-proficient students from the rest sets the stage for an “us-versus-them” mentality between Anglo and Hispanic students. Already, there is a division within the Latino community between those who know English and those who don’t, and physically separating them will only exacerbate the resentment between the two groups.

Segotta-Jones, the assistant superintendent for the Cartwright District, said students already group themselves based on language, readily identify those in their ethnic group that don’t speak English and then pick on them.

“Now, it’s just easier,” she said. “It almost targets the kids.”

Segregation isn’t a major concern for Horne and others in the department, though, because the separation is meant only to provide the instruction required by law.

“It’s not race-based. It’s, ‘do you know English or do you not?’” Horne said. “Plus, it’s temporary.”

Putting aside all the quibbling over money, philosophy and segregation, the Department of Education expects the new model to work and that students will learn English more quickly than before.

Margaret Garcia-Dugan, state deputy superintendent of public instruction and a former ELL teacher, said the two years of SEI funding provided to each ELL student under the law should allow ample time for them to learn English.

The most dramatic improvement, she said, will be in the third grade and below, a group that makes up 60 percent of the state’s ELL students.

“Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them should be out (of the program) after one year,” the target goal in the law, she said.

Horne, too, is adamant that the model will be a success.

“I want to make a prediction, that, when they start teaching these kids (English) for four hours with the training we’re giving out,” he said, “you’re going to see the numbers (of ELL students) drop like a rock from a tree.”

Originally published by Jim Small.

(c) 2008 Arizona Capitol Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.