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Serna Faces Bilingual Bind: School Fails to Meet Statewide Testing Goals

Posted on: Monday, 16 January 2006, 12:00 CST

By Keith Reid, The Record, Stockton, Calif.

Jan. 16--LODI - Lodi's Joe Serna Jr. Charter School is facing the California educator's dilemma: Teach students a well-rounded curriculum or teach them to pass standardized tests.

The school takes pride in its concept: a bilingual curriculum taught mostly in Spanish. But it failed to achieve its Academic Performance Index and Academic Yearly Progress goals for English and language arts in 2005.

Although it succeeds in state and federal requirements in math, Serna has five years to show progress before state education officials evaluate the school's curriculum and consider making wholesale changes.

Named after a Lodi native who was Sacramento's mayor until his death, the school is for children whose parents are interested in immersing them in a bilingual education. It occupies a renovated building at the old First Baptist Church on East Oak Street.

Serna places English and Spanish learners in one program. Students who begin the program in kindergarten are not taught to read English until fourth grade, school officials said. There are 220 students attending the school.

"We know what the implications are here," Principal Michael Gillespie said. "We know that when you teach the kids in Spanish their first three years, they aren't going to score high on English tests initially. We explain that to parents, and we let them know that they need to support the program."

In kindergarten, 90 percent of instruction to both English-dominant and Spanish-dominant students is in Spanish. The percentage of Spanish taught in the classroom declines each year until students are spending 50 percent of their day in each language by the time they reach fourth grade.

The long-term results, Gillespie explained, are students who speak, read and comprehend Spanish and English at proficient levels.

And that's an attraction for parents.

"I'm not worried that my son is taking a half-step back early, when he'll be way ahead when he's 12 or 15 years old," said Todd Maley, whose son Reid is a first-grader at Serna. "He'll be entering high school taking Spanish 3. As long as his English skills improve - and that could take some parent involvement - I'll be satisfied. He'll be better off."

State standards, however, measure schools based on performance and not on long-term results of student learning. Serna's API score of 653 is nearly 50 points lower than those of eight dual-immersion schools in the Bay Area that Gillespie considers similar to his. Of the eight, Serna was the only one below the 700 mark on the API in 2005. It also was the only one to miss its growth target.

On the AYP, the school missed growth targets in the Latino, socioeconomically disadvantaged and English-learners subgroups.

Lodi Unified School District Trustee Ken Davis said the school must improve, knowing that studies show charter schools normally outperform traditional public schools and are more likely to reach their assessment goals.

"The reason you start a charter school is to perform better than the public schools," he said. "They have a lot of options that traditional schools don't. If they continue to be in program improvement, something has to change."

Superintendent Bill Huyett said the district will do what it can to help raise Serna's test scores. Parents are backing the program as well.

"I think its really important for children to learn a second language," said Blanca Salas, whose daughter Julia is a Serna fifth-grader. "My daughter struggled on English tests at first, but I've seen improvement since she started in the first grade. She can now answer the questions in English and Spanish and converse with adults in both languages."

Students at Serna say they enjoy being bilingual for many reasons, from being in touch with their culture to just having fun with a new language.

Austin Costa, 10, an English-dominant fifth-grader, said he enjoys making friends with Spanish speakers. Austin's Spanish-dominant classmate Melissa Barron, 10, said speaking English helps her self-esteem as a U.S. resident.

"I'm not embarrassed that I can't speak in English," she said.

Gillespie said he'll visit Bay Area immersion schools to see what they're doing differently. He said the addition of seventh grade this year and eighth grade in the 2006-07 school year will help raise Serna's proficiency in English.

Davis, however, expressed concern over that philosophy. "They're playing the system," Davis said. "That's all that is."

Gillespie contends his students eventually will meet and exceed state standards. "People who are bilingual will succeed. It's documented that people who speak different languages make connections in their mind that others don't."

Contact reporter Keith Reid at (209) 367-7428 or kreid@recordnet.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Record, Stockton, Calif.

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Source: The Record

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