James Vaznis, Boston Globe, April 7, 2009
Students not fluent in English have floundered in Boston schools since voters approved a law change six years ago requiring school districts to teach them all subjects in English rather than their native tongue, according to a report being released tomorrow.
In one of the most striking findings, the study found that the high school dropout rate nearly doubled for students still learning to speak and write in English, according to the report by the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the Center for Collaborative Education.
The report—considered the most comprehensive look at the law’s impact on any school district in the state—paints a picture of a system ill-prepared to serve nonnative English speakers, who make up about 38 percent of the district’s 56,000students.
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Overall, the statistics show that the law—hailed as a quicker way to teach students English—has not helped them gain ground on their English-speaking peers, and in many cases may have left them even further behind.
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The report, which included a review of standardized test scores, attendance data, and suspension rates, steered clear of the contentious issue of whether the change in law was appropriate, and instead highlighted solutions that Boston should adopt to conform with the law.
The findings could also provide insight into what is happening in other school districts statewide. Boston, the state’s largest school district, represents 29 percent of students who require English language learning support in the state. The report looks specifically at languages most often spoken by them: Spanish, Chinese dialects, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, and Cape Verdean Creole.
“It’s always a crime when the potential of any kid is wasted away because a school system didn’t provide the services they should be,” said Jane E. Lopez, a staff attorney with Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy Inc., a national probilingual education group with offices in Massachusetts. “It’s a huge problem and it should be an embarrassment to Boston public schools.”
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Under the new law, districts must teach all subjects in English even as students learn the language. In most cases, students are taught as a group in a separate classroom, where a teacher uses more simplified English and pictures and graphics in teaching subjects such as science and geometry. The goal is to merge students into regular education classes within a year or two.
Students can still be taught academic subjects in their native languages under the new law, typically when a critical mass of students who speak that language exist and parents want the program. But many education advocates say school districts are unaware of that provision or do not generally let parents know of this right.
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The report follows a state review of the district’s program last year that found thousands of students identified as English language learners did not receive support for the past four years, and ordered the district to develop a remedy. Boston schools submitted their plan to the state this winter. Boston has been without a permanent director for English language learning programs for nearly a year.
The report, which will be the subject of a forum tomorrow, also urged the state to undertake a study examining progress in all the school districts across the state.
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[Editor’s Note: The Mauricio Gaston Institute’s report “English Learners in Boston Public Schools in the Aftermath of Policy Change: Enrollment and Educational Outcomes, AY2003-AY2006” can be read or downloaded as a PDF file here.
Original article
(Posted on April 8, 2009)
Comments
In one of the most striking findings, the study found that the high school dropout rate nearly doubled for students still learning to speak and write in English, according to the report by the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the Center for Collaborative Education.
Why are we to assume that they’re flunking out of what has to be easy inner city Boston high school because they can’t speak English? To ask this question another way, would they be much better off if they did speak English? I think their dropout rate wouldn’t be much lower.
Our law states that one must understand basic English in order to gain rights to stay here. So legally, what ever their status is, they should all be deported. Political correctness forces us to ignore that fact. I wonder what the people in Mexico would say if immigrants asked them to spend more taxes teaching them in their native language.
A few years black, the Buffalo News ran an op ed piece about this very issue. The writer was an elder Polish man who wrote about how Polish parents sent their kids to school and insisted they learn english. There were no demands for bi-lingual programs. The parents wanted their kids to learn english for two basic reasons. First, they needed their children to translate for them. The second was that Polish parents told their children that they were now Americans and as Americans they had to learn english. The Poles who moved to Buffalo, New York didn’t blame America for their lot in life and they didn’t spit in the face of their new homeland.
No, I don’t believe for a second that hispanics are just like any immigrant group that came before them. I have no sympathy for them. Nobody dragged them here in chains and if they don’t like it here, they can leave. Considering the trouble generated by hispanics in Buffalo, America as a whole would be better off without them.
“High-school students who are having trouble learning English just drop out.”
Their best bet is to just drop out all the way back to the old country, because non-English speaking peon work is going to be almost zilch in the coming years, beginning right now.
The big shot CEO’s who have moved their companies overseas, brought in foreign labor and applauded and rewarded in the millions for doing so, and who are directly responsible for the state of American immigration affairs right now, are on the way out completely and are thought of by the general public as nothing better than dirt.
Their dwindling numbers just might cause a lapse in immigration to here, because they won’t be encouraged to come by someone who earns a 500 million dollar bonus for such an unpatriotic, anti-white policy.
Years ago I was told that I was incapable of learning a foreign language. My undergraduate academic counselor told me just that and recommended I get a Bachelor of Science degree instead of a Bachelor of Arts which required a foreign language. I graduated with the B of Science.
As years passed and life went on, my career demanded that I travel to Europe to do some consulting so in order to meet my responsibilities and thus help MYSELF, I bought some cheap cassette tapes and language books of my host’s country, and in 2 months taught myself conversational German. Two hours of study every evening four or five days a week, and I had it handled. My hosts even remarked that I didn’t even have “an American accent”, and they were very please that I took the time to learn their tongue. I was asked back a second time, and was again rewarded financially as well as from an life experience standpoint.
I’m not celebrating myself in the above description. What I’m getting at is that to do well in life, you don’t give up on what’s necessary to gain life’s rewards. Losers simply do what these foreign born are doing — they drop out and/or quit.
Actually, they have free welfare, social security, medical care, and affirmative action hiring so in reality, they don’t have to work hard. Quitting is an option for them, as they see it, and they’re right. Our Democrats in office have them covered.
If I sound a little bit too harsh, let them drop out. Chances are, the students who aren’t fluent in English are illegal immigrants. I do not speak perfect English either. I try very hard every day though…
English is the official language in the United States and English and French are the two official languages of Canada. Those countries aren’t obligated to accommodate the illegal immigrants or even legal immigrants.
I am from Canada but I do visit websites of well-known universities in the States once in a while, and I realized, the website of U of Michigan now has a Spanish site…. means there are a lot of students who are more fluent in English than Spanish.
If Indians in India and Chinese in Singapore can learn English, why is it so hard for these immigrants in an English speaking nation like the USA to learn the language?
For a time I lived in Japan, and was surrounded by college educated ex-patriates who had lived there for decades but couldn’t order a bowl of noodles in the language. It was pathetic, really. The excuse was always that the Japanese didn’t expect anyone to learn their language anyway, and it was difficult and utterly useless outside of Japan.
Not long after, I was a bilingual aide for a school district in California full of Spanish speakers. They took forever to acquire English, and hung around together never interacting with the American kids. There was one pudgy Korean who played every day with the Americans and spoke English perfectly. I asked a teacher about him, and she said he’d been here all of a year and a half. I asked if there were any Korean-speaking bilingual aides who had worked with HIM, and the teacher just winked and shrugged her shoulders.
The point here, I think, is that people learn a new language when they feel that they HAVE TO in order to function. In that sense, bilingual education is basically a political decision. Get a large enough number of monolingual people who think it’s too much trouble to learn English, and they’ll obtain services in their own language. In the process, they’ll probably NEVER acquire English.
I was born in England. I had English lessons at school. So did everyone else I knew. We all spoke English, all the time. I don’t see a problem. Years later, I started to meet people from overseas who did not learn English at home but, without exception, all were determined to learn and would speak English all the time. Even allowing for accents and lots of mistakes, they persevered. The English language is very forgiving and it does not take very long to make oneself understood. I have lived and worked in many countries and found it difficult to learn any foreign language in everyday situations as everyone around me wanted to learn English and were reluctant to use their own tongue. So I used to ‘swap’ words with them. Worked a treat!
Students not fluent in English have floundered in Boston schools
These same ‘students’ would STILL be floundering if they spoke English. What race and religion are these ‘people’ in Boston anyway?
Just this morning at 1000 heard FOX News saying that Obamaster is about to make preparations for ‘meaningful dialogue’ about immigration reform, to include citizenship for 12 million illegals. Dict. defines Dialogue=to surrender our country. Citizenship=12 million Dem voters. After these 12 mil, 12 mil more will come and wait for the enevitble amnesty.
“Boston Students Struggle With English-Only Rule”
Translation: too many kids in Boston are immigrants who have no interest in assimilating into mainstream society and are mad because there’s someone in this country who expects them to.
Barack Obama says he wants to bring the illegal immigrants “out of the shadows.” They’re not hiding in any shadows! Just go to your nearby supermarket, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, hospital, Social Security benefits office, or bank where they are wiring their money back to Mexico! They are everywhere!
Recently I went to the post office before it opened to drop off mail and saw hispanic day laborers waiting beside their truck with one of them urinating against the side of the building. Whenever I go to the bank to use the ATM there are always short brown hispanic people with thick accents using the machine. I briefly looked at one in the face and he responded by spitting on the ground.
If Obama legalizes all these illegals, the people who hired them in the first place will find paying minimum wage too expensive and will just put the word out in Mexico’s trade papers that they need a fresh supply of illegals. Then Obama’s newly legalized American citizens get to apply for welfare because they will lose their jobs to illegals. Our country is going down!
Is Washington St in Boston still referred to as “the Combat Zone” I went to Army schools in Ft.Devens, Mass it was a lawless place then.
I’m a graduate of the Boston public schools. Iwent to the elite Boston Latin School. We had few if any Hispanic students.But we did have Asian students, and the current Latin School has many more. These Asian students are outstanding. They do well in the hard courses at Latin School, which is the equivalent of many top private schools, like Andover and Exeter. I think Chinese is a bit harder than Spanish, and to excel in English language courses from humanities to Science, as our Chinese students do, is wonderful. Since according to liberals, we are all equal, why can’t Hispanic students, who allegedly speak a language related to Latin, which comprises most English words, speak English? Especially if they are “legal”, ie they are born in the US or came here with legal immigrant parents. Does the group of Spanish speakers here mean they are “illegal”. That they don’t intend to become citizens. I say the proper educational response to these nonEnglish speakers is to put them on an airplane, at Federal expense, and return them to glorious Elsalvador or Guatamala, There, these unhappy students will be so very happy, free from the oppresive nature of Anglo Saxon society. They must be SO unhappy: they don’t know who the Angles were and they don’t know who the Saxons were. Indeed they don’t know who the Normans were. Or the Tories. Or the Federalists.
Clean non English speakers out of America after five years of residence. Including “parents” who are 85 years old. Are they supposed to get Social security and Medicare?
Keep it up Obama. You will ironically be the path for the white reclamation of our nation.
My grandfather (who immigrated here LEGALLY from Italy) couldn’t rub two English words together when he stepped off the boat at Ellis Island. Within a year he was proficient enough in the language to hold a simple conversation. How did he do this? He IMMERSED himself in the language.
Furthermore, he spent the rest of his life trying to master it. Why? Like most other European immigrants, he wanted to ASSIMILATE. He was quite proud of his American citizenship. That’s an attitude you seldom see in today’s Third World immigrants. We are in trouble.
