OC schools fall behind in fluency // Immigrant pupils
aren't learning enough English
DATE 02/23/92
NEWSPAPER THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION NEWS
EDITION MORNING
PAGE a01
STORY LENGTH 59 INCHES
HEADLINE OC schools fall behind in fluency // Immigrant pupils
aren't learning enough English
BYLINE/CREDIT Dan Froomkin:The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS OC:LANGUAGE:IMMIGRATION:STUDENTS:SCHOOLS
Orange County's schools are failing to teach immigrant students
to speak, read and write English fluently, according to state
records.
The problem is severe all across California. But it is even more
pronounced in Orange County, where school districts have been faced
with a huge wave of immigrant children in recent years.
Out of almost 1 million limited-English-speaking students
statewide, only about 50,000 -- or 5.7 percent -- achieved fluency
during the 1990-91 school year, the state figures show.
In Orange County, that rate was even lower -- 4.2 percent.
If immigrant students were becoming completely fluent in English
within six years -- as most educators say is the case -- then about
one in six students should be achieving fluency each year, and the
rate should be closer to 17 percent a year.
Since 1988, the statewide and countywide rates have both gone
down, not up. The rate at which Orange County's immigrant students
are reaching fluency has actually declined by more than half -- from
10.1 percent to 4.2 percent. Statewide, the rate dropped from 9.4
percent to 5.7 percent.
What the figures suggest is that there is a large -- and growing --
number of immigrant students who are never taught standard English,
spend at least some of their time not understanding what is going
on in class and graduate (or drop out) with an education below US
standards.
Many educators attack the validity of the state figures. But
they are the only statistics collected statewide that address how
well the schools are serving limited-English speakers, who now make
up one-fourth of Orange County's enrollment and one in five
statewide.
Bill Honig, state superintendent of public instruction,
describes the rate at which students are becoming fluent as "tiny,"
and said he is concerned about the continuing decline.
Honig stopped short of calling the figures alarming. "I don't
think it's fair to say ... that that represents reality."
But Honig acknowledged that there is no other monitoring system
that the public can use to see how well schools are teaching
limited-English students. And he said the rate at which students
become fluent is "one of the ways (school officials) should be held
accountable."
The education establishment is involved in a swirling and
spirited debate about bilingual education, but the discussion is
almost always about which strategies are best and what resources
are most lacking, not about how well the schools are actually doing.
As a result of a sort of educational Catch-22, the state's
testing programs don't provide any reliable data on the achievement
of students whose native language is not English.
State rules say that only the more advanced limited-English
students should participate in statewide assessment tests. The rest
are not tested.
But at the same time, administrators at school districts with
many immigrants often blame low scores on the limited-English
students who do take the tests.
A major state-funded report on programs for limited-English
students will be released in the next week, addressing the overall
scarcity of useful programs, especially at the secondary level.
And according to Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, an adviser to the
authors of the report, it also will criticize the state for not
keeping better track of how much limited-English students achieve.
The fluency-rate figures reflect how many students originally
designated as "limited-English proficient" achieve fluency
comparable to native English speakers, and prove it by passing a
battery of tests.
Some Orange County educators note that teaching limited-English
students is sometimes extremely difficult for reasons beyond the
lack of language skills.
Schools generally have a much tougher time teaching impoverished
students, particularly when the educational levels and involvement
of their parents is limited.
"Our immigrant population is not a middle-class population,"
said Meliton Lopez, Anaheim City School District superintendent.
"They're the children of the poor."
Lopez said succesfully teaching the poor is a "barrier that we
in America have never been able to overcome."
Many immigrants are transient -- only staying in one school for a
limited time before moving to other apartments or out of the area
altogether.
"You've got kids who are in a district for two or three months,
then they're in another district for two or three months," said
Eileen Dibb, who oversees many programs for immigrants at the
Garden Grove Unified School District. Success, she said, "depends
on who's in and out and what is really happening with your students
in real life."
Several administrators also said that more and more immigrant
students are arriving in junior high and high schools -- often with
virtually no formal education in any language. Getting them ready
for graduation is often impossible, they say.
"The older students coming in have a greater disadvantage," said
Rosemarie Bodrogi, an administrator with the Newport-Mesa Unified
School District. Those students, she said, "are often leaving the
district before they get to that fluent level."
Some educators also say the figures are artificially low because
the process of officially changing students' designation from
limited-English to fluent is complicated and frequently bypassed by
administrators who see the requisite paper shuffle as a low
priority.
Comparisons between districts are not entirely valid. Among the
other variables, definitions of fluency vary between districts.
But the Santa Ana and Garden Grove unified school districts,
which have by far the highest number of limited-English students in
the county, also have some of the lowest fluency rates.
Other districts with high numbers of limited-English students
and low fluency rates include Fullerton Joint Union High School,
Newport-Mesa and Tustin Unified.
SIDEBAR
Assessing gains of limited-English students difficult
An assessment of what is happening to limited-English students
in Orange County's classrooms is further hindered by the fact that
virtually every school district in the county has a different
philosophy. Their approaches vary almost as widely as the
background of the children they serve.
Most districts, such as Santa Ana Unified, subscribe to the
theory that the best teachers for non-English speaking students are
bilingual teachers. Those teachers can teach other subjects in the
students' native languages while the students are learning English,
so they don't fall behind.
But other districts, including Tustin Unified, believe the best
strategy is for teachers to speak only in English -- yet have
special training in teaching non-English speaking children.
In the absence of hard numbers, educators refer to surveys and
their own estimates to assess how long it takes immigrant students
to learn English.
On average, they say, it takes two to four years for a
non-English speaking student to learn enough English that they can
fully absorb instruction in English. At that point, the students
generally have moved into mainstream classes.
Then, the educators say, it takes another year or two for the
students to acquire what is generally considered fluency.
-- Dan Froomkin/The Register
CHART:
How many become fluent?
The chart shows the redesignation rates for Orange County and the
state, from 1988 to 1991. The rate is the percentage of "Limited
English Proficient" students redesignated as "fluent" each year.
1991 1990 1989 1988
Orange County 4.2% 7.5% 9.2% 10.1%
California 5.7 7.1 8.4 9.4
How the districts are doing
No. Limited- No. Redesignated %
District English Fluent Rate
Anaheim Elementary 6,563 253 3.9
Anaheim Union High 3,969 285 7.2
Brea-Olinda Unified 421 39 9.3
Buena Park Elementary 746 131 17.6
Capistrano Unified 2,134 129 6.0
Centralia Elementary 712 54 7.6
Cypress Elementary 156 28 17.9
Fountain Valley Elementary 594 62 10.4
Fullerton Elementary 2,172 85 3.9
Fullerton Joint Union High 3,440 74 2.2
Garden Grove Unified 8,673 112 1.3
Huntington Beach City 340 34 10.0
Huntington Beach Union High1,521 42 2.8
Irvine Unified 1,739 177 10.2
La Habra City Elementary 1,043 53 5.1
Laguna Beach Unified 72 19 26.4
Los Alamitos Unified 181 25 13.8
Magnolia Elementary 933 160 17.1
Newport-Mesa Unified 2,698 76 2.8
Ocean View Elementary 1,161 63 5.4
OC Department of Education 42 0 0.0
Orange Unified 4,398 211 4.8
Placentia Unified 2,641 159 6.0
Saddleback Valley Unified 1,151 43 3.7
Santa Ana Unified 26,000 805 3.1
Savanna Elementary 249 31 12.5
Tustin Unified 1,455 45 3.1
Westminster Elementary 2,281 74 3.2
Total Orange County 77,485 3,269 4.2
Total California 861,531 49,001 5.7
Source: State Department of Education