Let's Not Lower the Bar for English Learners

Achieving greater accountability and higher standards in education means achieving them for everyone, including so-called English learners. No excuses. No exceptions.

It's a simple idea. Yet some in the public school system still have trouble accepting it. In fact, they fight it every chance they get by lowering expectations for an entire group of students.

This is nothing new. But, lately, the issue is boiling over because teachers and administrators are becoming anxious over the convergence of two issues — the enrolling of more and more students who don't speak English as their first language, and the performance mandates of the federal education reform law, No Child Left Behind. The law requires that every student be performing at grade level in reading and math by 2014. That is another simple idea. Besides, the inverse — where we tolerate indefinitely a situation where millions of students perform below grade level — is cruel and unacceptable. If the performance goal isn't met, schools could lose funding.

Meanwhile, nearly 123,000 students in San Diego County public schools are classified as English learners, up from nearly 116,000 two years ago.

Some educators claim the growth in the number of English learners makes it nearly impossible to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind.

That is the concern of Shirley Day, who coordinates English-learner programs for the Poway Unified School District. "An English learner is someone who by definition is not able to perform at grade-level proficiency," Day told the Union-Tribune.

That brand of reasoning seems awfully defeatist. An English learner by definition can't perform at grade level? According to whom? "If they were able to perform..."? Does that mean that English learners can't perform, not in any subject? Reading is one thing, but they can't even meet the math requirements? And there is no hope that they can meet any of these requirements, even if we have five years to get them up to speed?

English learners will rise to expectations, if we can stop the schools from lowering them.

REPRINTED FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

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