Are non-native students learning English? Are non-native students learning English? (December 19, 2003)

District makes data available

By Julie O'Shea

Of the 1,261 Mountain View-Whisman students who were identified at the start of the last school year as English learner students, 204 -- or 16.2 percent -- were considered English proficient by the time classes let out for the summer. These figures were made available on the district Web site earlier this month.

District administrators and school principals say they are less concerned about meeting a redesignation quota than they are about making sure an English learner student has a firm grasp of the language before they are put into the proficient subgroup.

"You don't want to redesignate a student to jump your percentage up," Superintendent Jim Negri said.

Crittenden Middle School, which redesignated 30 of its students, had the most success in making its students proficient in English. The school had identified 55 students as English learners when school started last year.

Castro Elementary, where more than 80 percent of the total student body, or 348 students, are English learners, had more difficulties teaching English, redesignating just seven students last year.

Reclassifying English learners to English-proficient is a lengthy process that involves teacher recommendations, individual student portfolios and analysis from a slew of standardized test scores, including the California English Language Development Test (CELDT), which students took in October.

The district released preliminary results on the multi-pronged test that examines a child's comprehension in reading, writing, listening and speaking earlier this month. The state will have final results in late January, and more students will be redesignated by the end of this school year.

"It's actually a pretty good benchmark for us," said Craig Goldman, principal of Huff Elementary, which gave the CELDT to 88 students in October. The school redesignated 14 students last year, and administrators have a long-term goal of making sure all their English learners are redesignated after three years at Huff, where 29 different languages are spoken at home.

"We sort of represent the United Nations here," Goldman said.

This was the third year the CELDT was administered statewide to students whose primary language is not English. At Mountain View-Whisman, more than 1,800 were administered the test in October. It took the average student one-hour to complete the test, a jump of 10 minutes from last year, according to a staff report.

When it comes to assessing if a child can be redesignated as English proficient, "we decided to be really conservative," said Slater School Principal Niki Smith. "Once you reclassify a student, you don't qualify for services anymore."

However, Smith emphasizes that teachers want to make sure a child is going to be able to keep up in mainstream classrooms before taking away extra language tutoring that comes with being an English learner. Slater, which had 126 English learner students at the start of last year, redesignated 19 to English proficient.

This year's preliminary CELDT results shows between 2.9 and 12.9 percent of English learners at the district's nine schools met the minimum standards to be reclassified by the end of this year; their test scores are high enough and their teacher recommendations are encouraging. Districtwide information was not available.

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

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