Special Report: The English hurdle Special Report: The English hurdle (March 25, 2005)

Impossible dream: immigrants get one year to learn English

SECOND OF TWO PARTS Last week, the challenges educators face in teaching English to immigrant students. This week, the deck stacked against newcomers at the high school level.

By Julie O'Shea

Hector Perez is the first to admit he doesn't have an easy job.

This is his second year of teaching English language development classes at Mountain View High School. In his fifth-period class, he has 21 students -- a mix of freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. None of them know English well enough to pass a state test, yet all of them will be required to take a series of government-mandated exams next month, conducted solely in English.

"It's like a Catch-22 for them," Perez said. "The current situation is not equitable. ... It's not fair to these kids."

The kids who walk through Perez's classroom door are usually new to the country and are basically given a year to learn English at Mountain View High. Perez gets these students for one hour and 40 minutes a day, five days a week -- "the rest of the time, it's sink or swim."

"It's frustrating especially when you teach them something, and they come back next week and say 'I don't know how to do that,'" said Perez, who is one of just four English language development teachers at his school site this year.

It's not that these kids are dumb, Perez added, but when all their textbooks are written in a language they don't understand, it makes learning difficult.

"We stick them in a classroom, and then we flunk them. So what's the point?" he said. What these kids need, Perez added, is all-day, intense English workshops. But this seems unlikely given the dire state of school-district funding.

"It's a terrible conundrum," Perez said.

School districts across the nation have found themselves struggling to improve the retention rate of second-language learners ever since the Bush Administration unveiled its No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. The federal measure requires all of the nation's schoolchildren to be at grade level proficiency by 2014. California beefed up its accountability standards in 2002 and began laying the groundwork for the high school exit exam, which students must pass before receiving diplomas, starting in 2006.

However, when test results started coming back, administrators saw just how big the achievement gap is between English language learners and mainstream students.

"The bar has been raised for all students. We have become much more conscious of our data. And we've become painfully aware of the achievement gap," said Brigitte Sarraf, the associate superintendent of the Mountain View-Los Altos high school district. "All we can hope for is progress. ... We've done our homework. It has a lot to do with luck in a sense."

The high school district provides less than two hours of intense English development classes a day to second-language learners. In addition, many teachers are working toward their CCLAD (Cross Cultural Language And Development) credential, which certifies them to have English learners in their classrooms.

Still, "in spite of our support, we aren't performing well," Sarraf said.

Statistics show that there are close to 200 students in English language development classes at Mountain View and Los Altos high schools. However, with new students enrolling practically every week, that number is undoubtedly higher than the records show. For instance, Mountain View Principal Pat Hyland reported that she enrolled four new English learners this month alone.

But for as many kids who enter the school system here, just as many exit before the year is over. Because of these students' high transiency rate, district leaders said it is virtually impossible to track these students once they leave the area.

"It's like a wave. They are migratory. We may only keep them for a while before they move again," said Los Altos Principal Wynne Satterwhite. "That's the hard part with these kids. Just when you start to see some real growth, they move."

Satterwhite and Hyland agreed that the kids who come to their schools from another state or country are less prepared than the students coming from the Mountain View-Whisman or Los Altos school districts.

"It really depends on their background," Satterwhite said. "If they come up through our program," those kids generally are more academically successful than the kids who come from another country and may or may not have had any formal schooling.

Students who come from one of the district's feeder schools - Graham, Crittenden, Egan and Blach -- "have had exposure. They understand schooling. They still may have issues, but we believe in their capacity to learn," Hyland said. "Kids who come from no real schooling, that's a whole other ballgame. How do you make up for six or seven years of (missed) schooling? You can't. There is only so much a teacher can do."

Added Satterwhite: "We are here to give kids an education. We are not here to teach them how to pass a test. I think it's hard to lay blame anywhere. Systemically, we fail some of these kids. Is there a way to fix that? I don't know.

"We have seniors who can't read, and that is scary to me," Satterwhite said.

Few English learners are retained at the high school level. If they still haven't grasped English proficiency after four years of high school, most students are encouraged to sign up for adult education, where they can work toward their G.E.D. Sarraf doesn't have any statistics on the drop-out rate of the district's English language learners. She said an exact number is hard to track because these kids move around so much.

"They get frustrated. It's a sense of defeat," Sarraf said. "We are doing whatever we can to help these students. The goal is to get them to graduate."

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

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