Via Michelle Williams of MassLiveNews.com: “BREAKING: The state board of education declares Holyoke Public Schools a ‘chronically underperforming’ Level 5 district, under state control.”
As Peter Balonon-Rosen reports for WBUR, Holyoke has had trouble meeting state standards in part due to its demographics:
Nearly half of Holyoke students do not speak English as a first language and nearly 30 percent are English-language learners. Standardized tests, which have been a major factor in determining achievement in Holyoke, present a number of challenges for English-language learners (ELLs).
Research suggests that although such tests intend to assess subject-area knowledge, many ELLs can find themselves required to take assessments before their English language skills are developed enough to comprehend the tests.
Eighty-five percent of Holyoke students come from low-income households. Recent research shows that poverty may be the largest factor that affects academic achievement and likelihood of dropping out of school.
I’ve weighed in before on state takeovers in general:
We let our children grow up in communities with high unemployment, low-paying jobs and high crime rates, then when they don’t do well on tests, we declare the school, principal & teachers “failing.” Here in Massachusetts, our “failing” schools are all located in inner-city Boston, Fall River, Holyoke, New Bedford and Springfield – all urban areas, all poor, most heavily minority.
But I’m not familiar with Holyoke’s story. Are you? What do you think of the state takeover?
I think we should consider more English classes for children who need it.
By all means teach and test progress in learning English, but in the meantime it is not mutually exclusive to test in say science or history in the native language. Personally, I’ve long thought that every HS graduate in the US should be fluent in English and at least one other modern language.
Perhaps for standardized tests of math/science you could produce versions in multiple languages in a cost-effective manner for a limited number of languages. But for regular classes, forcing even bilingual teachers to produce multiple versions of their test materials doesn’t seem practical.
It would be short-sighted to think that this is solely about the English language. The problem is poverty.
Holyoke, along with other urban areas, serve as both the dumping ground and the whipping post for the state’s problems. There are no solutions, only scorn and blame.
Do you know that there are hundreds of homeless families living in motels in Holyoke, Chicopee, Springfield, West Springfield?
Do you know that the state’s solution to that problem is to pack those homeless families two-to-four-to-an-apartment in one densely populated neighborhood in Springfield? And that this is considered a solution to the problem?
Do you know that there are non-profit agencies relocating international refugees to cities such as Springfield, West Springfield, Holyoke?
Do you know that the transience rate of students in Holyoke and Springfield is incredible – for example, in Holyoke, 47% of the students in grades 4 to 10 moved at least once, with many moving multiple times. And when they move, they switch schools.
Do you know how many children are in foster homes in Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, and West Springfield?
Do you know how many children are living with a single parent (because welfare gets cut off if there is a male in the house), or with grandparents (because one or more parents are either in jail, unfit, abandoned, or dead)?
Do you know how much more funding Chapter 70 allocates to a poor student versus a rich student in the Foundation Budget? 50% more. That means the state presumes that a classroom of 17 poor students takes as much effort (and funding) to educate as a classroom of 25 rich students. Both should achieve the same results with the class size reduction attained by the 50% increase in funding for the low-income kids.
So what is the Baker administration’s solution to all this? Put the district into receivership. Break the unions. Fire the teachers. Probably create more charter schools, if James Peyser has any hand in this.
In 2011, one of Holyoke’s high schools was taken over by the state, and control of it was given to a private company called “Collaborative for Educational Services”. That company bailed out of the job after just 2 years, handing control to another private company called “Project GRAD”.
So even though this school has been essentially in receivership for four years, there has been no improvement. Why not? We have been told that Dean Vocational’s problem are due to “mismanagement” – yet two sets of private managers have had no impact.
So maybe the problem with the district, and with the urban schools in general, is also not “mismanagement”?
and Baker was no where in sight at that time.
How do you explain that?
Also note the efforts in Lawrence appeared to have had at least some impact.
Not minimizing the point that the schooling of kids with lots of problems is affected by those problems. From looking closely at Lawrence not sure how you solve some of those problems, so the best you can do it to try to “fix” the schools so they operate somewhat better.
Seems like MA Dems & GOP are generally united in terms of not caring about low-income cities & not wanting to tax their constituents one cent more to help them.
At least a couple of Lowell’s delegation seem to be part of the allergic to taxes crowd.
…Lawrence issues long predate his still fairly new governorship.
Here is what receivership brings, according to the Boston Globe (which fully endorses it because of “underperformance”).
So are we to believe that Holyoke schools are failing simply because:
* The union contracts.
* The local elected school committee.
* The fact that teachers can’t be hired or fired at will.
* The teachers should have to work more hours for the same amount of money (even though other communities are doing OK with similar hours to Holyoke)
* Principals do not have “autonomy” (whatever that means).
* There are no private “external educational partners” involved (except that there is, at Dean Voke, and it hasn’t helped).
And the Globe justifies this takeover because “…the state has had its hand in the district for a long time, and expenditures prove it. Last school year, Holyoke spent $16,700 per pupil, and about 70 percent of that cost was paid by the state.”?
This is the precise argument that conservatives use over people who receive welfare – “since we’re paying for your food, we get to tell you that you can’t buy a cookie”.
The most offensive line in the editorial is perhaps this:
Why is the choice between “neglected” and “state takeover”? How about “not neglected”? How about “giving help”?
…people closely familiar with the situation have spoken to me about the schedules produced by Holyoke administration. Hours and hours of “Study hall” that leave seniors without credits to graduate, much less pass whatever Mitchell Chester’s friends are selling as a test. A simple fix, but rather than effect that, the state is going to sell the school district to a favored vendor to do with what they will.
Why are such schedules being created? Is it a budgetary issue? The simplistic answer would be “bad management”, but that is a one-dimensional answer that doesn’t explain much.
In jr. high we had multiple study halls per week in time slots in which in previous years other subjects that had been cut would have been taught. The idea that they make it impossible to graduate seems a bit extreme though. You would think they would waive the requirements to accommodate actual offerings.
Please tell me there is more to this story? Please sabutai
…just remembering conversations years ago with those who were. It was presented as general disorganization within Holyoke High. I don’t want to speculate on the causes…often times it’s budgetary, but it was presented to me as incompetence.
When it comes to education, Democrats are as bad, and in some cases, worse than Republicans. It’s highly unlikely that Baker will change education policy for the better in Massachusetts, but premature to blame him for anything. Mitchell Chester belongs to Patrick, whose education policy was about as bad as Obama’s.
Education policy for the last 20 years shifted away from local control to the state. The state, which is disproportionately influenced by business, has imposed a management and “accountability” model that mirrors the business world, which traditionally disempowers workers and privileges managers. The problem is, corporate management doesn’t fit education very well. We rely on test scores rather than profits to hold schools “accountable” in spite of the well-known and equally well-ignored fact that students vary widely, particularly where household income and parent education are concerned. We pretend numbers can be mathematically adjusted to reflect this variance, but in all honesty they can’t. Learning in schools is infinitely more complex than making a profit, but the powers that be reduce learning to test scores, which are interpreted with all the complexity as a fundamentalist reading of the Bible. Holyoke is being punished for the poverty of its students. Receivership is the state proving the efficacy of its ideology. That’s what this is all about. The managerial class has set up a system, and when the system fails, teachers, students, and communities are blamed. The system itself is never questioned. It should said that these takeovers are paving the way for the corporate takeover of school systems by educational management organizations. Communities have no options about how to improve learning; when teachers object to managerial changes, they are told they just want to preserve their jobs. The managers of our state-run educational system following a business class ideology has no room for the people they claim to serve.
The public school system that I experienced in Montgomery County, MD in the 1950s and 1960s existed primarily to produce compliant industrial workers who functioned well in a factory environment. That system was, at the time, often cited as a model and as very “successful”. It had high graduation rates, most graduates went on to college, most students did well on the frequent standardized tests we took (NMSQT, SAT, and many “California tests” intended to measure school performance). Montgomery County was a prosperous suburb of the nation’s capital, and invested heavily in the best public school system money could buy.
Students were expected to arrive at the factory at the appointed time, ready for work. Bells rang to announce shift changes. Meals were scheduled in the factory cafeteria at times that optimized the schedules constructed by management. Management had absolute authority, and designated groups of workers to ensure that management directives were embraced in letter and spirit. Dissent was barely tolerated.
It was great preparation for lifetime of punching a clock. It only accidentally enabled graduates to thrive in a constantly changing world that requires creativity, constant learning, independence of thought and action, and self-empowerment.
It may not be coincidental that of my 1970 graduating class of 621 men and women, the “leaders” at the time — the lettermen, the student government officers, the “most likely to succeed”, the “most popular”, “homecoming queen”, etc — wistfully remember high school as their happiest days at our 30-year and 40-year reunions. Those who went on to become industry leaders, research stars (several became noted and celebrated PhDs), literary figures, performing artists, and successful entrepreneurs were — by and large — outcasts while in high school, relegated to the social fringes and castigated as “nerds”, “geeks”, “hippies”, and “ho-heads” (I never even knew what the last epithet meant!).
I agree with you that party affiliation seems pretty much irrelevant to Massachusetts public education policy today.
…that actually sounds like the antithesis of preparing them for a clock-punching job.
I’m talking about the culture and values of the school. Good teachers (and we had many) and affluent students can be successful in spite of whatever culture and values they work in.
I’m not saying that nobody was successful. I’m highlighting the contrast, after 30-40 years, between the life experience of those students who were held up as models to be emulated and that of those who were not.
What we’ll never know is how much some of the students on the fringes might have accomplished in life had they had not been told during their high school years that they were “losers”. What might some of those young women have accomplished if they were celebrated for their excellence rather than their appearance or their skills at twerking as cheerleaders? I like to believe that we’ve come a long way since then, especially for women.
The culture was broken, even if many or most students went on to college.
I’ve always assumed that education was about helping everyone achieve their potential, and my own experience tends to bear that out.
Where HAS it worked? In our economy, it’s punished workers and rewared executives with ever-higher bonuses. It might be better called the Blame the Powerless model.
So lets say a family drops into Holyoke (or elsewhere) from another country, and the kid speaks little to no English. For convenience, let’s say it’s in July, so the child starts a school year and the administration knew the kid was coming.
Why not add a year to the child’s education? Why not take the first year and focus hard on the spoken and written English word, with minimal attention to other subjects? It’s not great to have kids “held back” a year if they’re physically and socially ready to move on, but if a year of intensive English would allow those kids the opportunity to learn material in other subjects, why not? What am I missing (other than the funds to pay for it, of course)?
some bizarre policy called RETELL. It’s been explained to me once, and I still don’t quite understand it. It requires me to attend training to work with ESL\ELL kids, though from what I understand from people who’ve done the training it wasn’t anything they didn’t already know.
With that said, there is, I’m sure, plenty of research on how ELL teaching works and what the best practices are. There are probably existing curriculums for purchase. While language is part of the issue, it is likely being addressed in the classroom already. That’s not the achievement issue. What you have is a lot of dirt poor children with all the attendant problems of poverty–No Politician notes, in Holyoke, 47% of the students in grades 4 to 10 moved at least once, with many moving multiple times. I’ve talked to Holyoke teachers who told me that a lot of her young students lived in an apartment block where multiple people dealt heroin. I can’t remember the word in Spanish, but there is one for Puerto Ricans who routinely move back and forth between Puerto Rico and the continent.
It’s okay to speculate about what curricular or pedagogical changes would help, but that suggests there’s technical fix for Holyoke school. To truly address the issue of achievement, we need address the causes of poverty. We need safe neighborhoods, parents with the support and skills necessary to be effective , jobs (especially those that pay a living wage) for those parents. In short, we need communities built. MCAS and testing is a cheap way to pretend we’re doing something for poor people. It has the advantages of appealing to the managerial class, affirming the self-image of middle class communities, and blaming teachers who have little say about what happens in their classrooms.
To improve learning in our urban schools, we should be going in the opposite organizational direction: localizing more control in the communities served by the schools and building communities around them. I apologize for not offering any research, but here’s an article by Pedro Noguera that can give you an idea of what this might look like.
Pedro’s work is very, very good. It’s a pity he wasn’t Obama’s Secretary of Education.
That referendum back in 2004 (iirc) that Romney supported has created a burden. It demands that ELL students move into mainstream classes in 2 years, and that’s a legal mandate that conflicts with the developmental speed of the vast majority of human children. Not every kid is as mentally quick as you were when you were a child, stomv.*
Essentially, only a small percentage of children can take a year of intensive English and progress at the rate you want.
*Obviously I didn’t know you as a kid, but from all the posts & comments of yours it’s pretty clear you’re smarter than the average bear. This overestimation of kids’ potential to improve is a pretty common mistake people make about educating children.
I forgot to put in the link.
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/files/district-leadership/Transforming_Urban_Schools.pdf
and obviously, I’m not an expert in education, despite spending ~25 years in the classroom as a student, teacher, or TA. Maybe a year isn’t the right amount, and maybe this doesn’t work because you can’t take too much time away from other subjects either.
And to respond to mark-bail, I get that it isn’t just an ELL/ESL issue. I get that poverty, single parent homes, food scarcity, etc. are all big factors. But the quote in the initial post — the first two paragraphs are about ELL/ESL, the third is poverty. If the issue was just poverty, the parts about ESL/ELL wouldn’t be in the first two paragraphs, no?
the order should reversed. I have had middle- and upper-middle class kids who are ESL and for whom another language is spoken in the home and if they start out young, by the time they reach my suburban high school, they are in good shape. For kids who immigrate later, the task is more difficult. The big problem is poverty. Language is a more of a complication than a cause.
I was trying to comment in such a way that I didn’t criticize your comment or shut down conversation. When we start talking pedagogy–i.e. how to fix instruction, we move to a level of discourse over which most, if not all, of us lack enough information. (I know I’m pretty ignorant on ESL research). It would be like talking about medical costs from diabetes and focusing on how to alleviate neuropathy or do cheaper amputations.
I get to see Lawrence and the take-over close up.
The conversation gets politicized so quickly though.
I don’t blame the teachers (because it’s not all their fault) but some teachers are not good and compound the problem. In Lawrence 16 teachers were fired in the overhaul.
It takes leadership. In Lawrence they replaced almost all the principals and assistant principals, and the new people have been critical to the process.
Schools need some innovation and help. Lawrence has partnered with charter schools and that appears to be working well.
But for some on BMG all of these things are nonstarters. Fixing poverty, language issues, bad parenting, etc. will take decades. You basically give up on years of kids. “Improving” (quotes because this is a subjective term) is really the easiest/fastest way to help the children.
While it’s too soon to say that Lawrence is the best/only path, or that it’s permanently fixed, it’s at least better than it was, and appears to be on an upward trend.
We’ll have to see what happens in Holyoke, but this state has a lot of excellent people in education (Jeffrey Riley, Lawrence Superintendent, really is all that) and applying them directly against the problematic districts, in a framework that encourages a cooperative effort, should produce results.
We accommodate non-English speaking people throughout society now in ways unheard of 50 years ago. Have you seen the walls of hospitals (for ex) and the range of forms available in various languages. It was the responsibility of the people to bring an interpreter and often the kids became that for the parents. I accompanied a friend from grammar school when his Polish parents went to the doctor once, when their normal adult bi-lingual friend was unavailable. The kid could speak great after a year and his parents were passable after two. They wanted to assimilate, not so much today. See how many of those parents in Holyoke would show up for a weekly class to improve their own English, I bet not many.
The first part of your comment is accurate, as it should be. A nation of immigrants needs to remember that not everyone comes from the English-speaking world. My understanding, however, is that adult English classes have wait lists a mile long. These people know that English is advantageous, and I hope you are not assuming that just because they converse with each other in another language or are still more comfortable in their native language, that they don’t know English.
either very ignorant or unpleasantly revealing. Anecdotal evidence has its uses, but not as a basis for sweeping generalizations about people and groups we know relatively little about. There has been some empirical research on immigrants learning English:
I am convinced that people do not appreciate that immigration from Spanish-speaking countries is continuously occurring. Contrast that to Italian immigration which occurred over a finite amount of time – 1890 to 1917, just 30 years.
When the immigrants stop coming, it appears as if they are “learning English” when in reality the children are learning English and are growing up. When the immigrant stream is constant, people see others speaking Spanish on the streets for 40 straight years and assume that no one is learning English, and that even kids born here are not learning English.
It’s a perception thing.
I don’t know about scott12mass, so this is not at all directed at him personally — rather, at the mime he repeats.
As mark-bail observes, some non-English languages are more acceptable than others. For whatever reasons, people speaking German, Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Polish, and a long list of others, do not spark this hostility. The rancor is more often directed at people — particularly dark-skinned people — speaking Spanish. A middle group, including languages like various Indian and Pakistani dialects, Haitian Creole, Japanese, and various Asian dialects, catches some flack, but not as much as Spanish.
The sad truth is that too much of the animosity towards non-English speaking people and children is rooted in racism.
I want English as the official language. Efficiency dictates that one language is better whether it is landing a plane internationally or interacting in society. There was a reason the Tower of Babel fell. Whether Spanish or German I will interact with whoever is attempting to speak English, and with the understanding that even though it may not be their first language their attempt to speak English obligates me to cut them some slack. If I travel, Je parle un peu de francais. If I were in another country to live my first purchase would be a hand held translator to facilitate interactions in the primary language of that country.
…CAUSED the proliferation of languages rather than the result of it according to Genesis. Of course if you want to go Biblical language barriers became moot on Pentecost.
Anyway, official language legislation sends needlessly exclusionary messages and English is already the de facto national language. Keep in mind though that if you are going to use the if I go to France I’ll speak French argument that only works for English in England. In America we speak whatever and though accident of history makes us primarily English-speaking it no means had to be that way. The French owned much of the Mississippi basin – what if they had won the French and Indian Wars? Spanish speakers are most highly concentrated in parts of the country once owned by Spain. Some colonists wanted to convert to German out of pique in order to distance themselves further from Britain during the revolutionary era. Of course this European imperialism doesn’t take into account native dialects, some of which are threatened with extinction.
So sure, speak English. I for one advocate fluency for all in English and at least one other language. Just don’t be arrogant about it.
There are places in Maine and Louisiana where the residents have spoken French since before statehood. Similarly, there are places in the Southwest where people have spoken Spanish or a Native American language since before statehood. Additional easy examples in Hawai’i and Alaska, of course. Same communities, even the same families in some cases.
They didn’t come to America. America came to them.
I’ll have to remember that one:)
relatively speaking they are poorer than average aren’t they?
I’m sorry, I’m not getting your point.
Can you just spell out more precisely what you’re trying to say about these populations?
it must make sense to adopt it as social policy?
“Drücken Sie 2, wenn Sie diese in Deutsch hören wollen”
…but then, racism never did. Spanish is a language of European origin just like the rest of them. Because English has heavy Romance roots there are a lot of similarities. Plus Spanish is a relatively easy language to learn since unlike certain languages (*cough* – English – *cough*) it pretty consistently follows its own rules.
would this thread have been if we were all arguing in four different languages, with varying degrees of comprehension? It would all have reverted to whoever owned this blog, in essence the one with the most money would have the final say. That is why we are doing a disservice to students and immigrants when we enable them to stumble through life while accommodating their limited English skills. If they learn to stick up for themselves, become active citizens, they will enjoy the benefits afforded their fellow citizens. Far from being racist the desire to equip all citizens with the great equalizing skill of communication is the best empowerment they could get.
The internet’s a big place. I’m sure there are political blogs out there for communities which speak other languages. Seriously, have you ever had trouble communicating in English in this country? I haven’t, even in Lawrence which is in many respects a bilingual city. Plus, I don’t see anyone arguing that we shouldn’t give people the opportunity to learn English.
Plenty of interactions in Danish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and English. Strong economy, high education rate, low crime rate, respect for the natural environment — a pretty great all around place.
And, it just so happens to be the policy that aligns with xenophobia, requires the least effort or consideration from the native-born, and doesn’t match in the slightest the experience of the European ancestors who arrived 80-150 years ago. But don’t let that get in the way of a good rant.
Switzerland.
It’s hard, especially for adults who may have limited education to begin with, to become fluent in a new language. It has always been so with American immigrants. Within a generation families have the opposite problem: the kids don’t know the original language well enough to communicate with older relatives. I’ve never seen any immigrant community (or even family) go multiple generations without being able to function in English.
My American friend immigrated to Montreal where business is conducted in French, English, or French and English. People switch back and forth in the middle of sentences.
English, German, Flemish, and French spoken regularly. When I went to Bruges a few years ago I noticed that you could get an interesting lesson in the history of English by reading the signs. If you saw words similar to English on French signs you could tell the words were of Romance origin and if you saw similar words on Flemish signs you could tell those words were of Germanic origin.
The fact is that this blog is in English without government decree. A blog that depends on audience participation is likely to be conducted in the preferred language of the audience, regardless of who owns the blog or what the law says (unless you also propose government regulation of blog content — do you?).
Unless you propose to accomplish your proposal by unilateral executive order (you’re a small-government guy, right?), then the likelihood is that 10-20 years from now, the single language your law requires will be Spanish.
Sheer demographics is clear — our Hispanic and Latino populations are growing faster than our WASP population. The precedent you propose is likely to be used by a Spanish-speaking majority to impose their language in two short decades. Are you sure that’s what you want? Are YOU ready to attend “Spanish as a second language” courses at night? Are you ready to hear and read crude and offensive insults because you continue to speak English among your family, friends, and neighbors?
America has managed to do very well without a formally legislated national language, just as we’ve done very well without a formally legislated national religion. Surely we have enough racism and xenophobia in place already without promoting more by government action.
The aspect of this that destroys the credibility of both the proposal and its proponents is that those proponents so often complain of “intrusive government”, speak of seeking “liberty” and “freedom”, and proclaim their distrust of ANY government. Yet they offer a proposal is that is intrusive, tyrannical, and worst of all both unnecessary and ineffective.
In my view, “freedom of speech” includes the freedom to speak and write in the language of my choice, and includes the freedom to listen and read in the language of my choice.
This proposal is right-wing extremist garbage.
His accomplishments were made in English. He was bi-lingual but how far do you think he would have gotten is he didn’t speak English. What happens when lawsuits start because non-English speakers complain they aren’t being hired because they can’t speak English? You can’t discriminate, right?
Your Vietnamese waitress will have trouble communicating with your Nigerian cook, etc,etc. This line of dialogue started because the kids were falling behind in school. Defining a clear goal, English fluency was my solution. I am small govt and if you want to keep things the same way fine, I feel their problem “poverty” will not be alleviated until they can compete economically, and English will do that. done
For at least one high-end restaurant I’m familiar with, a problem exists today — and attempting to force English would only worsen it. That restaurant desperately needs to hire qualified line cooks. There simply aren’t enough good line cooks in Boston. That restaurant hired a manager who is fluent in Spanish. That let them begin actively recruiting line cooks who speak only Spanish. Problem solved.
That restaurant had a very real very immediate business problem. It was solved by embracing, rather than attempting stem, the demographic reality of today’s Boston.
It’s easier to hire one multilingual manager than to change the language of two dozen employees. It’s a whole LOT cheaper than paying overtime to the understaffed and overwhelmed English-speaking cooks. Your Vietnamese server will figure out how to communicate with your Nigerian cook, and “English fluency” may well not be their most immediate or even best solution (there’s a good chance they might end up using French).
For a self-professed “small government” guy, you’re sounding pretty big government to me. However hard it is to change the poverty issue, I suspect that the government has more immediate power there already than it has in choosing what language people prefer.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, there’s a group of Spanish-speaking line cooks in Boston for whom the “poverty” problem has just been solved — by the free market.
a nativist idea in search of a rationale, like many conservative ideas.
English as the Official Language is basically nothing. Massachusetts has had it for more than 40 years. English Only is a bigoted idea.
If it is a customer service position you’ll want to hire someone who speaks the language(s) of the clientele. Contrary to what you seem to be implying that still includes English in almost every case, but if anything being able to speak another language is a good thing.
…I don’t think scott12mass or anyone else is proposing requirements that private communication be conducted in a particular language. Calls to make English the official language usually entail that documents generated by government entities be printed only in English.
official language of Massachusetts, has be
en since 1975.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/12/states-where-english-is-the-official-language
How’s that worked out? I’ve seen plenty of state documents in other languages so I’m not sure what that means, unless there are federal laws that trump.
what the heck is he proposing? There’s not a coherent thought there.
Till they learn the language of competition, English, they will be relegated to being line cooks etc. They will be statistically poorer. Not sure who it was but the idea of one year of language only may be the way to go. Their homework can be to interact with their parents, in English and it will help them also. This was about the kids right, I never even knew we had already passed the racist, xenophobic English only law already.
Your apparent premise — that “one year of language only may be the way to go — is inconsistent with my read of what those who actually investigate this issue report.
I don’t think there’s any data to support the premise that one year of any language, including English, can make a measurable difference in outcomes. There is, however, data (if I recall correctly) that the loss of that year in learning science, math, and related disciplines does make a measurable negative difference.
While the children who are separated into their special English-only year, their English speaking cohorts are gaining an advantage that the non-English speaking children will never overcome. I am under the impression that, instead, ESL should be taught each year while the school simultaneously provides other classes in the native language of the children.
I’m not an educator, so I defer to the opinions of those here who are. Still, I see no evidence at all that passing additional laws to attempt to force English as the only language will do any good at all and may do harm (in addition to its racist, xenophobic, and constitutional issues).
FWIW, my wife, who arrived here in the mid-nineties as a native German speaker with some proficiency in English (learned in school), reports that she had far more difficulty with the “English” of government than in her workplace. She had far more difficulty with the vocabulary of government documents, the dialect/accent of the people she spoke with (here in Boston), and with their abysmal grammar on the phone than she did with her professional colleagues. She is now fluent in English (I do not speak German yet, even after 15 years of living with her). She still struggles with phone conversations with government workers — and, frankly, so do I.
Finally, my wife reports no experiences with anti-German prejudice at all from anybody. That stands in stark contrast to our Japanese friends, who struggle with it daily in their interactions with both government and school officials, and with my late Spanish-speaking Cuban former landlord. He viewed the prejudice against him, especially from government, as a price he paid for being in America. He spoke fluent English, by the way. He owned and operated several successful nightclubs in Boston as well as a portfolio of rental properties in Boston and Brookline. When we discussed these matters, he simply shrugged, smiled, and said “well, I don’t like it but it’s better than Cuba”.
English as the Official Language. Scott is right: it is racist and xenophobic, but it’s also somewhat ignored, I think. I don’t think it would be hard to eliminate from the Constitution if anyone cared to. It might also be superseded by other things at this point. (I couldn’t find it on mass.gov).
https://proenglish.org/official-english/state-profiles.html?id=108
…suffrage is no longer dependent on English, which I know from personal experience since Lowell ballots are in English, Spanish, and Khmer.
The restriction on holding office is pretty narrow and I’m not sure that qualifies as making English the official language. Truth is politics would probably prevent non-English speakers from getting elected anyway.
Not so true.
The wait list for classes for English for Speakers of other Languages can be as long as two years in cities with large immigrant populations, like Holyoke, per
MIRA Coalition.
…for confirming the understanding I expressed in another comment about wait lists.
because I necessarily agree with him (I have no knowledge of the situation in Lawrence), or because everyone seems to dump on him, but because he has a good point that should be reinforced: reorganization isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What’s definitely bad is the process. It blames teachers, but aside from pressuring them and forcing them to work more hours, it doesn’t give them the tools they need to make changes.
Instead superintendents and school committees do things like hire companies to run things–it’s been tried in Holyoke. CES runs Dean Tech and things haven’t gone well. They are bringing in another EMO to run things. The system had America’s Choice, another corporate entity a while ago. They are now owned by Pearson.
Why not empower–not turn over the reins, but empower–teachers in the system and people in the community? Because it doesn’t fit the managerial ideology imposed on education.
and exercising autocratic control, put people into leadership positions that he felt had the requisite skill and let them do the job at the school level.
a document that talks about Holyoke’s actions as a Level 4 school.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/2015-03/item7-History.pdf