Should High-immigrant schools be able to threaten to defy No-Child left behind law?
RICHMOND, Va. — Officials in some high-immigrant school districts are threatening to defy a federal law that requires all children to take the same reading tests, even those struggling to learn English.
This month, the U.S. Department of Education threatened sanctions against Virginia — including the possibility of withholding funds — if the state doesn't enforce the provision, which is part of the No Child Left Behind law.
The Virginia Department of Education had sought an exemption for another year, contending that the rule is unfair.
Immigrants who have been in the U.S. a short time "are simply unable to take a test written in English and produce results that are meaningful in any way," said Donald J. Ford, superintendent of the Harrisonburg city school division.
The federal government denied the state's request, saying Virginia has had time to prod schools into compliance.
Answer:
Torn on this one. It is really a 'spend as much as it takes to teach English to those who can't while taking the money from educating the children born here' act. I think the law needs to go, altogether, or better, the law stays and education of children of illegal immigrants goes. The problem is that the money to 'address' the problem comes from our own children's education.
There is no 'fixing' the problem, because more keep coming, and there is always this huge 'freshly here' population of people never accounted for in building our schools and services.
It's not PC, but frankly, I think they should. In L.A.. The immigrant and the stupid are the primary reason why L.A.'s school system is failing. The school system teach at a level where the slowest can keep up. Unfortunately, the rest of the class don't learn. They tried to use AP and Honor classes, but unfortunately, it is not a very good system.
Sounds like there are a lot of problems with this NCLB act, with standardized tests (a notoriously bad judge of intelligence to begin with) standing alongside criticisims of inefficiency, corruption and negative effects on school curriculum. And is tied in with military recruitment? Yikes!
Apparently ESL students are allowed to take tests in their own language for the first 3 years, which sounds good, except only 10 states do that. Is Virginia one of those states? Also there are claims that the tests are culturally biased.
Given all this I'd say these schools should be commended for standing up against the law, although I'd think they should be demanding that Virginia offer non-English tests for the first 3 years, or rewrite the tests to use simpler wording in the sections that aren't specifically testing English language skills.
Why blame the illegals and the stupid one for not being able to take a simple test? I think the real culprit here is the teacher of such child who cannot learn efficiently. Now days the damn teacher don't take time to teach the proper way. My son is in 2 nd grade and his STUPID teacher wants him to bring in a calculator.
easy, put the test in Spanish.
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