Speaking of tests on fluency in English
It might seem disappointing or even mildly alarming that the rate at which students in Orange County schools are being redesignated as fluent in English has remained about the same before and after Proposition 227, which ended most of the bilingual education programs in California. On closer examination, however, the systems for determining which students are designated as lacking fluency in English and then redesignated as being fluent are subjective enough to raise doubts about the relevance of the figure. The criteria vary for redesignation as "fluent." Some districts insist on test scores in about the 35th percentile not only in English but in math and writing, as well as a certification from the teacher that the student is performing satisfactorily at grade level. Some of these criteria are objective and some are subjective. The tests used have changed over the years, so it is difficult to compare accurately. Using a percentile system also rates students against other students rather than against a fixed criterion, such as a given test score. Some students whose native language is English will score in these lower percentiles. Some will improve and some will not. Most districts "redesignate" students as fluent in English if they move to the middle percentiles or above, and many educators believe it takes six or seven years for somebody for whom English is a second language to become fully fluent, whether bilingual or immersion methods are employed. But some students, operably fluent or not, will never reach those percentiles -- their intelligence and aptitude will make the difference, not their language skills. Finally, schools generally have an incentive to keep as many students as possible in the limited fluency designation for the simple reason that most schools get extra state money for limited- fluency students and lose it when they are designated as fluent. "I talked to one mother whose son has just received college credit for outstanding tests in Advanced Placement English," Ron Unz told us. He chaired English for the Children, the group that sponsored the 1998 initiative that required most California students to be instructed in English, rather than having them instructed in various subjects in their native language and learning English over time. "But she checked the records and discovered her son had never been moved out of the limited-fluency designation and was still classified as having limited fluency. She was angry at first but then chose to be amused at such bureaucratic absurdity." Mr. Unz believes that scores on standardized tests rather than the subjective standards involved in the redesignation program, are a more valid test of whether the older form of bilingual education or virtual immersion in English worked better. And English reading scores on standardized tests such as the SAT-9 of children whose first language is Spanish have improved noticeably -- as much as 40 percent in some districts -- since Proposition 227 was passed in 1998. But there are enough complexities that it might not be true that modified immersion can be viewed as an unqualified success. We would welcome more closely focused studies comparing various forms of bilingual education with various forms of English immersion techniques. While redesignation figures offer some measure, their relevance is open to question. |