Master Test Poses 'Unfair' Challenge
Like hundreds of others new to Connecticut, 9-year-old Edwaris Serrano of Hartford faces a state academic skills test this week written entirely in a language he does not understand. Under a controversial new state law, the fourth-grader, who arrived at Hartford's Sanchez School from Puerto Rico less than a year ago, must take the Connecticut Mastery Test. The test is given only in English. Under previous rules, students were exempt up to 30 months after entering bilingual programs, but the new law requires testing of all students who have been in bilingual education classes for as little as 10 months -- too short a time to learn the language, many bilingual educators say. "It's very simple. They are not ready," said Delia Bello-Davila, principal at Sanchez. Like most students at Sanchez, Edwaris speaks Spanish at home. More than half the school's students are enrolled in bilingual or English-as-a-second-language classes. Testing begins across the state today in grades 4, 6 and 8 on the annual exam of reading, writing and math. The new law puts the mastery test, the state's chief barometer for school performance, squarely in the middle of the contentious debate over how to teach English to non-English speakers. The matter has been hotly debated across the nation. In California and Arizona, voters approved measures banning bilingual education. Elsewhere, educators disagree over how long it takes for children to learn English. In Connecticut, the state legislature tightened the testing rules to comply with federal guidelines requiring states to test all special education children and virtually all English language learners, but the changes have angered some educators. "It is just so unfair," said Tomas Miranda, supervisor of bilingual and English language training programs for New Haven schools. "You're really going against all that we know in terms of second-language learning. ... We're testing them much too soon." The scores will count as part of a school's overall performance even though some students will do little more than write their name on the test, he said. State officials say scores will be listed in various ways, both with and without bilingual students, when test results are published in January. The 10-month test exemption for new English learners, ordered by the U.S. Department of Education, is even more stringent than a proposal in President Bush's education package before Congress. That proposal would allow a three-year exemption. The state legislature's inclusion of more students who speak little or no English on the mastery tests also grows out of concern over bilingual education programs that have produced disappointing academic results, said Abigail L. Hughes, associate state commissioner of education. "We had kids for five, six, seven years in bilingual programs who weren't proficient in English," Hughes said. Last year, just 5 percent of bilingual education fourth-graders met the mastery test goal in reading, compared with 57 percent of fourth-graders statewide. Their scores also were well below average in the state's poorest cities, where most bilingual students are enrolled. Last year, 22 percent of fourth-graders overall in those cities met the goal. Of approximately 2,400 fourth-, sixth- and eighth-graders in bilingual education classes across the state, only a small number would have been exempted from the mastery test under previous rules - - probably no more than a few hundred at each grade, Hughes said. Some advocates of bilingual programs say the test should be given in a student's native language, but Hughes said developing tests in Spanish and as many as 30 other languages would be too expensive. Still, giving a test in English to students who speak little or no English will produce little information about their ability to read, write or do math, some educators say. For a student like Edwaris Serrano, the Sanchez fourth-grader, "it's of no value," said Wanda Hernandez, a third-grade teacher who had the youngster in her class last year. Edwaris, a shy student who arrived with his mother and two brothers in Hartford a year ago, receives some special instruction to help him overcome a learning disability but is not ready for the test, his teachers say. "He's going to be frustrated," Her nandez said. "Most likely he'll start kicking, ... or wrinkling the test. He may cry." Hughes, however, said bilingual students, unlike others, can be tested in small groups and given unlimited time to complete the test. |