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English language tests daunt schools United Press International SACRAMENTO, Calif.---Teaching K-12 students with limited English-speaking abilities has been an emotional long-running topic in California, and the increasing push toward greater accountability from teachers and school districts could mean further trouble ahead for both students and administrators, a panel of educators told state lawmakers Wednesday. The Assembly Education Committee was warned that districts with large numbers of non-English speaking students could see a chronic slump in scores on increasingly important standardized tests that are geared toward English speakers, but at the same time will likely be used more in the political arena as a measure of their competency. "A test in English is a test of English," said Mary Ellen Gallegos, Director of Multi-Lingual Programs for the San Francisco Unified School District. "Regardless of the stated purpose of the assessment, for English learners, any test in English is a measure of English proficiency." The panelists that testified in Sacramento Wednesday were unanimous in their concern that when scoring the various tests, such as the venerable Scholastic Aptitude Test, the limited English skills of many students must somehow be factored in so that districts don't find themselves facing the appearance of abject failure. The importance of standardized testing has taken on a new urgency in recent years as political leaders at the state and national level look for ways to more accurately measure the progress of students in public schools. Meanwhile, the debate over whether parents in districts that appear to be failing should be given tax vouchers for private schools for their children's education continues. The Bush administration's recent "No Child Left Behind" education plan was a recent rallying cry for districts to buckle down and improve the education of both native English speakers and the children of immigrants through serious concentration on math and reading skills. But the devil is in the details as state and local districts determine how to improve these skills and how to accurately measure the progress of students. The situation has revived the debate over bilingual education in California where voters four years ago approved Proposition 227, which eliminates the bilingual program in which students who speak languages other than English are taught in separate classes in their native tongues. Prop 227 has not gone into full effect because education officials and lawmakers must first develop a formal set of regulations that will be used to implement the measure. Although the voters passed Prop 227, the drafting of the regulations has run into obstacles in Sacramento as lawmakers representing heavily-Latino districts fight to keep the bilingual option open for parents. Proponents of Prop 227 have complained that Gov. Gray Davis' administration has been dragging its feet on the measure, which Davis' office vociferously denies. Wednesday's hearing was not called to debate the pros and cons of Prop 227, however there was a consensus that more time was needed to establish a testing protocol that takes limited-English students into account, in terms of both district-wide test scores and as an accurate measure of what the individual student has learned about other subjects but may not be able to adequately demonstrate on a test geared toward English speakers. "Testing is a slow-moving beast," Paul Warren, a deputy superintendent with the state Board of Education said in regards to the logistics involved in refining the state's 1-year-old California English Language Development Test. "It takes about 18 months to make a change and get it to the classroom." Rita Calderon, of the Los Angeles Unified School District, told the committee that the new test, which measures English skills in reading, writing and understanding spoken English was comprehensive, but at the same time difficult to administer individually to more than 300,000 limited-English students. "It was very expensive and time-consuming, but very worthwhile," she said. "The comments we got from the teachers who actually administered the test were very positive." "I know it's time-consuming for a teacher to sit down with a student for 10-15 minutes and really listen to the level of their language," Calderon suggested. "Teachers don't often get a chance to do that on a one-on-one basis." |