Nix English Exams for Latinos Jeff Simmons
The Board of Education, acting on mounting complaints about discrimination, is expected to end routine language testing of new students with Hispanic surnames. The tests were intended to determine if the students needed bi-lingual classes. City educators plan to end a requirement enacted 22 years ago to prevent Hispanic students with poor English skills from missing out on bi-lingual instruction. The requirement is outdated, critics say, because many new students with Hispanic surnames already speak English well. "Parents felt like their kids were being punished," said Lilly Lopez, a Brooklyn parent whose son wasn't tested only because his father's last name is Albert. "Parents were alarmed, they were upset, they were mad." The board is expected to approve the change at a meeting on Wednesday. Chancellor Rudy Crew, in a memo to board members, wrote that the change "responds to objection by some Hispanic parents whose children are required to take the Language Assessment Battery even if no Spanish is spoken in the home or by the child." Board member Luis Reyes, the Aspira education advocacy group and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Legal Education Fund have lobbied for the revision. "What we're trying to do is tighten up testing procedures such as that kids who happen to be Spanish-surnamed, who are English-proficient aren't automatically tested," Reyes said. It comes as Crew evaluates the city's bi-lingual education program, which serves 163,000 students, and follows a 1995 Board of Education study that showed many students languished in bi-lingual programs. A home language survey, used to help determine whether students need bi-lingual services, also is being refined. Survey questions asked parents whether their family spoke a language other than English at home. An affirmative answer triggered language testing of students in the family even though the survey did not ask whether the children spoke English as their primary language. The city school system has conducted language testing since acknowledging in a 1974 consent decree that students with limited English ability did not receive appropriate instruction. As part of the decree, students with Hispanic surnames were required to take the Language Assessment Battery test. |