When Nayely Rojas flips open her test booklet Tuesday, the soft-spoken 11-year-old hopes she’ll recognize all the words and understand the instructions.

She speaks clear English. But sometimes, this new language collides with her native Spanish. American phrases like “piece of cake” make it no easier to decipher nuances of the English language.

The fifth-grade student at Oklahoma City’s Columbus Enterprise Elementary moved to Oklahoma from Mexico three years ago. In previous years, she could have waited until her fourth year in Oklahoma schools before spending hours with a sharpened pencil coloring in bubbles on state-mandated tests.

Hundreds of schools will administer state-mandated tests to students in grades three, five and eight. And for the first time, Nayely and thousands of others must take them even if they don’t understand English.

Under a new state Education Department rule, only students who have been in Oklahoma schools less than a full year and whose native language isn’t English qualify for test exemptions.

Many teachers, parents and students are apprehensive about the change. Principals are divided on whether it’s asking too much too soon of students still adjusting to a new country, customs and language.

“For the most part, these students do extremely well just functioning in a regular classroom. They just need that extra time to prepare,” said Ron Bradshaw, principal of Tulsa’s Skelly Elementary.

“They’re just becoming familiar with this country and its customs. It can be pretty stressful for those boys and girls.”

The language barrier

Oklahoma schools – and others across the nation – have little choice but to enforce the change. If they don’t, they risk losing Title 1 funding, federal money doled out to high-poverty schools.

But that’s not why Judy Jones, Nayely’s principal at Columbus, thinks the testing is a good idea.

She said testing children classified as limited English proficient will help teachers know how their students are performing and what they need.

At least for now, test scores of the limited-English-speaking students will not be calculated as part of the school’s overall test scores. The scores are used to decide whether a school is classified as low-performing or high challenge.

“It is a hard question with not easy answers, but I feel strongly that all children should be assessed. And it won’t negatively impact the scores of the school site, which means there should be no harm in testing them,” Jones said.

In Oklahoma, students can be identified as limited English proficient in two ways. One is if their parents, on a state-approved survey, indicate a language other than English is predominantly spoken at the home. The other is a score below the 35th percentile on a standardized reading test, provided the student comes from a home where another language is spoken, but English is used more often.

Jones has struggled with this particular testing issue longer than most Oklahoma principals.

The Oklahoma City School District has the largest number of Hispanic students in the state. Most don’t speak English as their native language. Oklahoma City has more than 8,000 students classified as speaking limited English. This number has more than doubled in the last six years.

Last year, the district tested nearly 7,000 students in grades five, eight and 11 and exempted about 500 under the language provision.

The problem is more focused at Columbus where Jones has been principal for 13 years. The south Oklahoma City school has the highest percentage of Hispanic students in the state – about 70 percent. More than two-thirds of Columbus’ 750 students have limited English-speaking skills.

Teachers there – and at other schools grappling with an influx of Spanish-speaking students – are faced with the daily task of using English-language textbooks to educate children who may be unable to read the lessons.

Most teachers, unable to speak Spanish, must muddle through communicating with their students. Teachers feel both helpless and frustrated.

“My concern is for those students who haven’t even been here two years. We give them 6 1/2 hours a day in school, and they go home in the evening to homes where all they speak is Spanish,” Skelly’s Bradshaw said.

“My teachers have tried to prepare the students as much as possible, but the language development is just slow.”

Ofelia Flores, Nayley’s teacher, understands the concern.

For now, she’s grateful the state will separate the scores so the students, teachers and schools are not punished for poor performance.

But by next year, that could change.

Oklahoma’s testing program has undergone massive changes in the last few years. Last year, third-grade students weren’t tested and high school juniors took only a geography test. The state this year also made tests more difficult for fifth- and eighth-grade students.

Flores has no reason to think it couldn’t change again, to the detriment of both students and teachers.

“I personally want to see how my students will do, and I worry about educators saying the kids can’t do it,” she said. “Testing is around to stay, and we might as well get them used to it.”

Flores, the school’s only teacher certified in bilingual education, is pushing her students. Last week, her words easily flowed from English and Spanish while rushing through a lesson on the American Revolution. She warned students that questions about the war likely would be on the test.

“Sometimes my parents complain that I’m pushing too hard. But these tests are important, and they matter. I just tell them that they came here to give their children better opportunities, and they can’t have that without education.”

Miguel Rodriguez, 11, will try his hand at the tests this week, too, although he doesn’t have to.

Because this is his first full year in Oklahoma schools, he could be exempted.

Miguel said he’s nervous. Although he likes to write stories in his journal, reading is sometimes more difficult.

“Sometimes, I just don’t know what the words mean,” he said.

Learning English is important, he said, so he can teach it to his little brother.

Bradshaw says he’s not sure how well the parents of his Spanish-speaking students understand the rule change. And at Columbus, several parents have asked if they can just sign a form, as they have in the past, exempting their children.

Alisa Brown, another fifth-grade teacher at Columbus, said most students know the scores won’t count against the school and worries they won’t take it seriously.

Help needed

In Flores’ grade book, Oklahoma gets low scores for not adopting a strong curriculum for bilingual education and English as a second language programs, she said.

Most bilingual education programs teach core academic subjects in the native language while also teaching English-speaking skills. English as a second language programs give students intensive instruction in English.

In Oklahoma, most non-English-speaking students are placed in a regular classroom where teachers often speak only English, a method commonly called immersion. Some schools have bilingual assistants who can help students individually. Many don’t.

Nationwide, nearly 30 percent of students with limited English receive no extra help, according to the federal office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs. They are not taught how to speak English, nor are they given additional assistance in core academic subjects such as math and science.

Eighty percent of schools looking for certified bilingual teachers fail. Fewer than 20 percent of the teachers working with such students are certified in that area, according to the agency.

For some schools, Flores said the tests will show just how far schools have – or haven’t – come in teaching English to non-English speakers.

“The state needs to do more. We need an English as a second language curriculum that can meet the needs of the students. We need to be teaching teachers the techniques to help these students. That’s why their parents brought them here.”



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