Feds Say Arizona Violates Rights of English Learners

Feds Say Arizona Violates Rights of English Learners

Friday, September 10, 2010
By Staff, Associated Press

(AP) - Federal investigators say the state is violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act by shortchanging thousands of students whose first language is not English.

Unless changes are made, the violations could lead to a loss of federal funding for state education.

The Arizona Republic reports one complaint alleges the Arizona Department of Education has reclassified "many thousands" of children as proficient in English even though tests indicate they aren't.

The second complaint says federal departments found the state eliminated two questions from its home-language survey in 2009.

The result was that students who are eligible for English-language services "are not being served because they are not being identified."

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75171

The FED is on a witch hunt and it shows.

The FED has lost it's collective mind ....

Don't blame us because thousands of illegal immigrant anchor babies are here and can't speak english ... if their parents had come here legally , they might have a better grasp of the language ... because isn't it required for legal immigrants to be able to speak limited english ?

if someones to blame , the FED is to blame for looking the other way while our country is invated .... the FED should pay all costs assoicated with their faluire to protect our country ..

Our Federal Government hard at work creating jobs and cutting spending. :evil:

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are not being served because they are not being identified

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I'll give you one guess at who is the biggest culprit in the failure of identifying any of these people or illegals. You are right. They are on a witch hunt now. Exactly what this government is not suppose to do or even be a part of.

that the way it should be in every state English if not get the hell Out

If they yank federal funding in my opinion Arizona has the right to boot each and every illegal from the school system! Can't prove your citizenship? BYE BYE

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Originally Posted by nomas

If they yank federal funding in my opinion Arizona has the right to boot each and every illegal from the school system! Can't prove your citizenship? BYE BYE

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If they yank federal funding, Arizona will have no other choice but to eliminate spending on illegals. The feds may cause the very thing that they are trying to avoid.

Federal Investigators from which agency?

I know that law requires AZ to education the illegal kiddies through high school but does the law require ESL instruction or can they use immersion? If I were head of AZ schools I would immediately discontinue ESL classes and present studies showing that immersion is beneficial to little anchor babies.

At this point Arizona should just tell the feds to go pound sand

The govt is coming after that state from 10 different ways , They should just kick out all the feds , then go after all the illegals

Its going to get interesting real quick

The federal government is now the enemy of the American citizens and the states they live in.

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Originally Posted by CindyB

The federal government is now the enemy of the American citizens and the states they live in.

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Etch that in stone! This DOJ are pigs!

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Feds Say Arizona Violates Rights of English Learners

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The civil rights act of 1964 had nothing to do with illegal invaders who cannot speak English. This corrupt DOJ is reaching for straws here, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Arizona in order to protect illegal invaders. The DOJ is scared shitless that even one illegal invader might be displaced by Americans who are fed up with this invasion.

Feds say Ariz. violates rights of English learners
By JONATHAN J. COOPER (AP) – 4 hours ago

PHOENIX — Two federal investigations have found that Arizona is violating the civil rights of some students who are not native English speakers by denying them access to special programs for English learners.

In one case, the U.S. Education and Justice departments concluded that Arizona is inappropriately classifying students as fluent in English when tests show they are not.

In the other case, investigators found that the state is not identifying thousands of students who might struggle with English because it replaced a three-question survey with a single vague question.

Arizona could lose millions in federal funding if officials don't fix the system to address investigators' concerns.

"The ... test seems to have become bogged down by a political agenda," said Andrew Morrill, president of the Arizona Education Association, a teachers union.

Morrill said education department policies seem to have been designed to give fewer students access to English learner programs to save money.

Acting on a complaint from an unspecified source, investigators analyzed Arizona's procedures for classifying students as English learners. They determined that some students were being inappropriately classified as proficient in English before they had mastered all aspects of the language.

Arizona scores a student's English skills in four areas: speaking, listening, reading and writing. A higher score in one area can offset a lower score in another area, so a student might be classified as proficient in English if he reads, writes and listens well but struggles to speak.

As a result, investigators found, some students who should have access to an English learner program are never granted it. Others are removed from the program too early.

In such cases, the state is denying students an opportunity to fully participate in a classroom setting — a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, investigators found.

State schools chief Tom Horne said the test is developed by contractor.

"I'll let our testing people talk to their testing people, and if they agree that anything should get changed in the test then we'll change it," Horne said. "But there's certainly no effort to keep people out" of English learner programs.

In a separate case, investigators looked into Arizona's new system for identifying students who should be tested for their English proficiency. Education officials eliminated a three-question parent survey in favor of a single question.

The state used to ask about the first language a student acquired, the language used most often and the language spoken at home. Now it asks a single question: "What is the primary language of the student."

School districts reported that the question confused parents. Investigators determined that it led some students to be inappropriately denied access to English learner programs or subjected to an unnecessary delay.

Investigators found that the question was confusing. In the 2009-2010 school year, the first year the new system was used, 114,000 students were tested for their English proficiency — a decline of 46 percent from the year earlier.

The 99,000 students classified as English learners represented a 25 percent decline over the prior year.

Horne said he changed the survey because it was catching native English speakers who had relatives speaking another language at home.

http://oneoldvet.com/

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