Thread: Oregon schools in trouble with the Feds over ESL Students

[b]MY aside the important points are in bold towards the bottom- basically the public schools are now going to loose funding over the illegal invasion and the burden of the anchor babies who speak spanish at home
in oregon [/b]Portland Schools Misusing Federal Dollars


By Rob Manning

PORTLAND, OR 2005-12-22 The Portland school district has been spending federal money illegally, and has been lax in providing the right instruction for some students, according to a report released Thursday by the state Department of Education. The findings are based on visits to Portland over a week last October. Rob Manning reports on some of the 29 federal violations the state found, and what the district is doing to correct them.

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The most pervasive problem found on the report is how the Portland disrtict spends the millions of dollars it gets every year from the federal government.

Carla Wade was one of nine investigators from the state Department of Education who wrote the report.

She says there are schools in Portland under strict guidelines to target federal money toward low-income students.

Wade says the district was spending that so-called "Title One" money in violation of federal guidelines.

"We identified that some staff, who may not be providing services to Title One eligible students, are being paid for out of Title One funds. The requirements of the grant are that the persons who are paid for out of Title One funds should be providing services to Title One eligible students."

District officials maintain those problems are limited to a few schools, and are being addressed.

The spending problem also affects Portland's goal of putting all-day kindergarten in elementary schools district-wide.

State ed director, Helen McGuire, says the kindergarten expansion became a federal issue once the money, meant for low-income youngsters, was spent elsewhere.

"The problem came when the district decided to do that in all schools. So now it became a regular district-wide service to provide all-day kindergarten, but they were still paying for part of it out of the Title One funds, at that point it became a supplanting issue. They were providing the exact same services using Title One funds."

Portland's assistant superintendent, Maxine Kilcrease, used to work for the state department of ed.

She agrees there's a legal problem with Portland schools that fund programs like all-day kindergarten using both general fund and Title One money.

Basically, it's either a service for a particular student population and funded out of Title One, or it's not, and then the money comes from the general fund. Kilcrease says some principals didn't realize that.

"Some very well-intentioned schools wanted to extend their program, or expand it beyond their Title One allocation that was provided by the district. And so as a result, they did so from general funds which is how you get that sort of a finding."

So, if the report is basically telling the district to take away either Title One money, or general fund money, could the loss of a revenue source jeopardize all-day kindergarten?

Kilcrease says some schools haven't had a problem funding kindergarten in other ways, and she says the district should be able to help those with problems.

That's not the only finding with implications in the classroom.

The Portland school district ran afoul of several federal guidelines dealing with students who don't speak English at home. {illegal aliens}

State ed director, Helen McGuire, points to a blanket finding that students with limited English were not receiving specially designed instruction. "So it's some addtional specific kind of instructional strategies, to gain background vocabulary for instance. So it's not that they aren't providing to ESL students, it's that the types of services they're providing don't address these particular kinds of situations."

Diana Fernandez is Portland's new director of English as a Second Language programs. Fernandez says the Oregon Department of Education is pointing out a weakness in how well teachers are including language lessons in the curriculum.

"The campuses think that they're doing that, and they think that they're embedding it in the instruction, and what ODE said when they did some site visits, and we've noticed it, too, is that it isn't always evident, and it needs to be more targeted."

But the English Language Learner programs' problems are greater than that, and go back to how the district is spending federal money.

For every English Language Learner in a school district, the district gets 50 percent more money than it would for a student proficient in English.
[b]
But the report says investigators found that Portland is keeping students listed as English Language Learners, even after they've gotten a grasp of English[/b].

Portland's Diana Fernandez says teachers are trying to look out for students.

"Sometimes they keep them back because they think you know, they're not academically strong yet, maybe they're failing, or maybe they're not at benchmark, so sometimes they keep them back for that reason, and they think that's the right reason, but they really should be exiting them when they are language proficient."

District officials say they are already working toward fixing the problems, and ODE says Portland has made remarkable progress in some cases, just since the investigators' October visit.

The district has between 30 and 90 days to comply with the various mandates.

If it doesn't, there is the possibility of losing federal funds. But district and state officials say they're working together, and enlisting the help of an outside auditor to make sure that doesn't.




© Copyright 2005, OPB

bump

Here is the story- divide and conquer
the same thing the Feds are doing to oregon schools is happening in arizona-
now lets get this straight - we wouldnt have a problem with spanish speaking students if --- the Feds had done their job of enforcing our immigration laws in the first place-

Not only don't they enforce the border, they pass unfunded mandates requiring the states to provide services to the invaders at the expense of the state taxpayers.

Where I live, the local media has started running stories about the alarming rise in whooping cough and other communicable diseases that had been all but eradicated here in the past.

Of course, there's no mention of the most likely cause of the return of these diseases, just a lot of hand wringing and head shaking.

pubic broadcasting did a show a month ago on communicable diseases and their history.

the scary part was about Ecuador and tubercolosis there- there are millions of carriers of TB in third world countries and they are coming here illegally ( and this was from the rather dry public broadcasting)

yes, we are being put at risk - it is an outrage

bumped to show that ESL programs come at a cost - and to the local schools these programs are being provided with a gun held to the head of the local schools by the Feds.

How about this ? A Fed judge (with a conflict of interest) is going to fine Arizona 500,000 a day , because they aren't paying enough to educate ESL students.. So the House passed a bill, But Napolitano vetoed it, so we might get dinged $500000 a day.

Importantly, the lawyer who worked relentlessly with the biaSED JUdGE to try to cut off our $500 million in highway funds,is named Tim Hogan. So if any Arizonian's want to pay him a visit and scream in face, go ahead, a don't know his office address, but I could find out.

He should be protested, the public should know that his actions are costing EVERY Arizonian about 12.5 cents per day (if everybody payed taxes)


Remember his name, because he could be coming to your state, looking to bankrupt you, if he doesn't like how you are educating your invaders.

pa