Thread: Texas revisions on standards for English draw criticism

Texas revisions on standards for English draw criticism
By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau
Article Launched: 03/20/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT


AUSTIN -- Texas education officials are poised to adopt new English and reading standards despite critics' emotional objections that the needs of millions of Hispanic students have been overlooked.

"This is not a race issue," Elena Izquierdo, associate professor of linguistics and bilingual education at the University of Texas at El Paso, said Wednesday. "This is a language issue."

The State Board of Education is in the final stages of a three-year process to revise and update Texas English and reading curriculum requirements. At a meeting Wednesday of the subcommittee in charge of developing the new standards, board chairman Don McLeroy said Hispanic students' needs have not been ignored and that he would welcome input.

But, he said, it is too late to make major changes to the curriculum plan already under way. "Our document is going to be pretty much finalized," he said.

Critics of the pro cess asked the subcommittee to allow an expert in Hispanic culture and language to assess the proposed new standards before a preliminary vote next week by the full education board.

The four-member subcommittee that worked on the curriculum did not include anyone of Hispanic descent, or anyone from South or West Texas, and critics said the committee did not seek advice from anyone with expertise in Hispanic language or culture.

Statewide, 47 percent of the more than 4.6 million public school students are Hispanic. Eighty-nine percent of El Paso County's 173,000 students


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are Hispanic.
According to the Texas Education Agency, about 16 percent of students statewide and about 28 percent of students in El Paso County in 2006 had limited English proficiency.

Izquierdo said the process should be slowed and revisited to consider the needs of English learners. If thousands of minority students are left behind, she said, it would hurt all students.

"It is important that we don't speed through this. You see, reading is everything to the success of any kid," she said.

The Mexican American Legislative Caucus, a group of mostly Hispanic state lawmakers, asked the board last week to ensure that the standards were vetted by experts who understand the language barriers many students face.

"This is about effectively educating the future work force of this state," state Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Corpus Christi, general counsel for the caucus, told the subcommittee.

El Paso board member Rene Nuñez said he hoped state legislators would put enough pressure on the board to delay a vote.

The board is set to take a preliminary vote on the new standards next Thursday after a public hearing Wednesday. A final vote is scheduled in May.

Nuñez said he has received dozens of calls every day for weeks from local educators concerned about the new curriculum.

Norma De La Rosa, literacy coach at Ross Middle School, said an early version of the new curriculum seemed to exclude many multicultural books.

Students, she said, are more engaged and learn better when they can relate to the material they are reading.

"Teachers now will not only be told what to teach, but they will now be told how to teach it, and what to teach it with, and there is no flexibility," De La Rosa said.

Board chairman McLeroy said comments early in the process from many teachers with experience in teaching English to Spanish-speaking students were considered in the development of the curriculum.

"This has not been a totally exclusive thing at all," he said.

But he said the board must approve the new curriculum so that new textbooks can be printed and ready for students by the 2009-10 school year.

Given the time crunch, McLeroy said, he welcomes the input of Hispanic experts and others but no major changes in the curriculum are likely.

"We've been at this for three years now," he said.

Angered to tears, Corpus Christi board member Mary Helen Berlanga said after the meeting she feared that the new curriculum would cause thousands of students with limited English ability to fail.

"We can save a whole population of children, thousands of children that we can save," Berlanga said. "I mean, it makes no sense except that there is malice an individual that is not interested in seeing minorities progress."


Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.

El Paso Times reporter Zahira Torres contributed to this report.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_8631940

"This is not a race issue," Elena Izquierdo, associate professor of linguistics and bilingual education at the University of Texas at El Paso, said Wednesday. "This is a language issue."

This is America and we speak English here. For over 200 years other immigrants have adapted......

It is quite insulting and patronizing to immigrate to a country and expect it to adapt to the very things one left behind. This is the behavior of a conqueror, not an immigrant."
Thomas Lifson

"By definition, an immigrant asks for the privilege of being allowed to live in a country not his or her own. Immigrants have no right to demand change. No more than I have a right to barge into your house and demand you rearrange the furniture, knock out the wall between the kitchen and family room, and paint the parlor walls a different color." Thomas Lifson

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all.
We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt