'Limited-English' Students Get Break on School Tests

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/article ... shtml?s=us

'Limited-English' Students Get Break on School Tests
NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, Sept. 15, 2006

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WASHINGTON -- The Education Department gave states final permission Wednesday to leave out the test scores of newly enrolled, limited-English kids when grading schools.
The goal is to give schools extra time to work with limited-English students before being held accountable for their yearly progress. Schools welcome the offer because it helps them meet their goals - and avoid penalties - under the No Child Left Behind law.

The policy applies only to students who have been in a U.S. school for less than a year. States may exempt their math and reading scores when measuring yearly progress.

Though freshly repackaged, the flexibility is not new. States have been allowed to exempt test scores on a case-by-case basis since 2004, when former Education Secretary Rod Paige announced the draft policy. Forty of them now do it.

The final version, announced Wednesday by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, opens the offer to all states. It also adds language to ensure that students learning English aren't ignored.

"We recognize that there are legitimate issues when students move to this country not speaking English," Spellings said. "They do need to have some sort of adequate time to get up to speed."

Spellings spoke about the policy to reporters before announcing it at a conference of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in Washington.

Roughly 5.4 million public school students are learning English as a second language.

Under the plan, newly enrolled students must take their state test in math, but not in reading, in the first year. In both subjects, their scores may be exempted for that year, and states must disclose to the public how many children have been left out of the reading test.

The new rule also makes clear that schools should not try to turn it into a free pass. They must still help limited-English students master English language and content.

Spellings' announcement finalizes one other change that's proved popular with states. Schools can consider students as "limited-English students" - and include them in progress reports that way - up to two years after these children have proven they know the language.

Schools campaigned for that. Principals say they could never show yearly progress for their group of limited-English kids if they couldn't include the ones who had succeeded.

Paige first offered that policy in 2004, too, and 40 states have been using it since.

Meanwhile, the Education Department is experimenting with about 20 states on different ways to test limited-English children, hoping to come up with good ideas for the nation.

© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Roughly 5.4 million public school students are learning English as a second language.

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http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/pubs/npefs03/findings.asp#3

# In 2002–03, the 50 states and the District of Columbia spent an average of $8,044 in current expenditures for every pupil in membership (table 5). This represents a 4.0 percent increase in current expenditures per student from the previous school year ($7,734 in unadjusted dollars).

# The median of the state per pupil expenditures was $7,574, indicating that one-half of all states educated students at a cost of less than $7,574 per student (derived from table 5). Three states-New Jersey ($12,568), New York ($11,961), and Connecticut ($11,057)-expended more than $11,000 per pupil. The District of Columbia, which comprises a single urban district, spent $11,847 per pupil. Only one state, Utah, had expenditures of less than $5,000 for each pupil in membership ($4,838).

# On average, for every student in 2002–03, about $4,934 was spent for instructional services. Expenditures per pupil for instruction ranged from $3,103 in Utah to $ 8,213 in New York. Support services expenditures per pupil were highest in the District of Columbia ($5,331) and New Jersey ($4,757) and lowest in Mississippi ($1,966), Tennessee ($1,885), and Utah ($1,461). Expenditures per pupil for noninstructional services such as food services were $329 for the nation.

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This is just what the Federal Government gives. They only provide a certain percentage of Monies to schools. The feds gave out 43.3 Billion Dollars of our tax monies to pay for this.

Thanks for the link, jp. :evil:

Yet another reason to home school.