These two stories in todays' paper, and posted on the NCT wenpage appear not to be allowing any Blog Comments. At least they will not post any of mine and I go by about a dozen different screen names.

These two stories just "SCREAM ILLEGAL ALIENS" , but they seem to have that "FOR THE CHILDREN MENTALITY"

R/ Skip



Mission to focus on English learners

By: KEITH RUSHING - Staff Writer

Editor's Note: This story is part of weekly series that looks at the distinctive qualities of each school in the Oceanside Unified School District.

OCEANSIDE ---- Mission Elementary School is contending with challenges that many area elementary school's don't face.

For one, about 60 percent of its students are classified as English learners, which means they aren't testing at the proficient level in English. Mission's share of English learners is more than double the average percentage of English learners throughout Oceanside Unified School District's 24 schools.


About one quarter of the school's students are new to Mission each year. And that's a challenge, the school's Principal Todd McAteer said earlier this week, because it often takes teachers substantial time to figure out each child's educational needs.

More than 80 percent of Mission's students come from low-income families and qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, and school officials say those students are less likely to perform at the academic levels of middle-income and upper-income students whose families have more resources.

This school year, Mission joined four other Oceanside schools in facing federal sanctions for failing to bring enough of its students up to grade level on standardized tests. For Mission, like most of the other schools, too few English learners tested at the proficient level on standardized English tests to satisfy federal requirements.

McAteer said the school came close to meeting federal expectations.

"We missed our target by five students. If five more English learners tested proficient or advanced, we would've made our AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)," McAteer said, referring to the federal requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Schools throughout the nation are required under that federal law to have a set percentage of their children performing at grade level each year or they face federal sanctions and are forced to change the way they educate students.

Schools such as Mission, which just began facing sanctions at the beginning of the 2006-07 school year, have to revise its educational plan to show how it will prioritize specific funding to assist English learners.

Part of Mission's educational plans includes offering 45 students who aren't testing at the proficient level tutoring three times each week. The students work to improve their literacy and testing skills for 90 minutes at each session.

The students involved in that program get familiar with standardized tests and gain strategies aimed at improving their test performance. McAteer said the program began in the 2005-06 school year. This year, however, the school's staff decided to match students up with one teacher for the entire school year to give them the continuity of forming a relationship with one teacher instead of facing various teachers who rotate through the tutoring program.

McAteer said the program seems to be making a difference.

"We are finding that these kids are doing well," he said. "With a little help filling in some holes, they progress quickly."

In addition to the one-on-one attention, Cal State San Marcos students are working through a grant from that college to tutor 30 third-graders three times each week.

McAteer said that working with students who have disadvantages, while challenging, also has benefits. He said the school qualifies for more federal funding than some of the district's other schools because of its high percentage of low-income students and newcomers brings in more funds.

The school is able to hire five support teachers who visit all the classrooms during time set aside for reading instruction. The support teachers enable classroom teachers to work with about half the class on reading while the classroom teacher works with the other half.

The school also has the district's largest collection of guided reading books, McAteer said, allowing teachers to choose from a wide variety of reading materials that are tailored to many different reading levels.

Fourth-grade teacher Fran Tovar, who has been teaching at Mission for 14 years, thinks the environment at Mission is a positive one.

"It's really a very warm and caring place," she said. "I think there's a genuine concern on the part of staff and on the part of kids for each person."

Tovar said the schools feels like "home."

Contact Staff Writer Keith Rushing at (760) 901-4151 or krushing@nctimes.com.

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VUSD updates plan for English learners

By: STACY BRANDT - Staff Writer

VISTA ---- The Vista Unified school board has updated its action plan for educating students learning English, as part of a state requirement for school districts under sanctions for low test scores.

The revised plan details the changes the district has implemented over the last three years to help those learning English, including reading intervention programs and more frequent assessments of how students are performing so that the results can be used to shape curriculum.

School districts, as well as individual campuses, are placed on the state's "program improvement" list if they fail to meet a set of federal requirements based on the scores from standardized tests that students statewide take every spring. In the last round of testing, Vista Unified met all but one of 42 benchmarks ---- English proficiency in students still learning to speak the language.


Penalties grow with each year a district fails to meet the standards and remains on the list. This is the first year for Vista Unified.

Three other districts in North County are on the state sanctions list. Oceanside Unified is in its first year of sanctions, while Fallbrook Union High School and Escondido Union Elementary districts are in their second. For a district or school to be removed from the sanctions list, it must meet all benchmarks for two years in a row.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires all districts to submit a five-year plan describing what it is doing to meet state testing goals.

Vista Unified wrote its five-year plan in 2003. That latest revise ---- or addendum ---- was prepared by district administrators in December as required by the state and approved by the school board on Jan. 18.

The district's testing coordinator, Katie Shanahan, said Thursday that much has changed since the district first wrote its action plan.

"We were just starting conversations about benchmark assessments" when the original plan was written, she said of the district's new focus on using frequent assessments to fine-tune programs and curriculum.

In the last few years, the district has implemented two reading intervention programs at several schools and bought books specifically geared toward students learning to speak English.

In addition, many teachers working with English learners have gone through hours of classes, including a five-day course for middle school teachers.

"We've defined the problem, which is the first thing you have to do," board President Jim Gibson said of the low test scores from students learning English, "and we're taking action."

The updated plan was written by district administrators after talking with teachers and parents at the district's four lowest-scoring schools, Shanahan said.

Administrators and board members in Vista have said they expect the changes in strategy to lead to improved test scores for students learning English. But they cautioned that those big strides take time to achieve.

"I expect to see results in the next two years," Gibson said. "We have a big ship here and a lot of people need to get on board. It doesn't turn on a dime."

In Vista Unified, the biggest change for students learning English has been the district's shift away from bilingual education.

In 2005, the board decided to eliminate the bilingual program in favor of a "structured immersion" approach, in which students are taught primarily in English from the first day of class.

Though the change has met with some opposition from Spanish-speaking parents who want their children to learn in both languages, Trustee Carol Herrera said she thinks the bilingual program was leading to higher dropout rates. She said some students, who did not learn fluent English early in their education, continued to struggle through higher grades.

"We need to be teaching these young people from day one, in our kindergarten classes, to speak English," she said. "By the time they're in third grade, they should be pretty fluent."

Contact staff writer Stacy Brandt at (760) 631-6622 or sbrandt@nctimes.com.

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