News-English-Learners-10222015
Before her daughter was even born, Dr. Patricia Tellez-Giron was investigating options for bilingual education programs in the Madison school district.
Tellez-Giron, a UW-Madison School of Medicine associate professor and physician at Wingra Clinic, moved to Wisconsin from Mexico 23 years ago. Now she wants her young daughter to connect with her heritage and learn Spanish.
“Language is such a part of you and your culture,” says Tellez-Giron, who saw her nieces go through Madison schools and lose the Spanish language skills they learned at home in favor of the English they learned at school. “I didn’t want my daughter to go through that.”
She was pleased to find that Cesar Chavez Elementary School on Madison’s west side offers dual-language immersion (DLI) — a highly lauded program that places native and non-native English speakers together for bilingual instruction with the goal of achieving proficiency in both languages.
DLI programs across the nation have grown in popularity. In Madison, there’s a long list of students hoping to enroll. Six of the district’s elementary schools offer DLI, but that number could soon rise as part of a proposal that would change Madison’s approach to serving English-language learners (ELLs).
Spanish-speaking families have praised the idea, saying it would provide essential support to an underserved demographic. But critics fear that expanding DLI could result in “segregated classrooms,” shifting resources away from African American, Hmong and disabled students.
“It’s so important for students to become bilingual, but I’m concerned about segregation,” Kati Walsh, an elementary arts teacher, told the school board at an Oct. 5 meeting. She teaches both DLI and non-DLI students and says there’s a “stark difference” between the two groups.
Students in DLI classrooms typically come from Spanish-speaking families and “white families of privilege,” Walsh says, whereas non-DLI classrooms skew low-income, African American and behaviorally challenged.
Walsh says the two classroom types receive “very different instruction” — better behavior in DLI classrooms means teachers have time to give students individual help, but poor behavior in non-DLI classrooms means teachers have less time to spend with students.
“I think the DLI program is very important,” she says. “But before we can [expand it] we have to look at these segregation issues.”
Walsh was among dozens of educators and parents who gave opinions on the district’s plan at a school board meeting earlier this month. Many shared her concern about segregation; others questioned how the proposal would affect the instruction of non-Spanish speaking ELLs and whether it would result in any staffing changes.
“We have a lot of unanswered questions,” says Jason DuRocher, a bilingual resource specialist at Thoreau Elementary.
DuRocher says ELL students at Thoreau speak 18 different languages and have outperformed district scores in both English and Spanish. He urges caution in moving forward. “Before anything changes too fast, we want to make sure it’s planned well.”
Thoreau was one of four Madison elementary schools, along with Falk, Schenk and Allis, initially proposed to start DLI programs next fall. But in response to concerns, Madison school officials on Oct. 19 voted to take Thoreau off the list and delay DLI expansion at Falk. The program is still set to move forward at Schenk and Allis, for now.
David Levy, whose daughter attends Cherokee Heights Middle School, worries that expanding the program would only serve the white and Latino students who make up the majority of Madison’s program. “[DLI supporters] seem to be dictating how the district is spending its funds,” he says. “[The district] couldn’t care less about anybody who is not in the DLI model.”
Madison School Board President James Howard says “the school board’s job is to consider all that attend [Madison] schools.” He agrees that segregation is an issue that “must be resolved” before moving ahead with the plan. The board is scheduled to vote on the matter Oct. 26.
Though some have suggested that the proposal has created a rift between African American and Latino families, Howard, who is black, says he has not heard from any African American families who oppose bilingual education. But he has heard concerns from that community about achievement gaps and points out that African American students and students with disabilities are still the lowest-performing demographics.
“It’s not that African American families are being divisive,” he says. “They’re just asking, ‘What about our kids?’”
Howard says it’s unclear why many African American families don’t enroll their children in dual-language immersion programs. On average, Madison’s DLI classrooms are 6% African American compared to 26% in non-DLI classrooms. White students make up 31% of DLI classrooms and 34% in non-DLI. For students with disabilities, the representation is 9% in DLI versus 16% in non-DLI.
Lisa Kvistad, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, says officials knew that there would be concerns about the possibility of segregated classrooms when developing the plan. But she says there are provisions in place to address the issue.
The proposal includes community engagement strategies to educate diverse families on the benefits of bilingual education and annual reviews to monitor demographic data. Kvistad also emphasizes that the DLI program is voluntary.
“We want to be sure that students receive access to bilingual programs — both native Spanish speakers and non-native Spanish speakers,” she says. “It’s a right under law to have access, but they can choose to enroll or not.”
But Levy, who is African American, says it’s not as simple as making a choice. He fears that low-income families who are transient may not be able to get the same access to DLI classrooms if they move to a school that doesn’t offer the program. And for African American families who might want to enroll their students in a DLI school, there’s an “intimidation factor,” Levy says.
“[The district needs] to fix the problems they have already,” he says. “They’re not doing our children, our community right.”
Despite the concerns, stakeholders seem to agree that improving the district’s approach to educating ELL students is a priority. The number of non-native English speakers in the district has nearly doubled in the last decade; as of last school year, there were 7,000 — nearly a third of the student body. But as the population grows, gaps in academic achievement persist, and district officials say these students are not receiving enough support.
Research shows it should take five to seven years for non-native speakers to gain English proficiency, but in Madison it takes more than 10 years. District data show that graduation rates for the demographic have improved from 47% to 61% in the last two school years, but that’s still below the 85% target rate set by the state Department of Public Instruction. Native English speakers graduate at a rate of 81%.
Silvia Romero Johnson, who heads the district’s Office of Multilingual and Global Education, says the need for improvement is “critical.”
“We need to focus on instructional improvement,” she says. “That will strengthen the services for students and provide a vision for the district and the community about how we serve this subgroup of students.”
It’s also a legal requirement. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 require public schools to ensure that non-native English speakers “can participate meaningfully and equally in educational programs.” Supporters of Madison’s proposal say it would bring the district into compliance.
“Depending on which schools your children attend, they do not have access,” says Salvador Carranza, president of the Latino Education Council of Dane County. Of the eligible Spanish-speaking students in the Madison West High School attendance area, 69% have access to bilingual instruction. But in the Memorial High School attendance area, only 16% have access.
To Carranza, providing bilingual instruction isn’t just about legal compliance — it’s about providing the best education. “The best model by far is dual-language immersion,” he says, adding that transitional programs, such as English as a Second Language, have been proven to be ineffective and to “marginalize” students.
Speaking at the Oct. 5 school board meeting, Carranza acknowledged that there are fewer African American students in DLI classrooms but said “that in itself is not segregation.”
“I don’t know why, but that is their prerogative,” he said. “That is their choice. That should not prevent students who want these opportunities to have them.”
Tellez-Giron says Madison’s DLI program has been a boon for her daughter, and she wants to see the program expanded so other children — of all cultures — can have the same opportunities.
“It was just amazing to me to see what school was doing to her,” she says of her daughter, who is now 7. “She started talking more about her culture and being so proud to be able to speak two languages.”
This isn’t the first time Tellez-Giron has advocated for the program. When she initially tried to enroll her daughter at Chavez, she was told the district was on the brink of closing it, so she set to work contacting Latino families and educating them about the benefits of enrolling their children in DLI classes. She even went door-to-door to reach families without telephones.
“Everybody in the Latino community that I have talked to has said, ‘yeah, we are pro this plan,’” Tellez-Giron says. “This plan is about providing for a community that is rapidly growing and has been in the shadows.... Finally, this is something for us.”
