SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California is increasing support for 90,000 “long-term English learners” in public schools.
The Los Angeles Times reports a new state law requires schools to identify “long-term English learners” and give them more attention.
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“I should be more confident in English because I was born here, but I’m embarrassed that I haven’t improved myself,” says Dasha, a junior at Fairfax High in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
According to the paper she’s been in America for 11 years and still doesn’t read or write at grade level.
She’s not alone. The state estimates like her, there’s about 350,000 other “students in grades six through 12 who have attended California schools for seven years or more and are still not fluent in English.”
In the L.A. district, about one-third of the roughly 600,000 students are learning English. Of those, more than 35,000 of them are still not at grade level after five years.
The district was forced to address those issues after the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights division decided those students had been “shortchanged.”
The district now offers classes to strengthen language skills and is providing more training for teachers. The district also requires teachers to try to develop relationships with parents so they can be more involved in the learning process.
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“All of the classrooms feature similar techniques jointly developed by teachers. This includes ‘collaborative conversation’ between pairs of students to develop oral skills, charts labeled with words to build vocabulary and frequent writing assignments,” according to the Times.
Activists have sought to undermine Proposition 227 – the “English in Public Schools” initiative – which was approved by over 61 percent of voters in 1998, according to Ballotpedia.
Democrat State Sen. Ricardo Lara has placed a measure to repeal the proposition on the November 2016 ballot, the paper reports.
They prefer a “dual-immersion” education instead of making students learn in the English language only.
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