The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on June 15 that Arizona’s way of teaching English language learners neither violates a federal law that prohibits the illegal segregation of those students nor denies them any right to an equal education, the Associated Press reports.
Arizona, which shares its southern border with Mexico, educates several children whose parents brought them here from their native Spanish-speaking country. It’s common for these students to hear English for the first time when they first set foot in a US classroom, as English isn’t spoken in their homes. The state requires that these first-generation English speakers be provided with four hours of English instruction on a daily basis until they become more proficient in English.
The state contends its schools are doing the best they can to provide an adequate education for English language learners, given the situation. But plaintiffs in this 20-year-old case claim separating Spanish-speaking children in this way violates the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, which prevents discrimination and segregation. A lead plaintiff, Miriam Flores, joined the case on behalf of her daughter in 1996. She believed programs offered for English learners in her mainly Hispanic town of Nogales were underfunded and inadequate.
“English language learners who are stuck in English class for four hours a day aren’t entitled to get the academic content that the other students receive,” the AP quoted Tim Hogan, an attorney who represented the plaintiffs for 20 years, as saying.
The court, however, found that Arizona is not violating the EEOA on a regular basis and that the plaintiffs lacked evidence to bring a claim against the entire state. “This district-by-district implementation of a general, state-mandated educational framework is consistent with the requirements of the (EEOA),” the justices wrote.
“It is not impermissible segregation to group students by language ability as long as there is a legitimate educational reason for doing so,” Justice Michelle Friedland added in a concurring opinion in the case.
But although programs that separate English language learners from their native English-speaking peers may offend some parents, who naturally want their children to spend as much time as they can with their English-speaking peers, teaching a math or English language arts curriculum to Spanish speakers presents a challenge, even if teachers speak Spanish.
In one New York school district, bilingual teachers admit that getting students up to speed on Common Core math and English language arts content is a lot more work if students come in with limited proficiency in English.
“We spend a lot of time and energy trying to make these ELA [lessons] available in Spanish for our kids,” the Hechinger Report quoted Kristin Pascuzzi as saying. She’s a fourth-grade bilingual teacher at John F Kennedy Magnet School in Port Chester. “For us, it’s double the work. Every teacher prepares their lesson, and they might differentiate on abilities of their classroom. We have that, too. But, then we also have language needs.”
