If you had a program that had long proved itself a failure, what would you do? If you are the New York City school system, the answer is obvious: Make it bigger.
That seems to be the approach favored by Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and her new chief for “English-language learners,” Milady Baez.
They plan to help schools with kids struggling because of poor English by “increasing bilingual program options for ELLs,” “strategically using ELL density enrollment data,” “collaborating with a broad range of partners,” “strengthening the specialized skill sets necessary to effectively address the academic and linguistic needs of the diverse ELL population,” etc.
These are the experts in charge of English?
According to a 2011 study, here’s what we have now in our schools:
- Of English learners who were in first grade in 2003, 36 percent failed the English proficiency test seven years in a row.
- Only 30 percent passed within three years. The average kid took more than five.
- Almost 70 percent of kids who failed for six or more years were born in America — meaning US citizens, not immigrants.
In his new book, “A Race for the Future: How Conservatives Can Break the Liberal Monopoly on Hispanic Americans,” Mike Gonzalez, a refugee from Cuba, reports how officials at IS 145 in Queens tried to stick him in a bilingual class.
Such programs, he says, are a disaster for Hispanic kids, keeping them from mastering English and the world of opportunity it would open up for them.
In New York, we even reward schools for this failure, because they get money for each foreign-language speaker they have. In any language, that should be a recipe for change — not more of the same.