LULAC suing Texas over ELLs in High School (public school, principal, classroom)

[HappyTexan]

As you know, bilingual education is only supported in K-5.
Middle School and High School is in English.

But more and more non English speaking students are entering Middle School and High School. There is limited support for ESL/ELL and no official bilingual support.

I saw this coming and figured it was just a matter of time.

In one district I sub in we got 2 new MS students that don't speak English. Now this is a small rural school so I can imagine that the urban cities are experiencing this with greater numbers. Other Hispanic students served as translators during class. I subbed in one such class and it frustrated me because I don't speak Spanish and knew the group of 3 in the back were NOT talking about Math (from the giggles, facial expressions and hand waving).

I imagine the cities are doing more regarding this as they have more money so what I experienced may not be the norm.

Our state tests have a Linguistic Accommodation version for those students that don't have command of the English Language but it's still in English. But, other than STAAR, there is limited ESL/ELL support in MS and HS because in the past the students learned English in K-5 bilingual classes. That's where the bulk of the funding goes.

With the way the country is changing I think we're going to start to see bilingual education in the MS and HS to accommodate this growing group of older students.

How else can they get educated ?

Here's the article:

Advocacy Group LULAC Sues Texas Over Inadequate Instruction For English Learners | Fox News Latino
Advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit against Texas on Tuesday, alleging that Hispanic English language learners are having their civil rights violated by not receiving adequate instruction in high schools statewide.

The suit alleges that English language learner programs are underfunded and poorly monitored, and that instructors are often not properly trained. Hinojosa said some programs feature "pullout" initiatives where students are removed from regular classes for a few hours for extra English instruction — only to be thrown back into full-emersion courses afterward.

The suit says high school English language learners "across Texas continue to perform abysmally due to the grossly deficient language programs." It seeks a trial in federal court, though it's not yet clear when and where it would take place, Hinojosa said.

[Mnseca]

Well, the suit is spot on, in my opinion. I was an ESL teacher in public school (but not TX) and the instruction was completely inadequate. I just don't understand why they have not included elementary school in it. When ESL teachers got too expensive to keep up with the number of students, many states just started having regular teachers take two or three classes and then called them ESL certified. Our district just cut down the number of ESL teachers until we had one for a hundred kids and it was just a pointless job. It would be great if this lawsuit led to something similar to special ed, where schools are forced to hire a certain number of esl teachers per student. I just hope it doesn't end up blaming teachers - in my district, I was horrified to get there and discover that we were not allowed to use any non-approved books, and that no grammar books were approved. We could not use multi-media (audio recordings, videos) to teach English because they were not approved. We had nothing. They put us in a trailer behind the school, on the far side of the playground, and sent us small groups of students for about 30 minutes at a time. We had no idea what was going on in the classroom, the classroom teachers would not talk to us or meet with us, and most of the time it took so long for the students to walk over to us and back that we really only ended up with 20 minutes. Then the principal decided he'd rather have more aids for the lunch room than an esl teachers, so we went down to one teacher for 120 kids. Grossly deficient is a good description.

[HappyTexan]

Originally Posted by Mnseca

Well, the suit is spot on, in my opinion. I was an ESL teacher in public school (but not TX) and the instruction was completely inadequate. I just don't understand why they have not included elementary school in it. When ESL teachers got too expensive to keep up with the number of students, many states just started having regular teachers take two or three classes and then called them ESL certified. Our district just cut down the number of ESL teachers until we had one for a hundred kids and it was just a pointless job. It would be great if this lawsuit led to something similar to special ed, where schools are forced to hire a certain number of esl teachers per student. I just hope it doesn't end up blaming teachers - in my district, I was horrified to get there and discover that we were not allowed to use any non-approved books, and that no grammar books were approved. We could not use multi-media (audio recordings, videos) to teach English because they were not approved. We had nothing. They put us in a trailer behind the school, on the far side of the playground, and sent us small groups of students for about 30 minutes at a time. We had no idea what was going on in the classroom, the classroom teachers would not talk to us or meet with us, and most of the time it took so long for the students to walk over to us and back that we really only ended up with 20 minutes. Then the principal decided he'd rather have more aids for the lunch room than an esl teachers, so we went down to one teacher for 120 kids. Grossly deficient is a good description.

K-5 has bilingual education. Students receive education in Spanish while learning English.