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Actually, you'd be surprised how many students qualify for ESOL services in one way or another. If parents check the box on the registration form saying a language other than English (or in addition to English) is spoken at home, the student is tested in school. The levels range from 1-6. Many of these children are 3rd generation here, they just grow up without a strong English background at home and are missing academic language.
Level 1-2 students are those who are stereotypically thought of as ESOL students--struggling to read/write/speak the language.
Level 3-4 are often perfectly fluent in their speaking, but struggling with reading and writing and so have an extra reading class instead of an elective, or are in team taught core classes so there is an extra body in the room to help break things down.
Level 5-6 I generally find myself surprised to learn these kids are ESOL students when the spreadsheets are given to me around late September. They speak fluently, and read and write at a level similar enough to their English only peers that it doesn't stand out. They are still categorized as ESOL students--they are eligible for accommodations on the SOL tests (like a dictionary or sometimes read aloud testing), but they do not receive any additional services during the school day. They are in regular classes with students from English speaking families. Oftentimes they will take writing classes instead of a regular elective, but they are not ESOL specific classes--they are classes for any student with deficiencies in writing. These students sometimes are just missing the academic language component, despite having social language down without issue.
There is no denying that teaching children English costs money--but it's not like every ESOL student in the statistics being posted is illiterate and can't speak English.
Thanks for the insight. The long-term financial drain that immigration puts on the school system is amazing. As you know, ESOL is a federal mandate. How much lattitude the county have in deciding who gets it, I don't know. Maybe none.
We know that Fairfax County has the largest immigrant population in the state. Almost a third of the student population are immigrants, Fairfax Becomes Immigrants and that doesn't include the children of immigrants. We know that the immigrant population has grown rapidly over the last couple of decades. That's what's driving the school construction and the proliferation of ESOL classes.
What's difficult is probably not simply about switching languages when going to school vs coming home (it's actually pretty easy to do), IMO. What's more difficult is probably more about trying to fit in, dealing with bullying, etc, things that everybody has to deal with, but may have a handicap because the English speaking ability is not completely up to par with the primary language yet.
From this map, I am drawing the conclusion that Culmore is crime-free and downtown Vienna is a war zone.
Did I get it right?
There is a sizable Hispanic population in the southeastern portion of Vienna just so you know.
Illegal immigrants of all races are self-selected law breakers. Once here illegally that evade income taxes and employment law. They drive without licenses but even the DMV in these areas are corrupt and follow a different set of rules than those located outside of illegal immigrant areas. Further, these people are poor and desperate. The live 20 to a house, and the GPS on your dash could take them a month to buy.
The concern is that rather than being the immigrant gateway county, a desperate, impoverished population will dominate. I dislike going by race, but since there is little information on illegal immigration, and we know that Hispanic immigration is 45 percent illegal. Spanish is the language spoken most at home for elementary school children. It's pretty much a given that native whites will become a fraction of the demographics, but what will replace them? Will there be an impoverished plurality? When does it become too much for the system and drag the schools and other institutions down?
There is a sizable Hispanic population in the southeastern portion of Vienna just so you know.
Illegal immigrants of all races are self-selected law breakers. Once here illegally that evade income taxes and employment law. They drive without licenses but even the DMV in these areas are corrupt and follow a different set of rules than those located outside of illegal immigrant areas. Further, these people are poor and desperate. The live 20 to a house, and the GPS on your dash could take them a month to buy.
The concern is that rather than being the immigrant gateway county, a desperate, impoverished population will dominate. I dislike going by race, but since there is little information on illegal immigration, and we know that Hispanic immigration is 45 percent illegal. Spanish is the language spoken most at home for elementary school children. It's pretty much a given that native whites will become a fraction of the demographics, but what will replace them? Will there be an impoverished plurality? When does it become too much for the system and drag the schools and other institutions down?
I think there's one older garden apartment complex near the intersection of Cedar and Park in Vienna with a lot of Hispanic residents. That's about it. Madison HS is the whitest HS in the county (and whiter than either George Mason in Falls Church or any HS in Arlington).
Your last question is fair game, although there are many non-white natives who care about things like immigration policy, but one that is also perhaps more pressing with respect to other jurisdictions, many of which are majority white and rural, that have far higher poverty rates than Fairfax County.
"Dear children and grandchildren of immigrants to the US who want to shut the door in the face of other people who wish to live in America:
Please, if you wish to see the illegal immigrants gone because they are taking your jobs, schools and way of life in an unlawful manner, by all means, go work in construction for not a day, but just for 3 hours in the burning sun. Don't forget your sunscreen."
I think there's one older garden apartment complex near the intersection of Cedar and Park in Vienna with a lot of Hispanic residents. That's about it. Madison HS is the whitest HS in the county (and whiter than either George Mason in Falls Church or any HS in Arlington).
Your last question is fair game, although there are many non-white natives who care about things like immigration policy, but one that is also perhaps more pressing with respect to other jurisdictions, many of which are majority white and rural, that have far higher poverty rates than Fairfax County.
That's the general area down to Nutley. Census tract 460701. There are about 1,000 Hispanics there. Associating Hispanics with crime through solid statistics would be easy to do, and is not something that I'm interested in accomplishing. I just wanted to point out that even your cherry picking of areas had its flaws. Look at the crime in Baileys, next to Culmore. These are highlights of recent crimes, and show where they are committed, not where the criminals live. This why so many larcenies are taking place at strip malls, etc. You should see the list of arrestees that the county provides. The concentration of criminals into certain neighborhoods is impressive.
I agree about rural areas. Whites used to have the largest total number of the poor before Hispanics took them over a few years ago. Right now, I'm concerned about the fiscal viability of Fairfax County. Whites can be a burden too, especially if they are placed in neighborhoods with drug addictions and criminal records like the county wants to do. You don't see too many (the do exist) entering the country illegally and causing the financial burden that threatens to bring down our schools, though.
"Dear children and grandchildren of immigrants to the US who want to shut the door in the face of other people who wish to live in America:
Please, if you wish to see the illegal immigrants gone because they are taking your jobs, schools and way of life in an unlawful manner, by all means, go work in construction for not a day, but just for 3 hours in the burning sun. Don't forget your sunscreen."
Shutting the door to immigration is about as realistic as draining the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not even talking about stopping illegal immigration. It's just that the county doesn't need to make itself a magnet for illegal immigration.
Actually, you'd be surprised how many students qualify for ESOL services in one way or another.
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There is no denying that teaching children English costs money--but it's not like every ESOL student in the statistics being posted is illiterate and can't speak English.
Do you have access to any percentages on this? Are you saying we are paying to instruct kids in English that don't need it?
FCPS has over 750 ESOL teachers and at about $50 million a year it is a considerable sum.
Shutting the door to immigration is about as realistic as draining the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not even talking about stopping illegal immigration. It's just that the county doesn't need to make itself a magnet for illegal immigration.
If the county wasn't business-friendly, and there were fewer jobs, there would be fewer immigrants, legal and illegal, in search of jobs and a better life. Situation solved, but with its own costs.
If what's driving you to post so feverishly is the specific proposal about constructing efficiencies and studios under the guise of "affordable housing," I agree it warrants far more scrutiny. On the one hand, you have young people taking jobs in Fairfax and hating the fact that they can't afford to live near their jobs in an area with decent, youth-oriented amenities. See, e.g., Steel City Rising. On the other hand, you have long-time residents worried that the county will end up with 10 or more residents in a studio apartment that Sharon Bulova will christen with fanfare and then never set foot in again. And those residents who are expressing concern generally aren't those of us lliving in Great Falls, McLean or Fairfax Station, but people in places like Annandale, Falls Church and Springfield who worry about the impact that illegal immigration is already having on their communities.
It would be nice if that conversation could be held without stigmatizing a particular race or ethnicity, but that might be too much to ask. And it's a shame, because it's hard to have an honest dialogue with you when it mostly seems like you want to get some pretty deep animosity towards people of a particular ethnicity off your chest.
Do you have access to any percentages on this? Are you saying we are paying to instruct kids in English that don't need it?
FCPS has over 750 ESOL teachers and at about $50 million a year it is a considerable sum.
No, I'm saying many students who have an ESOL designation are not getting ESOL services, so we're not paying any extra to educate them. They take the WIDA test in...February, I think? and their ability/score determines what services they are eligible for the following school year. The majority of ESOL students coming through my classroom currently have no extra costs associated with their education beyond the cost of assessing them. Many of them did when they first entered the county, but they have since graduated beyond a level requiring additional teachers/special classes.
I have no idea where to find county wide stats on this. I only know what I see in my own classroom and have access to numbers for my school as a whole, but that would paint a very lopsided picture.
Realize too that if those kids weren't in a classroom with a trained ESOL teacher, they'd be in a classroom with a trained regular education teacher. They have to go in someone's classroom, and an ESOL certification doesn't cost the county any salary money. The additional incurred costs come from team-taught classes and the smaller class sizes that should be present in a level 1-2 class. (Generally they are kept under 20 kids at my school, while a regular class can approach 25 or 30 at an honors level.)
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