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Language Lawsuit Fails in Appeals Court

Saturday 01 August 2009

by: Michelle Mitchell  |  The Desert Sun

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A group of children read books in Spanish. The education community is immersed in an ongoing debate about bilingual teaching and testing. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht / The Commercial Appeal)

    Academic tests need only be written in English in California.

    School achievement tests do not have to be offered in languages other than English, a state appeals court ruled on Thursday, rejecting arguments in a lawsuit filed by Coachella Valley Unified and other school districts.

    A vast majority of Coachella Valley Unified's students are considered English-language learners and the district is under state sanctions and an academic trustee for poor performance on standardized assessments.

    "Districts like Coachella are going to continue to be severely disadvantaged under the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) Act," said Marc Coleman, a Long Beach attorney representing the districts. "They're going to continue to suffer sanctions unjustly, not because they're not doing a great job with kids but because test scores don't demonstrate that."

    The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruling upheld a 2007 decision by a San Francisco judge who also ruled against the bilingual-education groups and nine school districts that sued to overturn the state's English-only testing methods.

    "Obviously we're very disappointed with the ruling," Coachella Valley Unified Superintendent Ricardo Medina said. "To have a unanimous decision go against us is kind of heartbreaking."

    The group has not decided whether to consider an appeal to the state Supreme Court, Coleman said.

    "We have to confer with our clients and evaluate those options," he said.

    Coachella Valley Unified has also not determined how to proceed, but administration changes in Washington, D.C., will be a factor in the decision.

    "I anticipate that there's going to be a reauthorization of (No Child Left Behind)," Medina said. "That's going to have to weigh into the decision about how much time and energy we're going to put into this."

    The attorneys in the case have done most of the work pro bono, with the exception of district travel expenses and a $10,000 to $15,000 payment from each district, officials said.

    The lawsuit argued that by not offering assessments in a student's native language, California is violating federal law that requires English learners to be tested in a "valid and reliable manner."

    That includes "assessments in the language and form most likely to yield accurate data," according to the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act.

    Students may know a concept, but be unable to demonstrate that if they can't understand the question, Coleman said.

    "The tests under-value the real academic knowledge that these students have," he said.

    The court ruled that it would not act as "second-guesser" of the California State Board of Education's decision to not offer primary language testing - a plan that was approved by the federal government.

    It also cited a state proposition requiring the majority of teaching to be done in English.

    "To teach in English but test in another language could create confusion and compromise test results," the 3-0 ruling stated.

    The state board considered offering native language tests in 2002, but determined that it would be too difficult to provide for 40 native languages of California students who are taught primarily in English and that tests in different languages would not be comparable.

    Federal law does not specify which language tests should be given in and requires only "reasonable accommodations" for nonnative speakers.

    ---------

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  

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Comments

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Of course the testing scores

 Mon, 08/03/2009 - 16:53 — Christopher Marlowe (not verified)
Of course the testing scores would be higher if they allowed the immigrant population to be tested in Spanish. That goes for all the testing scores, not just NCLB. But should the struggling schools get less money because they have immigrants? This points out the fallacy of these federal education programs: Tons of taxpayer money spent in a really stupid and unfair way. Stop spending federal money on state programs; it creates more bureaucracy and makes the schools less efficient. In this case, Principals spend all their time applying for grants instead of running the school. (When local Police Departments get Homeland Insecurity money, they have to take all the New World Order training/weapons.)

"No Child Left Behind" is a

 Mon, 08/03/2009 - 18:06 — Anonymous (not verified)
"No Child Left Behind" is a disastrous law. Instead of teaching kids writing, math etc. they teach how to take tests. Why hasn't this piece of garbage been repealed?

We have lost a sense of

 Mon, 08/03/2009 - 22:31 — Underground Sanity (not verified)
We have lost a sense of balance as a society and become craven and small minded. The supreme Court ruled that women could not be denied equal opportunity because of pregnancy. Childbirth was not an "enumerated" right, but it was directly connected with female status. Also, not all women needed assistance, and the potential disability was not permanent. But when they did need protection at a critical time, the law was construed to provide it. Employers later decided that it was wise and just made good business sense to provide parental leave to male employees, even though they did not actually suffer incapacity from childbirth. Similarly, not all immigrants require assistance with English, but many do in order to perform with equal opportunity in competition with native English speakers at the time standardized tests are given. If the standardized tests are to be the benchmarks or threshold applied by the state for skills and knowledge, then all who take them should have equal opportunity to succeed. To fail to accommodate the language issue is like demanding that a footrace is the test and that the physically disabled have to compete on exactly the same basis as those with no disability. it is illogical. And in California, it is also racist driven with respect to the language/ethnicity issue. What exact harm would be cause by allowing the students to demonstrate their knowledge of math, science and history through a standardized test that does not impose a language barrier to their even understanding the questions? Come on, this is not about fairness or funding education. It is about white power brokers beating up on Latino kids who cannot protect themselves.

So we let all of the

 Tue, 08/04/2009 - 02:08 — Anonymous (not verified)
So we let all of the students take the English-only state tests and the students do not know what they are reading. Hmmm...okay. 1) Let the school children look like a bunch of dummies and cause unnecessary dollars to be spent in administrative costs; or 2) Buck the state and give the students the answers. I agree with Underground Sanity completely. There is not a doubt in my mind why California is in the shape it is in. More young people-turned-adults on the welfare rolls because of poor education, supported by the state, of course, in either case. Unnnngh! Unnngh!!! I wish the CA WASPS (of which I am one) would understand that the non-white people are NOT going to be moving anywhere anytime soon! Thank goodness!

A better question might be,

 Wed, 08/05/2009 - 13:23 — CounselorTroi (not verified)
A better question might be, why are the school districts not taking these non-English speaking kids and putting them into all-day English classes until they are competent enough to handle instruction in the other courses? It seems likely that most of them are the kids of illegal aliens, if they can't speak English at all. No wonder California is in such a mess. They need to learn English and learn it well, if they are to succeed anywhere but in the border regions. It should never be the "job" of our public schools to "maintain" foreign language speakers in their foreign languages; it is our job to teach them what they need to know to succeed in THIS country, not in Mexico or other Latin countries. We really should, IMO, make English our official national language, and refuse to accommodate those who refuse to learn it.

IMO CounselorTroi needs to

 Thu, 08/13/2009 - 18:38 — Regina (not verified)
IMO CounselorTroi needs to spend a month in Europe, traveling among at least half a dozen countries. There he/she will encounter ordinary tradespeople -- not the "intelligentsia" -- switching fluently among at least four languages to accommodate visitors. It is not a grand achievement to be illiterate in all languages other than English. It is no sin to speak another language. This country was originally invaded and settled by Dutch, English, French, and Spanish speakers. Only the English (who prevailed) put draconian laws into practice, and we still suffer from their chauvinism and ignorance. Children growing up in homes where a different language is spoken would easily become bilingual if they were enrolled in Early Childhood programs -- Pre-K. Then they would be ready for the grades by the time they got there. Instead, we provide zero preparation and then subject them to ridiculous tests, and the whole school system suffers when they fall short. We don't need an official national language -- we need brains and courtesy.