Education Week - October 25, 2017 - 10

'English-Only' States Balk on Tests in Other Languages
Federal law calls
for such tests
By Corey Mitchell
Florida is among several states
gambling that their English-only laws
will provide cover from a new federal
push on English-language-learner
education.
Under the federal Every Student
Succeeds Act, states must "make
every effort" to develop statewide assessments in students' first languages
if they constitute a significant portion
of the student population.
But Florida, with its nearly 300,000
English-learners, has shown no interest in translating its state tests into
Spanish and Haitian Creole, languages spoken by tens of thousands
of public school students in the state.
The state education department
does not want to give exams in language arts, math, or science in students' native languages as ESSA
suggests because, it says, the state
constitution declares English Florida's
official language.
Florida is one of at least a half-dozen
states that have taken that stance, but
none have as many English-learners
as the Sunshine State, where roughly
12 percent of all K-12 students are
classified as English-learners. Their
presence is even more prevalent in
certain regions: One in four students

in the Miami-Dade County school system-the largest district in the state
and one of the 10 largest in the country-are ELLs.
The law stops short of requiring the
assessment in languages other than
English. Most states, including Florida, give students with limited English
skills standard state tests.
Arkansas, Georgia, and Virginia are
also seeking to bypass the latest round
of ESSA plan submissions. While the
ELL population in Arkansas is small
but growing, Georgia and Virginia
have sizable populations.

Digging for Details
Dozens of states have laws or constitutional amendments on the books
that establish English as their official
language. But only a handful, including Virginia, address how schools
should educate students who don't
speak English as their first language.
Florida, with its 23-word English-only
clause, isn't one of them.
Virginia prohibits instruction in
languages other than English "except
on a very limited basis and in foreign
language classes."
Florida's ESSA plan maintains
that giving assessments to students
in their native languages would impede their ability to demonstrate their
knowledge.
Among states with larger English-learner populations, Florida,
California, and Texas have put up

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 25, 2017 | www.edweek.org

no resistance to offering nativelanguage assessments. Some states
with smaller ELL populations, including Minnesota and New York,
plan to develop exams in three or
more languages to accommodate
students.
"When we look at the state plans
some of them did address the questions about native language assessments very thoroughly," said Delia
Pompa, a senior fellow for education
policy at the Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigrant
Integration Policy. "Other states were
more cavalier about it. It indicates a
lack of commitment, a lack of being serious about the needs of students and
looking forward."
But experts say test translations
aren't always as helpful as they
might seem.
"If the student is not literate in their
native language, then offering a native-language assessment is not going
to help," said Joan Herman, director emerita of CRESST, the National
Center for Research on Evaluation,
Standards & Student Testing at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
Herman said translated tests can
be beneficial for certain groups of students, particularly those at the middle
or high school level who already had
a strong foundation in their home
language before coming to the United
States. But for some states, developing
tests in languages other than English
could prove too costly, she added.

Initially, Florida planned to request
a waiver from the language requirement. But after pressure from state
and local activists, the state folded the
waiver into its ESSA plan.
The Florida Department of Education did not make Chane Eplin, who
oversees the state's ELL program,
available for an interview.
The state may have good reason
to be confident. Arizona and Tennessee already have won approval for
their ESSA plans after citing state
English-only laws as a reason not to
offer native-language assessments.
And some English-learner advocacy
groups are not optimistic that DeVos
will make an about-face on this
round of submissions.
The U.S. Department of Education
did not respond to requests for comment on native-language assessments.
"We don't have any indication that
[the Education Department will] be
pushing back on the lack of nativelanguage assessments," said Lorén
Trull, a senior education policy adviser
with UnidosUS, formerly the National
Council of La Raza.
TESOL International Association
and the Joint National Committee
for Language-National Council on
Language and International Studies submitted a letter to Florida Gov.
Rick Scott in August, arguing that
bills introduced in the state legislature to authorize tests in languages
other than English should serve as
proof that the state's official-English

clause does not provide grounds to
deny the assessments.
"To move away from developing nati
ve-language assessments tries to
mask the idea that there's going to be
great diversity in this population with
different needs," said John Segota, the
associate executive director for public policy & professional relations at
TESOL.

Competing Interests
While the state has declared itself an English-only state, Florida
is among the more than 25 states
promoting bilingualism among
K-12 students by offering the seal of
biliteracy-a special recognition on
high school diplomas for graduates
who demonstrate fluency in two or
more languages. To earn the award
in Florida, a student has to achieve
a qualifying score on a foreign -language assessment.
Rosa Castro Feinberg, a spokeswoman for Florida's League of
United Latin American Citizens
(LULAC) chapter, argues that it's
insincere to allow foreign-language
assessment to prove biliteracy, but
not competency in a native language
other than English.
Last year, less than 15 percent of
English-language learners in Florida
passed the 10th grade reading exam.
This is not a new problem. State data
show Florida's English-language
learners have been struggling in English and math for more than a decade.
Republican state Rep. Manny
Diaz-who co-sponsored the state's
biliteracy seal legislation-doesn't
think the state should translate tests
for English-learners.
"It becomes a crutch for students,"
said Diaz, a former teacher and assistant principal in the Miami-Dade
schools.
At most, test directions should be
translated, Diaz said.
In many states, the students can
get some extra help, including more
time to finish a text, bilingual dictionaries, instructions read aloud to
them, and testing in small groups.
Florida also allows teachers to answer questions about directions
or specific words or phrases in the
student's native language. In West
Virginia, the lone state where English-learners represent less than 1
percent of the student population,
test directions are translated into at
least 17 languages.
Diaz does acknowledge that Florida could face a dilemma with students arriving from Puerto Rico in
the aftermath of Hurricane Maria,
a storm that ravaged the island and
its schools. With families fleeing the
island, state officials estimate that
between 20,000 and 25,000 students,
almost exclusively native Spanish
speakers, could arrive in mainland
schools in the coming months. Without native-language assessments,
schools would have trouble figuring
out what the students know.
"The issue of Puerto Rico complicates the situation on many levels,"
Diaz said. "We have to take a look
at how we as a state deal with that
because clearly the students are not
the same."

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Education Week - October 25, 2017

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