VUSD Prepares to Revamp Program for English Learners in California
Arizona: Tucson-Area District to Defy State Law on English Immersion
The Tucson-area school district plans to defy a state law requiring all students learning English to have four-hour daily language immersion classes, saying federal civil rights rules take precedence.
The decision by the Sahuarita Unified School District to exclude its middle and high school students drew an immediate response from Tom Horne, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, who said he was ‘shocked’ and disturbed that the district planned to ignore the 2006 state law. ‘Any administrator who participates in open defiance of a state law would be subject to a complaint against his or her certificate for unprofessional conduct,’ Horne warned Friday.
Read about the forthcoming scrap…
California: VUSD Prepares to Revamp Program for English Learners
Over the next three years, schools in Vista plan to revamp how they teach nearly 8,000 students who are learning to speak English. In some Vista Unified School District campuses, English learners will begin to see small changes as soon as this fall. However, the changes will be more noticeable to teachers and administrators, district officials said.
They said the revised plan should help students whose first language is not English pick up the language more quickly, so they can be moved to English-only classrooms and perform better on state assessment tests.
Texas: Educators Oppose English Standards OK’d by State
The preliminary approval of new English and reading curriculum that will set guidelines for textbooks and standardized tests for the next 10 years was met with anger and frustration by many Texas teachers on Thursday.
‘I think it was wrong to disregard the teacher input,’ said a perceptive Elena Izquierdo, a University of Texas at El Paso associate professor of linguistics and bilingual education, and president of the Texas Association of Bilingual Educators.
If given final approval, the curriculum will remain in effect for the next decade and set standards for state tests and textbooks. Teachers and Hispanic experts have criticized the curriculum because they said it would leave behind students whose first language is not English.
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