Del Rio's schools struggle with English as a Second Language program

March 25, 2007
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

English as a Second Language. Just the title suggests a huge learning curve that transcends artificial distinctions between home, classroom, and social life. But it is reduced – for the sake of convenience – to a poorly understood abbreviation: ESL. In fact, two terms are used. “Bilingual” refers to language proficiency efforts from Pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, and ESL signifies more advanced emphasis, sixth- through 12th grade.

San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated Independent School District is now under a federal microscope to examine whether teachers and the administration can recover from a poor record for bringing Spanish-speaking students up to academic par with English speakers. Not to improve could mean a loss of certain administrative controls and federal funding on which the district depends.

San Felipe Del Rio CISD Superintendent Bobby Fernandez feels caught in a vise he believes should be loosened. “The government doesn’t give me any money for this program, but they expect us to do it anyway. This is absolutely another unfunded mandate,” Fernandez said, though he later admitted that the program does include modest assistance for supplies. Moreover, Fernandez believes the rules by which districts are judged are unrealistic, requiring kids enrolled in Bilingual/ESL classes to be academically comparable to English speakers within one year of their enrollment.

“We need to test when it’s reasonable,” Fernandez said, explaining that federal guidelines now demand – unrealistically, he believes – that, by 2014, each child will be at the same academic level of performance applicable to all grades. But part of what’s gotten the district in trouble with state authorities is that some ESL students have not approached any semblance of academic performance when tested in the English language. While the federal expectation that non-English-speaking students will be facile in English within one year may be too demanding, some ESL students in Del Rio have not achieved acceptable performance in six years or more.

Other than the abbreviation that was coined with the program in 1971 – as part of another federal initiative to consolidate the two former school districts in Del Rio – there seems to be nothing convenient about Bilingual/ESL. The current administration in Washington D.C. gave it a nickname, and passed a law in which Bilingual/ESL is imbedded: “No Child Left Behind.” NCLB is much harder to remember, so the nettled root of the matter survives as ESL aimed at students who the feds call Limited English Proficient (LEP). And the feds, the state, local school districts, and teachers who remember how Bilingual/ESL used to work appear to be struggling for supremacy.

But it’s the kids who will surely outlive all the combatants, paying the highest price for a clumsy introduction to this country’s mother tongue. Yet, the children and their parents who came to this country with scarce facility in English have little or no say in the crafting of that introduction, so Fernandez is taking steps to nudge SFDRCISD toward more parental involvement and eventual compliance with federal and state regulations.

“We’re in total agreement with the legislation that says ‘No Child Left Behind,’” Fernandez said, but he has sharp differences in how to achieve such a goal. And at least one retired school teacher has sharp differences with Fernandez and the implementation of ESL now in school. Edna Molina, a leader in The Border Organization that keeps a finger on the pulse of many community issues, said she believes the Bilingual/ESL requirement is exacerbated by the Texas TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) tests.

“I taught a bilingual classroom at Lamar Elementary for two years, before the craziness of the TAKS tests that have become so taxing – not to be funny – and now it’s got the school district on its heels, and they’re just not looking and reflecting on what really constitutes good education for our kids,” Molina said. Molina holds a Master of Education from the University of Nebraska, but later placed herself in immersion to learn Spanish. “I learned my first Spanish when I attended a language institute in Saltillo [Coahuila] in the early 1980s,” she said

“At Lamar, we were only using Spanish to help them develop concepts and learn better vocabulary. It was 90 percent English in the classroom, and only ten percent Spanish, but now it’s just reversed in those ESL classrooms. Of course, there are teachers who disagree with my position on this, but the parents we’ve talked to say the immersion is necessary, that their kids need pretty close to total immersion in English,” Molina said.

Fernandez agreed with Molina about the impact of TAKS testing on Bilingual/ESL efforts. “The teachers were so occupied with testing in other areas that ESL didn’t get enough attention,” Fernandez said.

To help rectify the situation, Fernandez has enlisted an enthusiastic lieutenant to lead the fight. Dr. Sally Zuñiga-Barrera, former principal at Ruben Chavira Elementary School, has been on the job as director of Bilingual/ESL education since Feb. 19. She recently graduated with a Doctorate of Education from Texas A&M Kingsville with a dissertation on school and classroom culture. Friday, Zuñiga-Barrera pointed at science instruction as an example of the challenge to Bilingual/ESL students.

District wide, science is an area in need of significant improvement, but Zuñiga-Barrera insists that Spanish-only speakers and readers have particular difficulty. In addition, she asserts that test-passing results are expected by federal and state authorities to show parity of understanding among children of the same grades in school, but the conditions under which they must learn are widely varying. “We have students that do their homework by candlelight because their families cannot afford electricity, or they don’t get baths at night, or they may even be living in old cars,” said Zuñiga-Barrera.

“The [TAKS] science test in Spanish is a lot more difficult than in English,” Zuñiga-Barrera said, adding that a similar gulf in terms and concepts occurs in other areas, too, though less in mathematics. She is arming the Bilingual/ESL program with new curricula guides and study kits from Delta Education to help address the problem.

“We want to develop a parental orientation package to let them know what the schools are doing in Bilingual/ESL programs, and how the parents can help,” said Zuñiga-Barrera. “And I really want to build up the morale of the Bilingual/ESL teachers, too.” In addition, Zuñiga-Barrera plans to visit school districts she believes exhibit “best practices” of Bilingual/ESL instruction, and is contemplating discussions with school districts in Corpus Christi, Midland-Odessa, Brownsville and McAllen.

The Border Organization is certain that parental involvement is indeed key, but that district officials should first listen to what parents have to say. “The district always blames a lack of public involvement for whatever is wrong, but parental involvement has to be open ended, the district needs to have open, honest conversation, and be willing to hear criticism,” said Molina.

The group conducts “home meetings” in the living rooms, dens and kitchens of those in affected neighborhoods, and their most recent round was held in Val Verde Park Estates on the city’s far east side, north of U.S. Highway 90 East. The neighborhood is a mix of residence types, mostly ungoverned by zoning ordinances, and only recently benefited from colonia funding to pave streets, install utilities, and fire hydrants.

“Pam Smith, one of the school board members, asked if we could generate some urgency about this problem. We had been planning to meet all across the district. It wasn’t a week later, after church, that someone suggested that the Border Organization should get involved,” Molina said.

The meeting at the home of Rosie Villa included ten representatives from six families, all communicating expressly in Spanish until Smith arrived, and a more bilingual conversation continued. “There were both men and women, and one girl who is a senior in high school,” said Molina. “One mother who speaks no English – and I think she might not be literate – said, ‘I want my children to go to school to get help in English. I cannot do that at home, only Spanish is spoken there.’”

“All the parents said exactly the same thing, that they wanted their children to be taught in English. In most of those homes, only the men are English speakers because they’re working in an English-speaking world, but the women are homemakers and don’t get any exposure to it,” Molina explained.

“They all said it was a smarter idea the way it used to be, when the emphasis was on English. We need to be humane, compassionate and understanding about it – don’t rap the kids on the knuckles like they did a long time ago – but we really need to let the schools develop the English skills and not wait so long for that to happen,” Molina said.

Fernandez agreed that a sea change in emphasis did occur in the late 1990s, where the 90/10 percent ratios of emphasis were reversed, focusing afterward mostly on Spanish in the classroom with about 10 percent English infusion. “Our emphasis then was on teaching them English, not on teaching [subject] concepts. Now we are required to teach and be tested on the concepts, and their English,” Fernandez said.

The creation of what Fernandez calls a “subpopulation” of Limited English Proficient (LEP) students was driven by passage of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. “Perceptions of this one subpopulation have given people the wrong idea about the entire district,” Fernandez said. “Academically, this school district has a very sound educational program for all students, Pre-K through 12th grade.

“Our products are the indicators. Our top students are going on to the best universities in the country – MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Texas A&M and The University of Texas,” Fernandez said.

Zuñiga-Barrera echoed Fernandez’s confidence. Focusing on her plans for ESL improvements and scrutiny of what other Texas districts are doing, “We want to play smart more than anything.” She is undaunted by the threat of punitive funding or administrative actions if ESL improvements are not demonstrated soon. Seeing the issue as a wake-up call, Zuñiga-Barrera said, “It’s made us all have higher expectations, but they have to be realistic.”

Fernandez said a “re-authorization” of the No Child Left Behind Act is underway on Capitol Hill, and he prays that it will include more realistic goals on this and other subjects. “We want to be held accountable for the progress of the ESL child, we need that,” he said.

Fernandez envisions a complete turn-around in the reputation of SFDRCISD on ESL and conformance with the No Child Left Behind Act. “You wait. We’re going to take a negative and turn it into a positive. In a few years, we’re going to have school districts coming to visit us.”