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Bishop defends ESL programs
Published November 7, 2009
Proration has hit Alabama public schools but recent suggestions of cutting English as a Second Language programs as a cost savings aren’t plausible, say Albertville school officials.
Albertville City Schools Assistant Superintendent Joyce Bishop defended ESL programs as a necessity that help not only ESL students but also all children in need of extra assistance.
“Our ESL teachers do not focus solely on children who do not speak English. They are in the regular classroom, helping all children who need a little extra help,” she said. “They may have some children who do not speak any English that they will take out of the regular classroom for 30 minutes at a time and have intensive, one-on-one sessions. But that is the exception now, not the norm. These teachers are in the classrooms working with any child who may need extra help grasping a concept, such as sentence structure.
“Good practice says what is good for ESL students is good for all students. No one is hurt by us having ESL programs.”
Bishop said Albertville City Schools have approximately 800 English language learners taking part in the ESL program.
“Our system is 30 to 31 percent Hispanic,” Bishop said. “But if you look further into the numbers, only 19 to 20 percent of our students take part in ESL programs. That is an important statistic.
“If you look at the demographics of our students, you’ll find most of them are born in the United States now. At one time, that wasn’t the case.
“Of course, we do occasionally see children who were born in Guatemala or Mexico and do not speak any English, but that is definitely outside the norm.”
Statewide, Alabama spends more than $6 million to educate an estimated 19,600 students in ESL programs. Six of the 11 largest ESL programs in Alabama are located in the northeast portion of the state and include Albertville City and DeKalb County schools.
ESL programs, teachers and the required testing are paid for through state and federal funds, Bishop said.
Each child must take a proficiency test prior to being included in ESL programs, and the tests are federally mandated as part of the No Child Left Behind legislation. Each test costs the school system $25 per child, paid for using state funds.
“That pretty much takes care of all our state ESL funds,” Bishop said.
Federal funds are used to pay teacher salaries either in full or in part, to provide ESL professional development and purchase supplies, Bishop said.
“We don’t get enough money to pay for all the teachers we need,” she said. “We use our Title 3 funds to pay teacher salaries. And we still have teachers we fund locally.
“We recognized a long time ago that language is a problem in our school system, but it is not just that we have people who do not speak English. We also have lots of people without a grasp of the English language who are from right here.”
Bishop invited area residents to visit Albertville schools to see what is being done to teach all students.
“I think a lot of people would be surprised to see what we are doing and if they did come in, they would see just how far we have come,” Bishop said.
“Our population has leveled out. We are not growing as quickly as we have in the past.”
In a widely published “Education News” magazine published in January, Alabama State Superintendent of Education Joe Morton reported English Language Learners enrollment increased by nationally by 57 percent between 1995 and 2005 and that Alabama’s enrollment increased by more than 200 percent.
“We‘ve added students while funding has been cut. My hat is off to all associated with ELL in Alabama for helping us maintain the current grades under the financial constraints of today. We are dedicated to teaching all students at high levels through our state initiatives that work for ELL students as well as all other students,” Morton said.
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