by David Safier
TUSD board member Mark Stegeman gave me a letter Tom Horne sent out in early May of this year. The gist is, every school district has to comply with the ELL Structured English Immersion model implemented in 2008. Horne's tone is harsh, to say the least.
All schools, school districts and charter schools are expected to fully comply with all requirements of the English Language Learners Task Force and fully implement the provisions of the Models of Structured English Immersion (SEI) adopted by the ELL Task Force for the 2009-2010 school year.
A "good faith effort" will no longer be sufficient. Districts and charter holders must fully implement a compliant model.
The OELAS Division met with Arizona educators throughout the 2008-2009 school year. During the monitoring process,it was evident that some LEA administrators and teachers were under the mistaken impression that not qualifying for SEI funding meant that they would not have to comply with either state law or the provisions of the SEI Models. This is not true. All school districts and charters must comply with the laws and the SEI Models regardless of their allocation or non-allocation of monies from the SEI fund. (bold face added)
If you remember from last year, Horne implemented an ELL system where students spend 4 hours a day in intense language instruction. When they can pass the English proficiency test, they're done with ELL. No follow up. No monitoring and tutoring. Nothing. At least, that's how I understand what I've read.
(By the way, this is an untested system which has ELL experts in Arizona and elsewhere scratching their heads.)
Implementation money for teachers and classroom space was meager, and many districts — TUSD among them if I remember correct — didn't get a penny. Because of the difficulty in getting the program up and running and the concern that it wasn't good for students, some districts created modified programs last year that moved in the direction of Horne's directive but didn't comply with the letter of the law.
This year, according to Horne, no exceptions.
How serious is he? This part of the letter is informational, but I can't help reading it as an open threat.
Administrators are advised to review A.R.S. 15-754 which states:
Shorter Horne: "Don't want to implement the ELL directives? Go ahead, make my day!"
Is this what Horne thinks of as establishing a working relationship with administrators and school board members? At least administrators get paid. Board members are a masochistic bunch who put in long hours and subject themselves to all kinds of scrutiny — mostly negative here in Tucson — without getting a penny for their efforts. This is quite a way to say to them, "Thanks for all your efforts."
Here is a copy of the complete letter.
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Districts should tell tom horne that fed guidelines and mandates state that models of instruction need to be based on scientific research. language acquisition models do NOT support getting students to English Language Proficiency in ONE year. studies show that it takes well over 5 years to become ELP in academic English.
Segregating kids by language performance is segregation. Something I thought we had done away with in this country.