Disturbing findings….

Nearly 30% of Los Angeles Unified School District students placed in English language learning classes in early primary grades were still in the program when they started high school, increasing their chances of dropping out, according to a new study released Wednesday…

The findings raise questions about the teaching in the district’s English language classes, whether students are staying in the program too long and what more educators should do for students who start school unable to speak English fluently.

“If you start LAUSD at kindergarten and are still in ELL classes at ninth grade, that’s too long,” said Wendy Chavira, assistant director of the policy institute. “There is something wrong with the curriculum if there are still a very large number of students being stuck in the system….”

The sooner students switch to regular classes the better, the new study showed. Students who moved out of English classes by third grade scored up to 40 points higher on standardized tests than those who stayed in the classes. If the students moved by fifth grade, they scored about 10 points higher than their peers.

Not stated explicitly, but important to note in order to comprehend the point, is that the ELL programs being evaluated are bilingual education programs (i.e., using the students’ L1 to mediate subject content while the students learn English).  This is the classic argument between proponents of bilingual education and immersion ed: immersion education proponents complain that bilingual education takes too long, and that students are not going to learn English by being taught in Spanish (or Vietnamese, or Chinese, etc.); whereas bilingual education proponents claim that immersion education simply doesn’t work well, and risks failing kids in large numbers.  As those who read this blog are well aware, I recognize good features on both sides of the debate, and there are as many success stories for each side as there are abysmal failures.  I’ve long supported a decentralization of ELL policy so that schools can decide on a local level which policy best suits their own learners, as student backgrounds can often greatly predispose the learner to more or less success in one approach vs. the other.

This report from the LAUSD provides pretty damning information points for those who would argue for scrapping bilingual education.  While the theory behind bilingual education is sound, and there are plenty of examples of thriving bilingual ed. systems to point to (one of the best in the country is about 10 miles away from me), it is practically legendary for misapplications and poor implementation — a point which, frankly, I am often annoyed by the more frothing-at-the-mouth-type supporters’ stubborn refusal to even acknowledge.  While I’m sure that one can find plenty of immersion supporters who are equally self-delusional in regards to the program’s short-comings, at least from my own perch in academia, I have yet to see one.  The important question to ask oneself, however, is why are bilingual ed. supporters so unwavering in their faith and support for the system?  The theory’s good, but really…  are we ever that sure of anything, especially a system that has such epic (although, admittedly sporadic) failures?

Though the study didn’t determine why students were staying in English language programs for so long, researchers say schools may avoid moving English learners into mainstream classes to keep test scores high.

That’s only part of the dark part of ELL policy making, I’m afraid.  ELL learners can also be a cash cow of sorts.  Federal funding for ELL is based upon head count, and thus to a less-that-perfectly-ethical administrator, there would be incentive to keep students enrolled in the ELL program, even if that entails sabotaging student success.  I would not dare to suggest that such nefarious motives are widespread throughout the system, but the LAUSD study does make one think…

postscript:  I wanted to let it go, but I just can’t.  Behold, the dumbest excuse since Flip Wilson’s “the devil made me do it”:

Mary Campbell, who is in charge of English language learning programs at L.A. Unified, said students must learn English as well as the grade-level material to move into mainstream classes. That often takes longer than learning the language, she said.

It would be risible, if it were not so serious to the educational development of so many children.  As I’ve pointed out countless times in this blog, bilingual education backers tend to completely ignore or feign ignorance of immersion schools, which parents often shell out big $$$ to send their kids to*, which, in a total immersion environment teach classrooms of kids both language and content simultaneously with high success rates.  Successful bilingual schools, as well, keep their kids at grade level while teaching the language.  Ms. Campbell is merely making transparently ridiculous excuses for sub-standard job performance.  Honestly, if you’re not managing to teach the subject matter required, either your students have problems much more profound than their English proficiency level, or (more likely!) you’re falling down on the job…

*but there are also public and low-cost experimental versions — so the disparity in success rates is not necessarily due to purely socio-economic differences.

I sat on this one for awhile.  It was all over the news last weekend.

A Dallas police officer, just out of the academy and still under supervised training, ticketed a woman recently for leaving her drivers license at home, making an illegal U-turn, and being a “non-English speaking driver.” 

Basically, it’s all a storm in a teacup.  When I first saw the news, I was incredulous as everyone else, but upon examination this is merely a case of a rookie cop misreading the law….  not that the case isn’t being used by demagogues who want to use this as proof for deep-seated racism on the cop’s part.

As atrocious as it sounds for someone to be ticketed for driving sans English skills, the Dallas department issued both an apology and a perfectly reasonable explanation.  The cop apparently found the short hand charge “non-English speaking driver” on the pull down charges card, and was unaware that this charge was restricted to commercial vehicles (there is actually a federal regulation that drivers of commercial freight vehicles speak English, and there is a city ordinance in Dallas requiring taxi drivers and the like to speak English).  Upon investigation, the department found that the citation had mistakenly been issued to operators of private vehicles at least 39 times.  This sounds like a revision of the charges card and some training is in order, but this is hardly a smoking gun case of racism.  Most who are wailing the loudest about the case have a definite ax to grind.

While one can reasonably worry about the department’s lack of care and precision in issuing the citations, the law that officer was mistakenly misapplying (and has, by extension, come under attack) is quite justifiable.   Both the federal government and the municipality of Dallas have a vested interest in requiring operators of commercial and freight vehicles to understand both street signs and directives from police officers.  Given the arbitrary nature of licensing laws, the authorities that issue private vehicle operator licenses technically could assign any number of conditions for the privilege of being able to operate a vehicle on the public roads.   In other words, if the government wanted to restrict the roads to red headed lefties with lisps, they could.  In principle though, they try to restrict the conditions to factors that have direct impact on public safety.  If anyone could make a successful argument that private vehicle operators who lack basic English skills significantly increases the danger to the public, it probably would be illegal.  Personally, I don’t see much in the way of argument to that effect, though, which is why such stipulations are not likely to even exist in the U.S.  I can personally attest to the contrary, in fact, as I’ve driven in many an country where I’ve had no practical ability in the national language.

So, all in all, a major boo boo on the part of the Dallas PD, but no reason to panic over the possibilities of coming pogroms against Latinos across Texas…

No, I’m not kidding (although I sincerely wish I was)….  (via James Fallows at the Atlantic)

“obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think “Yes we can, Yes we can,” and proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally, as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose).

“[Japanese bloggers] give the following example:

:ほら、何落ち込んでいるんだよ。オバめよ、オバめ。

“Or, “Hey, why are you so down in the dumps? Cheer up, cheer up!”…

So…  The President’s name has been converted to the verb form, making it “obamu” [オバむ], but the use of katakana in the example sentence is telling, as it clearly indicates the foreign derivation.  This is not entirely a surprise, given that Obama is currently the English model of choice in Japan.  As strange as speeches peppered with “so let me be clear” would sound coming from a Japanese speaker, it still beats — hands-down — what my friends and neighbors in Japan were picking up from US TV during the Clinton impeachment.  Being asked to explain expressions like “earning her presidential knee-pads” to mystified students was not exactly a career high point for me….

The Japanese actually have quite a knack for linguistic innovation of this type, as any Japanophile will note.  They have very little reservations about adopting foreign words into the language, and then contracting them or adapting the meaning to their own purposes.  I believe I’ve pointed out before on this blog that the word “cunning” in Japanese has taken on the meaning of “cheating on exams.”

Ranked high in the list of disturbing TV pranks (and, frankly, Japanese shows comprise at least 80% of my top list!)…  The thought behind the prank is simply awesome in its simple effectiveness, yet somehow the brutal reality still managed to just sit badly with me.  I still had to laugh out loud when the action started, however…

If you don’t speak Japanese, don’t worry.  Just wait, and everything will become abundantly clear at the 43 second mark.

Your “quaint observations on life abroad” link of the day.  This blog is featured semi-regularly in the Telegraph (which means that I REALLY need to find myself a newspaper sponsor for my own blogging output!), and the author (a Ms. Josephine McDermott) has apparently been living in Shanghai since 2007.  Personally, I would like to hear much more about her experience working “at the Australian pub where they filmed Crocodile Dundee, in a town with 20 people,” but that’s probably just me.  The sad truth is, I’ve come to realize that at this point in my life, small town Aussie life is actually much more exotic to me than Shanghai…  Anyway, check out the link.  Her descriptions of daily life are worth a few minutes of your day… 

Via the Times Online…  Click the link and scroll to the bottom of the article for the goods on how to text cutsey messages in various (European) languages.  Very F1….

Because since mobiles began their steady march from the periphery of technology into our back pockets, the attendant menace of textspeak has been frightening the bejesus out of parents, teachers and correspondents to letters pages all over the land. Stories abound of students handing in essays written completely in SMS lingo, of children losing the ability to spell and, perhaps most insultingly to the younger generation, of them losing the ability to discern between situations when it’s appropriate to write abbreviated English and those when it isn’t.

btw- as for the part about “555″ being akin to “whimper” in Chinese, I’ll add that when talking to people in Thailand, as the number 5 is pronounced “ha,” “555″ is used to express laughter.  Very F1!!!

Just thought you should know….

The English Project - the Winchester-based group that is planning the first permanent English-language exhibition space, with a target opening in three or four years time - have come up with a lovely piece of PR: English Language Day. It’s 13 October. They hope to make it an annual event.

Yes, I’ve been out of it for awhile…

I think that what I experienced for the last couple months could be described as “blogging fatigue.”  I would look at my front-page, and just be struck by an incredible urge to do anything other than write…  Go figure…

It’s quite possible that one of the motivating impulses prohibiting me from constructive engagement on the blog was the fact that I’ve started work on my dissertation (finally!), an so any urge to write has recently been corralled towards that effort.  The goal is to be able to defend in early 2010, and to be employable thereafter.  The job search has already begun, and is occupying a surprising amount of my free time.  I’ll give details once we get to the more salient parts of job hunting, such as on-site interviews.

Anyway, I’ll do my best to pop my head in here regularly, although my blogging output is not likely to be daily, as was the case for much of the last couple years.  The dissertation needs to come first…