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Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
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Past Educational Opportunity Reports
UCR legislative forum focuses on English-language learners
The Press- Enterprise - April 11, 2008
By Elanie Regus
Experts joined educators Friday to discuss the challenges faced by English-language learners in California schools and what can be done about it.
The lack of adequate education for the growing number of kindergarten to high school students who don't speak English has major implications not only for the individuals but for the economic future of the state, experts say.
"This is not a Latino issue, this is a California issue," Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said in her opening remarks at the legislative forum at UC Riverside.
It was the second in a series of events Romero and Assemblyman Joe Coto, D-San Jose, chairman of the Latino Legislative Caucus, are holding to find ways the Legislature can help promote and improve education.
Sophie Fanelli, a UCLA researcher, highlighted results of one of three educational opportunity reports released last year that showed for every 100 students enrolled as high school freshmen in 2002, only 66 graduated four years later and only 13 went on to a four-year public university.
California lags other states not only in high school graduation and college-going rates, but it has among the largest class sizes and fewest high school counselors per student, Fanelli said.
Her colleague, Jaime Del Razo, said the opportunity gap was even wider for young Latinos, who represent 48 percent of all kindergarten through high school students in California, and wider still at the 90 California high schools with the highest concentrations of Spanish-speaking, English-language learners.
A panel of local educators offered a variety of ideas to help close the gap including:
Training teachers and administrators to better understand the needs of students who are learning English.
Recruiting more diverse, bilingual schoolteachers.
Universities need more diverse senior faculty, especially female faculty of color.
School principals need more time and flexibility to apply resources where they are needed.
Extend instruction time after school or on weekends for English-language learners.
Teachers and parents need to be advocates for students.
Classes should be taught based on student needs, not on what teachers want.
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