Scheduling's not rocket science but it sure seems that way.

Pissed Off Teacher has a student with a IEP: kid is doing math at a 3rd grade level and his IEP wants him to master math facts "and to be able to work with whole numbers, decimals and fractions." He is enrolled in Algebra.

Joanne Jacobs mentions that bilingual education didn't work ... "California’s bilingual education ban, which was supposed to lead to disaster, worked for Hispanic students ... Hispanic test scores on a range of subjects have risen since Prop. 227 became law."

What's the connection?

Students should master the basic material before moving on to more difficult material. If you shove them into a class they're not ready for and tell the teacher "Individualize the education", then you will ultimately fail.

Better to spend an entire year getting up to speed and then moving on than to struggle for years in half-assed placements.

English Immersion Example

IN a New York Times "Education Watch" article:

The Bilingual Debate: English Immersion
By Lance T. Izumi

Take, for example, Sixth Street Prep, a charter elementary school in eastern Los Angeles County. The school’s students are overwhelmingly Hispanic and low income. More than a third of the students, many of whom are recent arrivals, are learning English. Yet, among fourth graders, an astounding 100 percent of the students tested at the proficient level on the 2008 state math exam. A nearly equally amazing 93 percent of fourth graders tested proficient on the state English-language-arts exam. This incredible success was achieved using a different ingredient than the one favored by Mr. Obama.

Sixth Street emphasizes review and practice, constant assessment of skills and a no-excuses attitude. Furthermore, and here’s where Mr. Obama should take note, according to Linda Mikels, Sixth Street’s principal, the school’s instructional approach for English learners is “full immersion.” English immersion emphasizes the near-exclusive use of English in content instruction. Ms. Mikels, who opposes bilingual education, told me, “we’ve had tremendous success with having a student who is brand new from Mexico and you would walk into a classroom 12 months later and you wouldn’t be able to pick out which one he was.” “It’s working,” she observed, “it’s working for us.”

I wonder why that seems to be the exception rather than the rule? I can't see bi-lingual education being as effective - it certainly never was in my experience.

Let's define effective while we're at it. The students should walk in knowing only their own language and walk out speaking fluent, if accented, English. To put it another way, in two years or less an immigrant student should be able to function in an exclusively English setting whether it be a community college or trade school or sales position at a car dealership in Iowa.

How do you pack twelve years of English education into two? By doing it 6x as often per day, i.e., immersion.

Seems simple to me.

Once more into the Breach of Contract

I feel that we have a Contract with Students to teach them as much as possible. For ESL/ELL students, this means English. This country runs all it's systems in English, with a patchy cobweb of translated documents inhabiting the corners of our bureaucracy. Colleges are run in English. Businesses are run in English. Media are run in English. Laws are written in English and court cases are judged in English. (Sure, they're translated. Do you trust that translator with your freedom? What if he went to the same school you did and the same program and learned just as much?)

ASBJ: has an article about the struggles of ELL students to pass the state competency tests. The article is called "A Race Against Time" referring to the need to take tests soon after starting at school.

Butler estimates that a mid-level student, with average intelligence and moderate literacy in their home language, will be in ELL classes about seven years. Research shows it takes five to seven years to gain competency in English.

Which leads me to ask, "Why?" The answer is "Because they're not focusing on English."

The kid is in the US and will have to take tests in English. If he's a good student and works hard, he'll go to college - in English. Why are we teaching him math in Spanish or Vietnamese? Let him take all his time to learn English. No science. No math. No history. A class of grammar. A class of reading. Back to writing. Speaking and enunciation. A math class in English - one he has already mastered the math of and is taking for the English.

It is better to take a year off from math and science and history than to take four or seven more years to learn English. He's already at the ninth or tenth grade in math skills. He'll not lose that. His math skills are probably better than his classmates' anyway because his old math teachers didn't mess around with calculators and group learning and fuzzy math. (Yes, it's a stereotype but the reality is too often true to that stereotype. Remember the South Park episode where the Mexican day laborers teach math better than Mr. Garrison? priceless.)

As a final point, look at the language program at Middlebury College or any competent college. Total Immersion. Why? It's the best way.

Here are your choices to use the time he's got:
A) Math and science classes in which the language problem will limit him to maybe a half year of progress and lots of time staring at the wall.
B) English classes in which he'll make several years of progress, which will then allow him to take those math and science classes NEXT year.

Nevertheless, Georgia requires high school students to take the district’s graduation exams after they have been enrolled for only one year, beginning in 10th grade. Norcross’ ELL students struggle to pass any of the seven required subjects, particularly the writing exam.

I'll bet many of them pass the math tests anyway.

English, and Bilingual education.

For generations, the French have fiercely guarded their language against the horreurs anglais. But France's education minister yesterday admitted for the first time that the secret to success is speaking better English. Xavier Darcos claimed poor English is now a 'handicap' because all international business is conducted in the language, and said French schools would offer extra lessons during the holidays. He also admitted that, because of globalisation, very few people outside France will being able to speak French in the future.

Daily Mail link

Can we now extend that to this country? How many businesses can you get a job with if you only speak Spanish? How many US colleges will award a degree if the student only speaks Chinese? How many stores, restaurants, policemen, neighbors, and other daily conversationalists will be able to deal a friend who only speaks Vietnamese?

Can we admit finally that the use of English is the biggest key to success in this country and that putting off the learning of English is more damaging to the future of a student than probably anything else? Can we understand that allowing a kid to get through high school without a clear command of English is essentially committing him to a life of only watching Telemundo and only getting jobs in businesses that cater exclusively to Hispanics - a vanishingly small portion of the job market.

So why do we still insist that every ESL ELL (English Language Learner, because we all know that changing what we call them makes all the difference) student get a bilingual education? All students who can't speak English should get 7 straight periods of English. Nothing else. This phase might even take a couple of months. It's called a crash course and it's effective.

When they get enough to make it in a math class, add one. When they can handle a social studies class at an ESL-level, do it.

Think back to your own time - you took one class of French and then everything else in English. How much did you learn? Maybe enough to not get lost the Metro but nowhere near enough to matriculate at the Sorbonne. Giving them one period of English and six other courses taught in Spanish, knowing they're going home to a home that doesn't speak English and knowing he's surrounded with friends who also don't speak any English? That's just prolonging the time until that kid learns the language. It may even be too late.

Try going to any other country and demand that people teach you in English - oh, wait, they all know enough English that you can get by.

But then, what do I know?