<div dir="ltr"><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><h1 itemprop="headline" id="headline" class="">New York Schools Struggle With New Rules to Help Students Learning English</h1>
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<p class=""><span class="" itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/elizabeth_a_harris/index.html" title="More Articles by ELIZABETH A. HARRIS"><span class="" itemprop="name">ELIZABETH A. HARRIS</span></a></span>MAY 8, 2016
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<span class="">Agata Majchrzak, a general
education teacher, left, works with third graders alongside Hallie
Sacca, who specializes in English as a new language, at Public School
160 in Brooklyn. The teaching setup meets new state requirements.</span>
<span class="" itemprop="copyrightHolder">
<span class="">Credit</span>
Jake Naughton for The New York Times </span>
<p class="">In a bright classroom at <a href="http://www.ps160k.com/Page/1" title="School's website">Public School 160</a> in Borough Park, Brooklyn, three teachers orbited 28 students, 21 of whom were still learning English.</p><p class="">One
teacher, trained to teach English as a new language, drew pictures to
go along with words on a whiteboard: a sweater next to “seamstress,” an
apple next to “farm.” A table by the door was littered with work sheets
about firefighters and teachers that included words in English, Chinese
and Uzbek, along with colorful pictures all the third graders could
understand.</p><p class="">This
is what a classroom for children learning English is supposed to look
like according to New York State’s new regulations, which cover
everything from how those students are identified to what kinds of
teachers they are entitled to.</p><p class="">The reality, however, is trailing far behind.</p><p class="">“I’m telling you, the whole city is out of compliance,” Evelyn DeJesus, a vice president at the <a href="http://www.uft.org/" title="Union website">United Federation of Teachers</a>, <a href="http://www.uft.org/news-stories/devil-details">said in a publication</a> put out by the New York City teachers’ union this year. “It’s like the Wild West out there.”</p><p class="">The
regulations are a broad effort to improve the academic standing and
progress of students learning English, who are far behind their peers.
Statewide, only 34 percent of them graduate on time, less than half the
rate for those who already speak the language. In New York City, more
than 10 percent of students are English language learners.</p>
<p class="" id="story-continues-1">Shamsun
Nahar, who came to the city from Bangladesh in 2013, said her elder son
was among those who needed the help: An 18-year-old student at a high
school in the Bronx, he still has difficulty with English, which has
left him socially isolated and could keep him from graduating on time.</p><p class="">“The
whole point of our struggling to be able to come here and raise our
family here, to leave everything behind, is primarily because of
education,” Ms. Nahar said through a translator at a South Asian
organization called <a href="http://www.drumnyc.org/" title="Organization website">DRUM</a>. Yet her son, she said, is “already being left behind.”</p>
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<span class="">Rows of dual-language books sit in a room in P.S. 160. Parents can take them home to read to their children.</span>
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<span class="">Credit</span>
Jake Naughton for The New York Times </span>
<p class="">Among
the most significant changes is that schools must now have an English
language teacher — like the woman drawing pictures at P.S. 160 — in the
classroom for part of each week if even one student is learning English.
In the past, students could receive English language instruction
outside of the classroom, while spending the rest of their time in a
regular class trying to puzzle out the words on their own.</p><p class="">Another
shift requires schools and districts to create programs in which
classes are taught in two languages. These bilingual programs will now
be offered to students who are new to the public system, as long as
there are enough children in one place who speak the same tongue.</p><p class="">But finding teachers who are both bilingual and licensed in relevant areas can be difficult.</p><p class="">Take
Bengali, for example. It is the fourth most common language among
pupils learning English in the city’s public schools. But there are only
three bilingual Bengali programs in the schools.</p><p class="">“I
have been talking to anybody who knows of a teacher who speaks the
language so we can recruit,” Milady Baez, a deputy chancellor in the
city’s <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/education_department_nyc/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the N.Y.C. Department of Education." class="">Education Department</a>, said with a hint of desperation. “It is very, very difficult.”</p><p class="">Ms.
DeJesus, of the teachers’ union, said she thought almost every city
school needed to hire one or two teachers, which would put the numbers
required in the “thousands.”</p><p class="">And
the new rules came with very little in the way of resources — $1
million for the entire state, which has left schools scrambling.</p>
<p class="" id="story-continues-2">Angelica Infante-Green, a deputy commissioner at the state’s <a href="http://www.nysed.gov/" title="Department website">Education Department</a>, said she did not yet know how many more teachers were needed.</p>
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<span class="">Margaret Russo, the principal of P.S. 160, said meeting the new state requirements was “a challenge for us.”</span>
<span class="" itemprop="copyrightHolder">
<span class="">Credit</span>
Jake Naughton for The New York Times </span>
<p class="">“There
is a shortage; we do understand there is a shortage,” Ms. Infante-Green
said. “This is the first year of the regulation and we’re not looking
to sanction anyone this year, but we expect people to be on track,” she
continued. “We expect kids to be getting as much of what they’re
entitled to as possible.”</p><p class="">The
administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has started 88
bilingual programs and hopes to offer at least 50 more beginning in fall
2017, Ms. Baez said. The city plans to spend $40 million to meet the
new requirements in the next school year.</p><p class="">Both
city and state education officials said they were working with colleges
and education schools to try to recruit more language teachers and, in
some cases, paying to get teachers licensed. But the shortage has been
building for years. Education officials and family advocates say that as
large failing schools were closed and replaced with smaller schools
during the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, many bilingual
programs disappeared because schools no longer had the number of
students necessary to sustain them.</p><p class="">Union
rules are also a hurdle: If teachers switch licenses to become English
language specialists, they lose their seniority, which could make them
vulnerable when a school trims its staff. City education and union
officials say they are discussing ways to change that.</p><p class="">At
P.S. 160, more than 1,000 of its 1,400 students are classified as
learning English. Most speak one of several Chinese dialects, but a
potpourri of other languages are spoken as well, including Uzbek,
Russian, Urdu and Arabic. One third grader, whose formal schooling has
been inconsistent, speaks Portuguese and Toisanese, a Chinese dialect.</p><p class="">Yet
P.S. 160 is probably far ahead of many schools because it had been
meeting some of the requirements before they came into effect. Teachers
of English as a new language were integrated into general education
classes, with more than 10 of them already on staff. The school also had
a full-time staff member coordinating the English language efforts.</p><p class="">Margaret
Russo, the school’s principal, said P.S. 160 still had to hire five
teachers of English as a new language to comply with the regulations.</p><p class="">“We were in a good place when this came down,” Ms. Russo said, “and it was still a challenge for us.”</p><p class="">NYTimes 5/9/16<br></p><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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