US: Proposed ELL Guidelines Criticized as Too Rigid

[Francis Hult]

Via lgpolicy...

Proposed ELL Guidelines Criticized as Too Rigid
By Mary Ann Zehr


Education officials in several states with large
English-language-learner populations are bristling at a proposal by
the U.S. Department of Education that they say would curb their
flexibility in deciding when children are fluent in English and if
they still need special services for ells. The comment period closed
June 2 on the proposed "interpretation" of Title III of the No Child
Left Behind Act, the main conduit of federal funds for
English-language-acquisition programs, generating a two-inch stack of
responses to the proposal published in the Federal Register on May 2.
("Consistent ELL Guides Proposed," May 14, 2006.) The responses
include critical or skeptical comments from officials in states with
some of the largest populations of English-learners, particularly
California, Florida, Illinois, and Texas.

Education Department officials have said that a goal of the proposed
interpretation is to create more consistency in how the federal
education law is implemented for English-language learners. If made
final as now written, the guidance is intended to reduce some
variations among states, and among school districts within states in
how they report the progress of students in learning English. Elissa
Leonard, an Education Department spokeswoman, said in an e-mail
message that the department expects to publish a final version of the
interpretation by the end of the summer and a timetable for
implementation will be included in that notice. She said the
department had received 73 comments-23 of them are from states.

Full story:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/06/11/41interpret.h27.html?print=1

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