No Child Left Behind? Say It in Spanish

[Harold F. Schiffman]

December 16, 2007
No Child Left Behind? Say It in Spanish

By FORD FESSENDEN

AS school enrollment for Hispanic children declines in New York City and
in other urban areas around the metropolitan region, school districts in
dozens of outlying suburbs are adding seats and bilingual programs to
address a sharp increase in the number of Hispanic students whose parents
are immigrants. Four out of five school districts in the region have
gained Hispanic students since 2000, according to enrollment figures
compiled by the states. By last year, 478 of New Jerseys 595 districts had
bilingual programs, up 5 percent from the previous year.

Immigrants are skipping over the urban experience, and thats something
thats quite new, said Nicholas V. Montalto, chairman of the board of
directors of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, a group that works
on behalf of immigrants. Immigrant integration now is happening in the
suburbs. On the front lines of that integration are suburban schools.
Census data from 2006 show that the Hispanic population under 15 has grown
by 17 percent in the 19 suburban counties closest to New York City, while
the white population in that age group has fallen 10 percent.

The suburban baby boom now is Hispanic, said William H. Frey, a
demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. At one time you
had whites moving to Levittown, and now weve got Hispanic suburbanites
helping to populate the schools and starting the family networks that had
been missing for a while as the whites aged. Why is this occurring? Mr.
Frey said. Some of it is parents looking for better schools, just like in
past immigrant waves. But what really drives it is where the jobs are and
where cheap housing is.

An analysis of census data shows a steady growth in the number of Hispanic
residents with school-age children in towns and suburbs, like the Town of
Dover in Morris County, N.J., and the hamlets of Brentwood and Copiague on
Long Island, and in hundreds of small municipalities in Westchester and
New Jersey. At the same time, enrollment of Hispanic students was on the
decline in places like Jersey City and Camden, Bridgeport in Connecticut
and Hempstead on Long Island, from 2000 to 2005, the census data shows.

Several predominantly white communities, like Mount Pleasant in
Westchester, Plainedge on Long Island and Bethel in Connecticut, have seen
school enrollment of Hispanic students whose parents are immigrants double
in the last five years. Its a population increase that we did not expect,
and it just grows and grows, said Alfred Lodovico, the superintendent in
the Mount Pleasant Central School District, where the number of Hispanic
students increased to 109 in 2005, from 52 in 2000.

The changing demographics is raising questions in some school districts
about how to best meet the needs of young Hispanic children, in the
classroom, and within the school community.

These students have a different preparation and different cultural
background, said Miriam M. E. Garcia, the executive director of Adelante
of Suffolk County, a social services agency that provides services to
Hispanic residents in Suffolk. The districts dont know what to do with
them.

In Randolph, a township of almost 25,000 in the hills of Morris County in
New Jersey, school officials and residents expect their public schools to
score well in statewide rankings and for students to perform well on
standardized tests. About five years ago, there was concern that one of
the schools four elementary schools, Fernbrook, was lagging far behind in
the standings. Our district is high performing, said Christine Carey,
president of the Randolph school board. Out of the four elementary
schools, Fernbrook was noticeably lower.

The school, which has prekindergarten through fifth-grade classes, wasnt
doing so well on state tests, with passing rates in the 60s and 70s
instead of the 90-plus numbers posted by the districts other schools.
Fernbrook seemed to be struggling to reach many new children of
immigrants, especially Hispanics.

While the other three schools had seen little or no change in their mostly
white enrollments, the number of Hispanic students at Fernbrook had
doubled in five years, and there was concern that lower achievement had
become chronic.

The community was getting frustrated, and the idea taking root was that
Randolph is great, but then you have Fernbrook, said the principal,
Deborah Grefe.

Two years ago, the district hired a superintendent, Max R. Riley, partly
on the strength of his record improving the performance of minority
students. Mr. Riley, who had previously led the school district in
Lawrence, N.J., in Mercer County, where there is a significant Hispanic
population, told the board it had to invest in Fernbrook to help get the
results that school officials were seeking.

Last year, even though the district faced a $3 million budget shortfall,
the board hired more teachers at Fernbrook, including one who spoke
Spanish. While jobs were cut in the administrative office, Mrs. Grefe
hired a literacy coach for teachers to show them some new strategies to
help students who were behind in reading. Mrs. Grefe initiated evening
programs in Spanish and urged parents to attend.

What the school board has to buy is it costs more to educate some kids,
and its going to cost more to educate immigrants, Mr. Riley said. Once you
accept that, everything falls into place.

With homeowners complaining about already high property taxes and many
school districts struggling to close budget gaps, not all school districts
are capable of providing the resources that Randolph concluded were
necessary to help raise performance in those classrooms with children in
need of extra services.

There will be more resources that will be required for these students, and
the fact is, in New Jersey especially, the community pays the lions share
of the costs, said Frank Belluscio, director of communications for the New
Jersey School Boards Association. This is going to strain the entire
system, and there will have to be some hard choices.

He said he hoped that state aid formulas, which the governor has proposed
rewriting, would help funnel more money to districts facing increasing
numbers of children of immigrants.

In some towns, the challenges that go along with the increase in
enrollment may test the suburban education paradigm of small districts and
high taxes.

It will challenge peoples fundamental values about what theyre willing to
invest in the school system, said Chung-Hwa Hong, the executive director
of the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella organization of
immigrant-advocacy groups. Its one thing if its your kid, but if its not
your kid, or kids that look like you, people dont want to pay for it.

LIKE many suburbs, Randolphs identity is tied to the high performance of
its schools. If you ask anyone why they moved to Randolph, they would say
because the education is very good and the athletic program is very good,
said Alfredo Z. Matos, 49, a school board member.

The perception of quality is closely associated with scores on tests
mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law. That law has also forced
schools to make sure that subgroups, like Hispanic students, do well. If
not, the schools are publicly branded as failures.

And, as in most middle-class suburban communities, property values are
closely tied to the perceptions and performance of the towns public
schools. There is a lot of talk about property values, Ms. Carey said.
Some people think thats where your property value is, in the quality of
the schools.

Carmen Perez-Hogan, a consultant and former coordinator of the office of
bilingual education in the New York State Department of Education, said
the nexus of scores and property values can make immigration a flash
point.

If the district starts to feel that their scores are being affected, or
the quality of the school is being affected, then residents worry whether
the value of their property is being affected, and that plays a great role
in whether there is a reaction to immigration, she said.

When Mr. Riley arrived in Randolph two years ago and was asked to improve
Fernbrook, he asked the school board president to give Fernbrooks
principal the support and freedom, in addition to more resources, to help
raise scores. Besides the literacy coach and more outreach, class size in
kindergarten and first and second grades was reduced and set at 15, while
it was 22 at the other three elementary schools. Computer laboratories
were cut at the other schools, but retained at Fernbrook. A full-time
social worker was added, and the schools reading specialist was made a
full-time position; the other schools continued with part-timers.

These kids come in with half the vocabulary of middle-class kids, said
Mrs. Grefe, the principal. We have six different categories of kids in
terms of vocabulary, and they each get different instruction. The group
with the lowest skills gets a half-hour every day with the reading
specialist.

Mrs. Grefe speaks Spanish. That has helped with another problem that Mr.
Riley, and other superintendents around the region, say they must solve:
getting hard-working, culturally and linguistically isolated parents
involved. Mrs. Grefe organized events and programs for parents at the
school, including an evening called Noche Latina, and called every
Spanish-speaking parent to attend.

In Colombia, the school is supposed to teach you, and the parents dont get
involved, said Gustavo Roman, 44, a maintenance supervisor for a
Parsippany chemical company whose children attend the Randolph schools.
American people take it a little different. Here, the school is supposed
to teach you, but the parents are supposed to help.

Mr. Roman got a high school education in South America, but he works three
jobs, 12 hours a day, six days a week. He bought a house in Randolph 10
years ago so his son could attend the schools. His daughter is in second
grade, and his wife works only part time so she can be involved with the
childrens schoolwork, he said.

Marisol Giraldo, a Colombian immigrant, moved to Randolph from Dover after
a divorce five years ago, when her son was entering kindergarten. They
have many programs at the school to help you to be a good parent, Ms.
Giraldo said. She rents a $900 apartment near Fernbrook, and works as a
human resources assistant in Parsippany. Its very hard because you have to
work and at the same time be a parent, but they provide programs at
Fernbrook for parents that work all day.

Everyone involved said they believed Mrs. Grefes strategies were working.
Test scores in third grade have increased steadily since 2004, and are now
in the 90s. Fourth-grade tests are up in 2007, but they have been up and
down since 2003. And the effects of reducing class sizes wont be seen
until the younger students take the third-grade tests starting this year.

We have a way to go, said Mr. Matos, who is serving his first term on the
school board. Mr. Matos, an executive with an international company, is
Puerto Rican, and lives in the Fernbrook area. We have brought the grades
up, but we have to continue to work. I just dont want to lose our good
reputation. Its hard to go up, its easy to go down.

For Mrs. Carey, the school board president, the victory so far is that
there had not yet been political repercussions.

We thought wed hear questions like, Why is Fernbrook getting lower class
sizes and were losing our computer labs? she said. We waited to hear the
complaints, but there was no backlash.

I think as long as the scores stay high, we wont have any problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/16Rschool.html

***********************************************************************************

N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal.

***********************************************************************************