New York: on different pages with bilingual education

[Harold F. Schiffman]

NYTimes, February 14, 2007
On Education

On Different Pages With Bilingual Education

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

When Lafayette High School in Brooklyn was ordered last year to begin
shutting down, condemned as an educational failure, Steve Chung stood
ready with a plan for what might come next. The city Education Department
had decreed that Lafayettes building, in Bensonhurst, would be converted
into several new, small schools, and Mr. Chung envisioned one of them
serving the neighborhoods large population of Chinese immigrants.
Lafayette, after all, had about 650 students, a majority of them Chinese,
who were entitled to bilingual or English as a Second Language classes. A
consent order from a federal court, the outcome of a lawsuit claiming bias
against Asian-Americans at the school, had put pressure on Lafayette to
provide those services.

Several Lafayette administrators and teachers joined Mr. Chung, the
president of a Chinese-American community association, in devising a
proposal for a school specializing in international studies and submitting
it to the department. At a public meeting, residents of the neighborhood
lauded it. Meetings with department officials, he said, went amicably and
productively. Then, a few weeks ago, the department announced its plan for
restructuring Lafayette, which now has about 2,100 students, beginning in
September 2007. It would contain three new schools one emphasizing sports
management, another focusing on film and music, and a third offering
expeditionary learning under the aegis of Outward Bound. None will offer
bilingual instruction, at least at the outset.

This is an absolutely unacceptable choice, Mr. Chung said. These three
schools have nothing to do with our community. Theyre forcing the
immigrant students out of their own neighborhood. New York is an immigrant
city, but I think the education policy is not for us. Several miles to the
east, in East Flatbush, something remarkably similar was happening at
Samuel J. Tilden High School, which serves roughly 2,400 students. Like
Lafayette, Tilden will be dismantled beginning next fall, and replaced by
a collection of small schools. Like Lafayette, Tilden has a large
population of immigrant pupils, about 250, many from Haiti. That critical
mass allowed Tilden to operate a bilingual program in Creole, and its
students outperformed peers at comparable schools on various standardized
tests.

The new version of Tilden, however, will have one high school run by
Outward Bound and another, called the It Takes a Village Academy, that
says it will prepare students for college and meaningful careers while
fostering an appreciation for diverse languages and cultures. At best,
according to the departments own projections, those schools will take in a
total of 50 English-language learners, as students entitled to bilingual
or E.S.L. classes are officially known, despite the heavy presence of
Haitian and African immigrants in the surrounding neighborhood. Tildens
current immigrant students will continue in the school until its complete
shutdown. Education involves trade-offs; it always does, said John
Lawhead, who has taught English as a Second Language at Tilden for three
years. But those trade-offs, in breaking up the big high schools, should
be discussed publicly so you know whats being lost as well as whats being
gained.

In the trade-off for the closing of Lafayette and Tilden, with the net
loss of about 800 places in bilingual and E.S.L. classes, the Education
Department has announced the opening of only one small school geared to
immigrant pupils in the entire borough. And even now, less than two weeks
before eighth graders throughout the city must submit their applications
to high schools, the department has not revealed the location of that
school, the Multicultural High School. For all any parent or child knows
at this point, it could be anywhere from Bay Ridge to Brownsville. The
recent decisions about Lafayette and Tilden provide the latest flashpoints
for months of friction between the Education Department and immigrant
families and their advocates. It is a deeply paradoxical confrontation,
because many immigrants express support for the trend toward small high
schools. They approvingly cite the departments own statistics, which show
that students in small schools have better promotion and graduation rates
than those in large schools.

Their complaint, though, is that those schools with the notable exception
of eight International Network schools that are aimed specifically at
immigrant pupils neither seek nor welcome students who need bilingual and
E.S.L. classes. That accusation emerged last fall in a report by the New
York Immigration Coalition and Advocates for Children. It is likely to
re-emerge this Friday, when the City Councils Education Committee holds
public hearings on the small-schools policy. Education Department
officials dispute the accusation. According to their statistics,
immigrants form a higher share of students in small high schools (12.9
percent) than in all high schools (11.2 percent). With the International
Network schools removed, the department says, immigrant pupils are
slightly underrepresented in small schools. The immigration coalitions
report concluded that the gap was substantially larger.

WE love the fact that the argument and criticism has moved from opposing
small schools to asking us to build more and open more, said Jemina R.
Bernard, the chief operating officer for the Education Departments office
of new schools. But when it came to discussing the educational options for
immigrant pupils, Ms. Bernard used a phrase slow and steady that few would
associate with the departments creation of 200 small schools in less than
five years. What slow and steady translates to, in practice, she
acknowledged, is a rule that any new school gets a two-year waiver before
it even tries to establish a bilingual or dual-language program. And even
after two years, few small schools will ever reach the critical mass of
students eligible for a bilingual or dual-language class with a certified
teacher.

Rather, the immigrant pupils in most small schools receive E.S.L.
instruction, which may be a brief session, as short as 15 or 30 minutes,
for a small group, or some extra attention in the classroom from a teacher
unlicensed in E.S.L. To try to remedy the situation, the department has
recently begun offering grants to small schools to pay a full-time E.S.L.
teacher. As for the specific decisions about Lafayette, Ms. Bernard called
the plan for an international studies school an incredibly strong
proposal. She suggested it might be approved at a later time for a
different site. The reconfigured Tilden, she said, has enough unused space
to accommodate more than the two small schools scheduled to open next
fall.

Meanwhile, uncertainty will continue for the thousands of immigrant pupils
not just in Brooklyn but throughout the city wherever big high schools are
being closed and small ones are opening without comparable services. Its a
very crazy way theyre doing this, said Deycy Avitia, a specialist in
education reform at the New York Immigration Coalition. Were talking about
students and parents. Were not talking about Monopoly pieces.

E-mail: sgfreedman at nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/education/14education.html?ref=education

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