Demand for English Lessons Outstrips Supply

[Harold F. Schiffman]

New York Times,  February 27, 2007

Demand for English Lessons Outstrips Supply

By FERNANDA SANTOS

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y.  Two weeks after she moved here from her native Brazil,
Maria de Oliveira signed up for free English classes at a squat storefront
in this working-class suburb, figuring that with an associates degree and
three years as an administrative assistant, she could find a good job in
America so long as she spoke the language. The woman who runs the classes
at Mount Vernons Workforce and Career Preparation Center added Ms.
Oliveiras name to her pink binder, at the bottom of a 90-person waiting
list that stretched across seven pages. That was in October. Ms. Oliveira,
26, finally got a seat in the class on Jan.  16.

I keep wondering how much more Id know if I hadnt had to wait so long, she
said in Portuguese. As immigrants increasingly settle away from large
urban centers New Yorks suburbs have had a net gain of 225,000 since 2000,
compared with 44,000 in the city many are waiting months or even years to
get into government-financed English classes, which are often overcrowded
and lack textbooks. A survey last year by the National Association of
Latino Elected and Appointed Officials found that in 12 states, 60 percent
of the free English programs had waiting lists, ranging from a few months
in Colorado and Nevada to as long as two years in New Mexico and
Massachusetts, where the statewide list has about 16,000 names.

The United States Department of Education counted 1.2 million adults
enrolled in public English programs in 2005 about 1 in 10 of the 10.3
million foreign-born residents 16 and older who speak English less than
very well, or not at all, according to census figures from the same year.
Federal money for such classes is matched at varying rates from state to
state, leaving an uneven patchwork of programs that advocates say nowhere
meets the need. We have a lot of folks who need these services and who go
unserved, said Claudia Merkel-Keller of the New Jersey Department of Labor
and Workforce Development, noting that her state has waiting lists in
every county, from beginner all the way through proficient level. New
Jersey, like New York and many other states, does not keep statewide
figures on how many people are on waiting lists. Luis Sanchez, 47, a
Peruvian truck driver for a beer distributor in New Brunswick, has been in
this country 10 years and on the waiting list for English classes in Perth
Amboy five months. You live from day to day, waiting to get the call that
you can come to class, Mr. Sanchez said in Spanish, explaining that he
knew a little English but wanted to improve his writing skills so he could
apply for better jobs. I keep on waiting.

Mr. Sanchez is unlikely to get the call soon: Perth Amboys Adult Education
Center recently discovered that it was operating in the red and canceled 9
of its 11 evening classes in English as a second language, including all
at beginner and intermediate levels. In Orange County, N.Y., where the
immigrant population doubled in the past 16 years, the Board of
Cooperative Education Services adult education program has stopped
advertising for fear its already overflowing beginner classes will be
overwhelmed. In Framingham, Mass., 20 miles west of Boston, hundreds of
people used to spend the night in line to register for English as a second
language, so the program now selects students by picking handwritten names
from a big plastic box. With the lottery, everyone has the same chance,
said Christine Taylor Tibor, director of Framinghams Adult E.S.L. Plus
program. Unfortunately, you might have to enter the lottery several times
before you get in.

Census figures show that in the United States there were 32.6 million
foreign-born residents 18 years or older in 2005, up about 18 percent from
the 27.5 million counted in 2000 (and nearly twice the 17.1 million in
1990). Federal spending on adult education, about $580 million last year,
has increased 23 percent since 2000 and more than tripled since 1990; some
45 percent of the money is devoted to English. But financing varies widely
across the states, which are required to allocate at least one quarter of
what was provided by the federal government: Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma,
South Dakota and Texas spent the minimum in 2003, according to the
Education Department, while California and Connecticut each spent about
seven times that. In New York, the state Education Department added $76
million to the federal governments $43 million for the 2005 fiscal year.
That year, according to a recent report by the Center for an Urban Future,
a nonprofit research group based in Manhattan, there were about 86,500
people enrolled in government-sponsored adult programs for English as a
second language, serving about 5 percent of the states 1.6 million adults
with limited English skills.

Last fall, Arizona voters approved an initiative banning illegal
immigrants from benefiting from all state-financed programs, including
English instruction; administrators of English-as-a-second-language
classes in several other states said they do not check for documentation
when registering students and thus do not know how many of them may be in
the country illegally. Advocates for more English classes say the
state-federal financing split leaves an adult education system whose
quality and reach vary widely from place to place and is lacking most
everywhere. Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, where the immigrant
population has tripled since 1990, largely because of an influx of
Mexicans, sponsored a bill last year that would have given legal
immigrants $500 vouchers to pay for English classes since so many of the
free ones were full.

Most education policy is the prerogative of state and local governments,
but I would argue that the prerogative to help people learn our common
language is a federal responsibility, said Senator Alexander, a Republican
who was education secretary under the first President George Bush. If we
make it easier for people to learn English, they will learn it. I think
that ought to be a priority of our government, and I dont think it has
been. The government-financed classes are most often run by school
districts or worker training centers and generally require only a
registration fee of perhaps $10. Libraries, churches and community centers
often also provide free or inexpensive classes, like the English Language
Institute at Westchester Community College in Valhalla, N.Y., which offers
nine levels of instruction for $76 to $247 per three-month session. Then
there are private programs like the one at Pace University in
Pleasantville, N.Y., which costs $790 for two classes a week for 14 weeks.

With immigrants accounting for half of the growth in the nations labor
force from 1990 and 2000, and expected to make up all of the growth in the
two decades to come, the issue of English proficiency has become an issue
of economic development, said Tara Colton, the author of the Center for an
Urban Future report. Indeed, some business owners, frustrated at the lack
of low-cost classes, have begun teaching immigrants English at work. At
Skyline Furniture Manufacturing Inc. in Thornton, Ill., a suburb of
Chicago, about half of the companys 60 employees have learned English at
the factory over the past five years, under a state program in which the
government pays to bring teachers to work sites if companies pay workers
for the hours in class. It makes sense to us because our workers can do
their jobs better, and it makes sense to them because they can advance in
their jobs, said Cinthia Nowakowski, the plants manager, adding that three
of the companys eight foremen were promoted after completing the program.
Besides, its convenient. The guys dont have to worry about having to
arrange transportation to get to school or getting there and finding that
theres no room in the class.

In Newburgh, N.Y., an Orange County town where one in five of the 29,000
residents are immigrants, Blanca Saravia has amassed an impressive
portfolio of odd jobs since arriving from Honduras in 2004: gas station
attendant, office janitor, cooks helper, and, for the last 14 months,
packager at a local nail-polish factory. Speaking in her native Spanish,
Ms. Saravia said that she has been able to get by with co-workers
translating, but that when the boss gives orders, I dont understand. So
earlier this month, Ms. Saravia joined 30 others in a cramped classroom
learning to conjugate the verb to be as part of the adult English program
in Orange County, where the immigrant population doubled in the last
decade and the number of free English classes has jumped to 26 from 2 in
1995.

If I tell her, We're full, come back in a couple of months, chances are
she'll get discouraged and never come back, said Ramon Santos, who runs
the Newburgh program. Carl DeJura, director of adult basic education at
Brookdale Community College in Long Branch, N.J., said he has lately
crammed as many as 40 students into a class double what it should be. If
you have to cut back on textbooks, supplies and materials to serve the
people who need it, he said, thats what you do. In Mount Vernon, Haitian,
Chinese, Somali, Arab, Mexican and Brazilian students flock to the
beginner class each morning at 8:30 before heading out to work or to look
for work. Ahmed Al Saidi, 49, who works at a gas station and moved from
Yemen in 1994, said in halting English that he wants to learn the language
for better work and to talk to people when I go to the store.

Ms. Oliveira, the immigrant from Brazil, said she still knows too little
English to venture into the marketplace; her husband, who is American born
and supports the couple financially, encouraged her to enroll in the
classes, held five mornings a week. I hope that when Im speaking a little
better, Ill be able to find a job where I can use the English I learned
here and the skills I have from back home, she said in Portuguese. When I
was on the waiting list, there were times I thought this time would never
come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/education/27esl.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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