[lg policy] Illinois Board Votes to Require Bilingual Ed. in Preschool

[Harold Schiffman]

Illinois Board Votes to Require Bilingual Ed. in Preschool
By Mary Ann Zehr on June 25, 2010 8:35 AM |

Update: Matthew Vanover, a spokesman for the Illinois state board of
education, has a few corrections on the following blog post. He said
that the new rules adopted by the board do not call for the
superintendent of Illinois to identify the screening mechanism for
preschool students. Rather, school districts will select the screening
procedures, as long as they meet certain criteria. Second, Vanover
said I chose the wrong verb to describe the action that the Joint
Committee on Administrative Rules will take on the rules. I had said
the joint committee would need to "approve" them to go into effect.
Vanover explained that the joint committee can either issue an
objection to the rules or not object. If the committee doesn't object,
the state board of education will file the rules with the Illinois
secretary of state and they go into effect.

Lastly, Vanover said that my post should have pointed out that the
Illinois state legislature made a change in state law, effective Jan.
1, 2009, that extended the category of "children of
limited-English-speaking ability," or ELLs, in regular public schools
to include 3- and 4-year-olds. That's what prompted the state board of
education to create rules that clarified how that change in the law
should be implemented.

Orginal blog post:

The Illinois State Board of Education yesterday unanimously adopted
regulations that will require all public preschools in the state to
identify any children who have limited proficiency in English and
provide transitional bilingual education for them. The Joint Committee
on Administrative Rules in Illinois will still have to approve the
rules for them to go into effect. I wrote about the proposed rules for
EdWeek in April.

Should the rules go into effect, and I expect now they likely will, it
is believed that Illinois will have the most prescriptive rules in the
nation for English-language learners in preschool.

Mary Ann Fergus, a spokeswoman for the board, sent me an e-mail
confirming that the rules had been approved. She included an analysis
of the rules (on pages 169-201) that were among documents provided for
a meeting of the board June 23 and 24. (The actual rules are on pages
202-240.)

The adopted rules say public preschools will have to use a screening
test chosen by the state's superintendent to assess whether children
have limited English skills. They require that any preschool teachers
who teach in a transitional bilingual education program have
certification to do so by July 1, 2014. They mandate that any school
attendance center with an enrollment of 20 or more English-language
learners who speak the same language be provided with a program of
transitional bilingual education.

The phrase, "transitional bilingual education," commonly refers to a
program in which students are taught some subjects in their native
language while also using English. The rules say that under the
umbrella of transitional bilingual education, preschools may implement
bilingual programs that are often known as two-way immersion programs.
In such programs, students who are dominant in English and students
who speak another native language learn both languages in the same
classroom.

The board also adopted a rule that sets a cut-off score on the state's
English-language proficiency test to be the deciding factor for when
an English-language learner is determined to no longer need special
help to learn the language. Currently, school districts can use a
higher cut-off score than recommended by the state as well as
additional criteria to decide when an English-language learner should
leave special programs. The rule says that districts must use only the
state-established cut-off score, which will be determined by the
state's superintendent, but doesn't spell out what that score is.

If you're interested in issues about best practices for the education
of preschoolers who speak a language other than English at home, join
us for a free Web chat on that subject on Tuesday, June 29, between 2
p.m. and 3 p.m., Eastern time. Barbara Bowman, the chief early
childhood education officer for Chicago Public Schools and a founder
of the Erikson Institute, will be the guest. I'll be the moderator.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2010/06/illinois_board_votes_to_requir.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,
and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message.
 A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman,
Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list