Parents learn how to monitor their child’s language progress at workshops run by the Parent Organization Network.
Parents learn how to monitor their child’s language progress at workshops run by the Parent Organization Network.
Yosadara Carbajal Salmeron has always been a very engaged parent, even when her children were in Head Start.
She volunteered in classrooms from elementary school through middle school and was registered on the parent committee.
But Carvajal-Salmeron understands that the children attending Pomona Unified are still considered English learners years after they leave school, and how that affects them. I hadn’t. Then one day, she received a notification that her son had been reclassified as fluent and proficient in English during her eighth grade year.
Her first question was, “Why isn’t my daughter reclassified?”
Carvajal Salmeron’s daughter Mia Miron was younger and had never learned to speak Spanish fluently, in part because she always spoke English with her brother.
“I didn’t understand,” Carvajal Salmeron said in Spanish. “My son is the eldest and only spoke Spanish when he started school. But if her daughter had a harder time learning Spanish, why was she still learning English? Is that so?”
Parents of English learners are often unaware of their children’s progress in learning the language, advocates say. Parent organization networkbased in Los Angeles.
The group has launched a campaign to help parents learn how to monitor their children’s progress and advocates for changes to how school districts communicate information to families.
Students are classified as English learners when they enter school if their parents speak a language other than English at home and they speak a language other than English. California English Proficiency Assessment (Elpac). English learners must continue to take tests every year until they become proficient in English. meet other requirements, meeting grade level on state standardized tests in English language arts, and more. At that point, they are reclassified as “fluent in English.”
As long as a student is classified as an English learner, they will be required to take English language development classes in addition to their regular coursework. If students are not placed in classes before entering middle school or high school, their language classes will take up too much of their schedule, they will not be able to take as many electives as other students, and they will not have access to academic content in other classes. It may disappear.
Araceli Simeon, executive director of the Parent Organization Network, said parents often rely on report cards to monitor their children’s academic progress. “If they’re getting A’s and B’s, I don’t look at anything else,” she says.
School districts are required to send information about their child’s progress on ELPAC to parents of English learners each year, but the report is often mailed separately from the child’s report card. Even if parents receive a score, they don’t necessarily understand what it means or what their child needs to do to be reclassified.
In addition, more and more school districts are using online portals to share state standardized test scores in reading, math and English proficiency, Simeon said. These portals can often be difficult to navigate for parents who don’t speak English or aren’t familiar with technology.
“If you don’t know how to get through it, you could go years without receiving notes on your child’s test progress,” Simeon says.
Last year, Parent Organization Network staff trained more than 80 parents in three districts: Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified, and Pomona Unified.
During one of those trainings, Carvajal Salmeron learned for the first time about the process by which students are reclassified.
“For the first time, someone explained to me that there are exams that you have to take once a year that you have to learn how to write, listen, speak, and read. For example, my daughter’s reading level is 3. My teachers never told me that I had a grade of 2 on my essay. No one told me that,” Carvajal Salmeron said.
Maribel Bautista is another parent who received the training. She has 14-year-old triplets at Long Beach Unified. All three children were classified as English learners when they entered kindergarten because their families spoke Spanish at home. Bautista said that when she received reports in English about how her triplets were doing, she assumed that it was not learning the language itself, but the art of English language.
When Ms. Bautista received training from the Parent Organization Network and began analyzing the reports she received, she found that one of the triplets had been reclassified as a second grader, the other as a third grader, but the other had never been reclassified. I realized that the child was in the second year of middle school.
“Most importantly, what does the English language learner classification mean, why are children put in it, and what steps do they need to take to pass the exam before entering secondary school? I think it’s about explaining to the parents what it is,” Bautista said in Spanish. . “It’s a communication issue.”
When asked what steps they take to help parents understand the reclassification process and their child’s progress, school districts where Parent Organization Network trained parents responded in a variety of ways. .
Pomona Unified Superintendent Darren Knowles said the collaboration with the parent organization network “led to a complete review of the documents we use to notify parents about the reclassification process.”
Knowles said that over the past four years, Pomona Unified has resource page Reclassification criteria will be explained to parents in English, Spanish, and Chinese. The district also conducts regular presentations and training for parents on what it takes for a student to reclassify. In addition, the district is printing ELPAC score reports to provide to families during parent-teacher conferences, he said. She said the district recently sent parents information about ELPAC scores and offered in-person meetings if they wanted to see their child’s progress. He said 92 parents from 18 different schools requested in-person meetings.
Spokespeople for Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified declined to provide many details. “Our families have a variety of opportunities, including notification and counseling letters,” the LAUSD statement said. “The district also hosts more than a dozen conferences a year where families can dig deeper into their student’s educational journey. In addition, families can call their English learner designator or school principal to visit the school. We welcome you to set it up.”
“length beach Unified is dedicated to ensuring that parents of English learners receive information regarding their student’s progress and reclassification. ” said Evelyn Somoza, a spokeswoman for the Long Beach Unified School District. “Parents of students who have not yet been reclassified will receive information about their students’ English proficiency through U.S. mail and an online portal at the beginning of each school year. Test scores from assessments completed during the school year will be available. Parents will then receive a phone call or email.
Both Bautista and Carvajal-Salmeron attended universities in Mexico, and they hope to send their children there as well. They want their children to be able to enroll in the required college preparatory classes in high school, but that can be difficult for students who are still classified as English learners.
After understanding the process, they began encouraging their children to seek further support and work on their English reading and writing skills to improve their ELPAC scores.
Carvajal Salmeron’s daughter Mia took an intensive summer school English class and began attending English classes on Saturdays and focusing on improving her reading comprehension.
Finally, during her first semester of ninth grade, she was reclassified and was able to stop taking English development classes and free up her schedule to take more electives.
Mia, currently in her second year, would like to attend college to study ethnic studies. She credits her eighth-grade English language development teacher with helping her. Her teacher spoke with her and other English learners and she explained that they needed to pass an English proficiency test to be reclassified as fluent.
“She was a teacher who truly wanted everyone in her class to be part of the class, and she spent her energy and time really building connections with each of us,” Mia said. “Personally I feel that everything is due to the teachers. If they motivate you and show you that you are capable of acting, achieving and reclassifying individually , that’s the biggest compliment ever.”
For more reports like this, click here to sign up for EdSource’s free daily email on the latest developments in education.