News and Alerts
As achievement gap expands, Latino leaders demand
change
This bit of news begins with a shocking
statement: “Between
2006 and 2010, the achievement gap between white and Latino third-graders in
Illinois almost doubled, making change urgent, Latino advocates say.” This made
me wonder what type of study was conducted that gave those results. One of the
issues that came up after they had their community meeting was that Latino
students are not fluent in English. Again, I couldn’t help but ask myself “how
many of those students who are not fluent in English are recent immigrants?” “How
long have these students been in the U.S. consistently?” etc…
Finnish Educator Offers Suggestions for American Schools
I know
that Finland leads the way in education in ways no else has. Also, I learned a
few years ago that they also had to rethink and restructure their education
system being that it was failing drastically. One of the suggestions the
Finnish educator mentions is to do away with hierarchies and tests because
our recent (school) environments do not produce thinkers…I will have to agree with that.
I agree that we need to make some changes when it comes to language acquisition. For decades, we have been enrolling children in elementary school in the bilingual program with the best intentions. Yet, many of these students are not exited in elementary, and must continue in ESL when they are promoted to middle school. Arizona, California, and Massachusettes have replaced the bilingual program with ESL or SEI (Structured English Immersion). I think that Texas should at least 'try' one of these programs at the elementary level to see how successful it is. Then, if successful, make the change.
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