Testimony of UFT Vice President for Education Evelyn DeJesus before the New York City Council Education Committee

Good afternoon. My name is Evelyn DeJesus, and I am the vice president for education for the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). I want to first thank Chairman Dromm and members of the Education Committee for raising the profile of an issue that is very important to our members and families. Making sure that English Language Learners in New York City public schools receive the appropriate services resonates deeply for me, and is at the heart of my personal journey as a student and my experience as an educator. As a child, I was an English Language Learner whose first language was Spanish and for over 25 years I taught in Chinatown, where many of the students are ELLs. I am also here today to register the union’s support for Resolution 388-2014 addressing the need for an Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) waiver exempting newly enrolled ELLs from participating in the state English language arts assessments for two years.

We commend the Council for its unrelenting advocacy on behalf of our students and we appreciate that your committee is reviewing the New York City Department of Education’s Memorandum of Understanding with the New York State Education Department with its update of the 2012 corrective implementation plans for ELLs and the outline of the scope of work between the current school year and 2017–18.

As educators, we know it is vital that all students receive a quality education and that their academic needs are met. State education law requires it and our passion for teaching and learning call for us to act.  Specifically, at a minimum, and with deliberate speed, we ask the Council to join us in recommending that the DOE and the state Education Department undertake the following steps:

• Hire more certified bilingual teachers, guidance counselors, paraprofessionals and other specialized professionals;
• Expedite current plans to work with SUNY and CUNY to develop certification and courses for ESL licenses and bilingual extensions, and provide tuition assistance to help existing teachers finance these additional credits;
• Collect and report student-level data disaggregated to detail where students fall on the language-acquisition continuum, native origin, languages understood, performance level in native language and disability, if applicable;
• Establish a system-wide Language Allocation Policy team to ensure that all students with the need receive the right services;
• Change the current testing requirement, as proposed in Council Resolution 388-2014, to give the appropriate time necessary for ELLs to acquire language skills;
• Adjust accountability measures for student Common Core test results to align with where ELLs fall within the wide language-acquisition spectrum; and
• Ensure that all district partners and charter schools are committed to serving ELLs effectively.

Before discussing in detail our union’s specific concerns, let me express how much we welcome the partnership with schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña and Milady Baez, her senior executive director of the Department of English Language Learners and Student Support. They are educators who, like me, identify with the students and families arriving from other nations and cultures, but understand that students need to learn English to acquire all of the necessary skills to achieve on grade level and graduate ready for college and careers.  

The English Language Learner landscape

The chancellor and her team have inherited vast challenges. In their first year, the new administration has been visiting schools and actively collecting and analyzing data. It now knows that ELLs in many schools and communities have not been receiving the services to which they are entitled. Specifically, transitional bilingual education programs have been dismantled, even in schools with very high ELL populations at every grade level. Despite the prior administration’s 2012 agreement with the state Education Department to take positive steps toward recruiting certified staff, particularly ESL and bilingual teachers, and to facilitate professional development for bilingual teachers and deepen content area knowledge, the results were found wanting. In September of 2012, the last time we testified before this body on these issues, we expressed our hope that the DOE’s plans would be implemented. However, the DOE in the prior administration minimally implemented the agreed-upon corrective actions and hardly moved the needle in increasing  the number of ELLs who graduate ready for college and careers.

Our ELL students have no more time to lose. Numbering at over 154,000 and, according to the DOE’s Memorandum of Understanding with the state, speaking over 160 different languages, the population of students identified as ELLs in the city’s public schools is significant. Additionally, the challenge is further deepened as 22 percent of ELLs are students with disabilities.

We are all acquainted with the sobering statistics reflecting the differences in achievement between ELLs and their English-language proficient peers. On the state ELA and math tests for grades 3 through 8 in 2014, ELLs scored significantly lower than the citywide average — 21.8 percentage points and 20.2 percentage points lower, respectively. While we are not aware of any current data on the performance of ELLs with disabilities, we expect that gap in achievement might be even more profound.

The 32.5-percent four-year graduation rate for ELLs, as compared to 68.1% for English-language proficient students, is another measure indicating the gap in the provision of services to ELLs. While this is the latest data, these children have been shortchanged for years.

In order for the members of this body to fully advocate for English Language Learners, I ask you to accept that one size does not fit all. Central to your understanding the instructional and support needs of ELLs and what it will take to equip these children to succeed on par with their peers, I need you to recognize and agree that ELLs are not monolithic.

There’s an entire spectrum of language acquisition from students who lack basic interpersonal communication skills to students who are on the cusp of achieving cognitive academic language proficiency. Layered upon the many subcategories along the proficiency continuum are students with autism or other intellectual, learning, hearing or vision disabilities, students who are highly proficient in their native language but are still learning English, and students with interrupted formal education who often lack the requisite skills in core subject areas.

While we call for data identifying students with different special needs, disability issues must not be confused with language-acquisition issues. But where both are present, the mandated services must be targeted to address both challenges.

As noted earlier, we call on the district to collect student-level data disaggregated to detail where students fall on the language-acquisition continuum, native origin, languages spoken, performance level in native language and disability classification so that educators and stakeholders are able to make better-informed decisions about how to best serve these students. Equally important, if we are to implement a targeted, aggressive plan, we have to develop a multi-pronged approach to building the professional capacity among certified educators and school-related professionals.

What it will take to build capacity

We do not have a perfect metric for determining how many more bilingual- and ESL-certified educators will be required. But we must underscore the urgency of increasing our workforce to meet the needs of our ELL students. Currently, we don’t have sufficient specialized staff and there’s a need for more intensive training for educators throughout the system. It may be useful to know that ELLs are approximately 15 percent of all students, and by our rough estimate we currently have almost 4,300 certified teachers of these students, or 6.6 percent of all teachers in the district. If our goal is to have a comparable percentage of teachers licensed to teach those students as ELLs in the district, we would need to employ about 9,800 certified teachers — roughly 5,500 more than are licensed and employed today.

We’re encouraged by the mayor’s plan to set aside $13 million to help build capacity to address the steps outlined in its recent agreement with the state, as well as the chancellor’s plan to dedicate $1 million in federal funds from Title III Language Instruction for Limited Proficient and Immigrant Students to launch 40 new dual language programs in September. It will also benefit ELLs in every borough that the DOE is funding $25,000 planning grants for schools to create dual language programs in Mandarin, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Japanese and Spanish. The need, however, is far greater.

We’re likewise pleased that the DOE plans to train the administrative staff who enroll students, which will provide more support for bilingual and non-English-speaking parents. Given the DOE’s support for embedded time for parent engagement within the school day, we believe that parent outreach will continue to grow stronger for all parents.

Our union is in the midst of actions to ensure fairness and equity for our city’s and state’s public schools. While the state Education Department has brought pressure to bear on the DOE to comply with an agreement to prioritize services to ELL students, the state has not complied with the 2007 Campaign for Fiscal Equity appellate court decision that would provide financial relief to district schools serving English Language learners and their peers with the highest need. According to our calculations and those of the Alliance for Quality Education, our city’s students are owed $2.5 billion. Infusing these dollars into the DOE’s budget would definitely help finance our union’s recommendations.

Policy in action across the school system

We are cautiously optimistic that the recently implemented changes to the school support structures under the leadership of district superintendents will lead to greater accountability and transparency as it relates to serving ELL students. We await the establishment of a citywide Language Allocation Policy team to serve the ELLs in our public schools. Driven by educators attuned to the specific needs of their students, this team can identify and implement targeted programs, create nuanced assessments that more accurately measure language acquisition and design relevant professional development.

Pass Resolution 388-2014

We support the resolution seeking an ESEA waiver to eliminate the rigid standardized testing requirements and over-testing that disadvantage ELLs and the schools that serve them before these students are truly proficient in English. Current federal regulations allow for newly enrolled students who have been attending school in the United States for less than one year  to take the New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test (NYSESLAT) in lieu of the grades 3–8 state ELA tests.. Extending the exemption to two years, while not optimal, is better.

We thank Councilmembers Reynoso, Chin, Johnson and the other resolution sponsors for recognizing that testing should focus on the needs of the students and help their teachers gauge their learning.

But we would go a step further. We plan to ask Mayor de Blasio to send a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan requesting the testing waiver for English Language learners to underscore the importance of putting these critical assessments into the hands of educators.

In addition to the recommendations already covered, we count on the DOE to reach out to culturally sensitive and supportive educators, parents and community partners to help ELLs fully transition and achieve at the highest levels. Contracts for district services and approvals for local charter schools should be contingent on assurances that public resources will only be provided to organizations that have the capacity and commitment to provide the services that English Language Learners need.

We also challenge both the DOE and the state Education Department to enforce existing state law and ensure that our city’s charter schools enroll their fair share of English Language Learners and other students requiring special resources and supports.

Closing thoughts

The new administration has a dedicated team in place and now has a better handle on the data in order to provide ELLs with the proper supports. It is our hope that the DOE will share this data with schools and provide clear information to administrators, teachers and other school staff and parents about how it will meet the needs of English Language learners. This information should begin with information about how a child is identified as an English Language Learner, describe all the programs and services for ELLs, and explain how ELLs participate in the state assessment program and exit from ELL status. It should also fully explain parents’ rights and identify who parents can contact for further information and support. Parents should also be informed about the programs and services that the DOE will be required to provide next year to support ELL students, including reporting the performance of ELLs with disabilities — both those who participate in regular assessments and those who participate in alternate assessments.

We believe the administration will work closely with superintendents, and we would like the superintendents to hold schools accountable for providing legally required programs and services. Our union has continually advocated for increased transparency, and we believe that transparency will be particularly beneficial to help meet the challenges posed by these issues.

Greater communication and understanding will strengthen initial assessments, which are especially pivotal when identifying the primary service needs of ELLs. With the advent of the Common Core Learning Standards, which have introduced higher language literacy standards across all content areas including math and science, we need to have a comprehensive, system-wide approach to meeting the needs of these students coupled with the policy work at the school level. Of particular importance is equipping our teachers with the proper tools and professional learning as it relates to the new and enhanced Common Core content for English Language learners.

The UFT is ready to be a partner in this work. Building capacity will take more than increasing the number of teachers certified to work with these students, but obviously that is a critical step. We welcome the opportunity to help the DOE identify and address any barriers that may be hampering the recruitment and retention of bilingual teachers.

If we are furnished with the necessary information, we can assist the DOE in ensuring that ELLs receive the supports and services they need to succeed.