Threat to ELL teacher training in Florida
It’s an all-too-familiar story. As anti-immigrant attitudes harden, states respond by seeking to dismantle programs and services designed to help immigrant students.
This week the state is Florida, where once again legislators are trying to cut back on professional training for the teachers of English language learners, the Miami Herald reports. Republicans from the Jacksonville area, at the behest of the Clay County Education Association, are pushing a bill (SB 286) that would reduce required inservice training for the reading teachers of ELLs from 300 hours to 60 hours.
SB 286 is identical to a bill that passed last year but was vetoed by Florida Governor Charlie Crist. “It is imperative that our students learn to read English from the highest-quality instructors,” Crist said in his veto message. “Accordingly, I cannot justify lower standards for these teachers.”
Members of Sunshine State Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages played an instrumental role in the governor’s veto and are actively organizing against the latest bill. They note that slashing the training requirement would violate a civil-rights consent decree in LULAC v. Florida Board of Education (1990), which is still under federal court supervision. If the state unilaterally abrogates this agreement, it would invite further litigation.
Nevertheless, according to the Herald, the Florida Department of Education is also determined to slash the training requirements for ELL educators, regardless of what the legislature does. Action is expected soon in both venues. Stay tuned.
James Crawford
March 12th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Clay and Duval County legislators Senator Wise and Representative Carroll introduced the bill last year and again this year. Senator Gaetz of Okaloosa, also a proponent, stated in the Miami Herald that the training is unnecessary.
Below is a sampling of ELLs served in according the Florida 2006-07 Florida Count of Students by English Language Learner (ELL):
North Florida
Clay County = 414
Duval County = 3,820
Okaloosa = 642
Central Florida
Orange = 33,827
Osceola = 9,608
South Florida
Broward = 25,752
Palm Beach = 18, 514
Dade = 57,170
In 2005, the Florida DOE ruled that teachers with a Reading Endorsement complete 2 ESOL courses and a practicum when an ELL is placed in their classrooms to ensure teachers would become highly qualified. Broward County has implemented this plan with the practicum consisting of writing three lesson plans. Since lesson planning is part of a teacher’s job, it can hardly be considered a burden. Last month a reading expert testified in the Senate PreK-12 Appropriations Committee that Florida’s 300 hour Reading Endorsement training did not prepare teachers to serve ELLs and recommended a revision and an additional 60 hours. This testimony confirms that Florida’s ELLs have gone underserved. The reading expert further testified that teaching reading to native speakers is not the same as teacher reading to non-native speakers. A second reading expert testifying at the House School Learning Council testified that only a tiny piece of training needed to be added. Does Florida have a plan at all?
In February, the Florida DOE announced a joint task force of second language acquisition and reading experts to determine what competencies teachers needed to serve the literacy needs of ELLs. Why is it that policy makers undermine a process that should bring clarity and the appropriate level of expertise for making professional development meaningful and effective?
In a televised House committee meeting, a Clay County high school reading teacher stated that the needs of “language impaired” students born in the United States and whose parents were born in the United States go unmet because she has to take inservice training. Place of birth of student or parent has nothing to do with equal educational opportunity. ELLs are not language impaired and students unable to pass the FCAT are not language impaired either. What is the hidden agenda of the proponents?
March 14th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Yesterday the Florida Senate approved SB 0286. Senator Nan Rich, representing parts of Miami-Dade and Broward, and Miami-Dade Senators Diaz de la Portilla, Garcia, and Villalobos voted against the bill. Parents, educators, and community group members are grateful for the support for ESOL students provided by this bipartisan group of legislators.
Last year the Senate had voted unanimously in support of a substantially similar bill later vetoed by Governor Charlie Crist last year. He received a barrage of calls from Florida educators and almost two dozen letters requesting the veto from prestigious non-profit civil rights and language education associations (including ILEP), from school district officials, and from the Florida Hispanic Legislative Caucus. The calls and letters made three basic points:
1. Teaching reading to native speakers of English is not the same as teaching reading to second language learners. Reading teachers need additional training to be able to effectively provide literacy instruction to ESOL students.
2. Elimination of the requirement that Reading teachers earn ESOL Endorsement would be harmful to ESOL students. How could decreasing training standards increase reading achievement?
3. Implementation of the bill would violate the 1990 Consent Decree in LULAC v. Florida Board of Education and expose the state to the risk of needless litigation costs.
The House Policy and Budget Committee will be the last to vote on the bill before it goes to the full House Chamber. Contact information for members of this committee is at
http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Committees/committeesdetail.aspx?SessionId=57&CommitteeId=2358
Many of us are calling Governor Charlie Crist’s office (1 800 488 5000) to ask him to persuade the Representatives to vote against the House companion bill, HB 0491. If you can make time to help Florida’s ESOL students with these calls, please do.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Yesterday SB 286 passed with little opposition in the Florida Senate. Legislators who voted for the bill either don’t understand the English language and literacy learning needs of the .25 million English language learners (ELLs) in Florida schools, or they simply don’t care. In either case, if this bill passes in the House of Representatives and becomes law, it will result in our failure to prepare Florida teachers to meet ELLs’ very real needs to learn to read in English and to succeed in school. Whether SB 286 has been motivated and propelled by ignorance or by negligence, it represents a giant step backwards for our students.
The fact is that Florida teachers of reading to ELLs need more ELL-specific professional development than some apparently think. I use the case of “Holly†to illustrate. Soon after SB 286 was introduced in the Senate, a reading teacher named Holly wrote in to one of Florida’s major newspapers to assert that, based on her experience, teachers do not need special preparation to teach reading to ELLs. Holly stated that she had not pursued the ESOL professional development required by the state because, she explained, “If I had wanted to become an ESOL teacher, I would have done so.â€
Indeed, Holly claimed that she was “proud to be a reading teacher.†Holly went on to report that last year she had been assigned to teach reading to two classes of Haitian students. In spite of the fact that these recent arrivals spoke “almost no English,†Holly noted emphatically that she “was NOT teaching these students English. We focused on phonics.â€
Holly’s instruction ignored the fact that her students did not have the oral language foundation they needed to take advantage of phonics instruction in English. In fact, Holly appeared to understand very little about teaching reading to ELLs. Her own account of her instructional practices with these students reveals a general misconception among teachers who are inadequately prepared to teach ELLs—the belief that teaching reading (or teaching any of the other language arts or any content area) to ELLs is little more than “just good teaching.†Below I provide several examples of how and why Holly’s generic reading instruction was likely inappropriate and inadequate for her ELL students.
First, unless these middle school students were completely illiterate in their native language (Kreyol or French), there was probably very little need to “teach†them phonics. Those languages use basically the same alphabet as English and have few distinctive sound contrasts with English, so Haitian students who are already literate in their home language can transfer their phonemic awareness and knowledge of phonics to English. These prior literacy skills allow them to “read†(decode) English aloud without understanding any of the words, just as most readers of this blog can “read†the words in the following Kreyol sentence without understanding what they mean:
“M byen kontan pou m te eksplike w kòman fet la te ye pou mwen.â€
[English translation: I’m very happy to have told you about my holiday.]
In order to read the Kreyol sentence above with understanding we have to know what the individual words mean and we have to know something about the sentence structure. For example, we have to recognize verb tense markers, contractions, and definite articles. Basically, we have to know a little Kreyol—not just be able to sound out the printed words. Phonics instruction must build on (not replace) oral language development, including vocabulary. That is my first point.
Second, Holly wrote that she found it “exciting†to hear these middle school students reading grade-level texts aloud. However, if the skill of decoding has already been established in the native language, reading aloud in a second (alphabetic) language is no great breakthrough and is of little real value for ESOL students without diagnosed language or learning disabilities. In fact, reading aloud can be counterproductive for ESOL readers because they tend to focus on the pronunciation of unfamiliar words rather than on their meaning. The main goal of reading at this grade and English proficiency level should be comprehension. That is my second point.
Third, Holly commented that these students would “probably never pass the FCAT reading test.†In spite of the low expectations reflected in this statement, ESOL students at this grade level do in fact have time to catch up in learning the English language and academic content of school. But they have no time to spare. Focusing on phonics instruction and reading aloud are a waste of precious time for students who need intensive oral language development in English and in reading and writing in the academic register of school. If adolescent ELLs have any hope of passing the FCAT and eventually graduating, their teachers need to provide reading instruction that is appropriate for these students’ age/grade level and targeted to their second language and literacy needs. They should not be delivering generic, remedial reading lessons that lead to barking at print and not much else. That is my third point.
Finally, Holly said that over time, as the students (somehow) learned English, their reading comprehension began to catch up with their phonetic reading skills. Of course! Naturally. What is surprising is that Holly credited herself for having played a key role in this process. It is a shame that she did not make more informed contributions to her students’ progress in reading English. That could have been accomplished by building on their existing literacy skills, helping them to develop their vocabulary in English through meaning-based language and literacy techniques, and drawing their attention to bilingual strategies such as recognizing cognates and using the “key word†approach. Teaching reading to ELLs is NOT the same as teaching struggling readers who are already proficient in English. That is my fourth point.
A recent review of existing research in second language reading (August & Shanahan, 2006) supports the following conclusions: 1) phonics instruction for ELLs may be necessary, but is not sufficient, 2) oral language development in English (including vocabulary) should accompany decoding instruction, 3) phonics instruction for ELLs who are already literate should target contrastive differences between English and students’ native languages, and 4) reading aloud is not a sound instructional technique for ELLs who have already learned to decode (especially those in the upper grades) nor is it a valid and reliable measure of their reading fluency or comprehension. Holly was either blissfully unaware of or purposefully negligent in providing reading instruction targeted to her ELL students’ specific second language and literacy needs.
In sum, teaching (reading) to second language learners is NOT the same as teaching (reading) to native English speakers. All teachers of reading to ELLs (not just ESOL teachers) need to understand this complex issue and know how to provide instruction that meets their needs. If the Florida legislature approves the proposed reduction in ESOL professional development, the inappropriate and inadequate one-size-fits all reading instruction described by Holly will be the most we can expect from Florida teachers of ELLs.
[*Thanks to Mercedes Pichard for providing the Haitian Kreyol example.]
April 5th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Follow up article on the latest.
Florida Bill Would Ease ESL-Training Mandate, Mary Ann Zehr, April 4, 2008
Education Week is a national daily newspaper on K-12 education. This Education Week article makes some very important points:
1.The DOE has no position on the bill.
2. The FEA has no position on the bill.
2. Advocates for ELLs nationally are watching what happens with the ESOL Inservice bill.
4. Other states have higher ESOL training standards for mainstream teachers than the 60 hours proposed in HB 0491/SB 0286.
5. All reading teachers need extensive training—almost a second master’s degree-because the approach to teaching reading is not the same for ELLs.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/04/09/32flaesl_ep.h27.html
April 7th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I wholeheartedly support SB286/HB491. Teachers deserve to have the statutes protect them from the confusion and special interests that have ruled the DOE for the past few years. Reading teachers have already been requires to get the 300 hour reading endorsement.
Enough is enough! Requiring the ESOL endorsement on top of that serves no purpose except to encourage us to leave the profession. We are already highly qualifid according to NCLB and need to spend our time focusing on best practices for servicing all of our students.
Commissioner Eric Smith supports this bill and so does the FEA. The opponents of this bill are frantic in their efforts to try to turn this into an thnic issue. Perhaps because ESOL publications and training have become a big business for them. The students are our business.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:04 am
According to Mary Ann Zehr’s article cited above (”Florida Bill Would Ease ESL-Training Mandate”), neither the state teachers’ union (FEA) nor the Florida Department of Education support the bill.
After 12 months review of ESOL inservice training, the claim that opponents of the bill profit from offering inservice courses and materials to Florida school districts has yet to be substantiated.
The purpose of school personnel certification and endorsement, and of the training provided to permit teachers to meet credential standards, is to protect the educational interests of students, parents, and the public at large by assuring that teachers in this state are professionally qualified. These guarantees must not be waived.
April 9th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
The biggest news in Florida revolves around the drastic budget cuts. Schools are reeling with cutbacks on hiring, hiring freezes, and program cuts. Jobs are being lost right now and reading teachers are very vulnerable under a proposed district flexibility plan. The biggest losers are the Florida students who need reading teachers and that includes ELLs who require reading teachers who know how to meet their needs. SB286/HB491 fails to ensure that all of Florida’s students have highly qualified teachers.
May 4th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
End of session status report on SB 286/HB 491, ESOL Inservice
With their votes in support of amendments to SB 286/HB 491 offered by Representative Carroll, the members of the Florida House of Representatives unanimously demonstrated commitment to maintaining adequate ESOL teacher training standards for Reading teachers. LULAC Florida and the FLSSTESOL Advocacy E-Group thank them for their unanimous support of ESOL students.
The bill has died and the status quo is still in force. English language learners will receive literacy instruction from teachers prepared to provide it as Reading teachers must earn ESOL Endorsement. We encourage our colleagues in Reading to look into the DOE’s reverse crosswalk option for earning ESOL Endorsement and we ask the DOE to set up a task force to seek further improvement along the lines outlined in the second section of the floor amendment. We stand ready to support the Commissioner in that effort.
We appreciate Representative Jennifer Carroll for reaching out to other legislators in an effort to formulate effective policy with regard to English Language Learners. We are grateful to Representatives Zapata, Flores, and Rivera, and to the Dade County Legislative Delegation for their response to statewide concerns by developing creative problem solving approaches.
We thank the parents, educators, community groups, civil rights organizations, education associations, superintendents, school board members and local elected officials, Deans of Colleges of Education, civic leaders, and experts in the education of ESOL students who spoke out in their favor. We thank the Miami-Dade Public School Board members, Superintendent, and staff for their leadership on behalf of ESOL students. Finally, we thank all the policy makers who supported a quality education for ESOL students with their votes, questions, statements, and related efforts over the past two years: Senators Frederica Wilson, Rudy Garcia, Alex Diaz de la Portilla, Nan Rich, Alex Villalobos, Larcenia Bullard; Representatives Anitere Flores, Janet Long, Bill Heller, Jack Seiler, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, David Rivera, Marco Rubio, Darren Soto, J.C. Planas, Yolly Roberson, Joyce Cusack, Ron Saunders, Curtis Richardson, Juan Carlos Zapata; the members of the Florida Hispanic Legislative Caucus, and Governor Charlie Crist.
Hispanics now account for about one in four children younger than 5 in the United States and make up more than 15 percent of the U.S. population. Although not all Hispanics are English language learners, almost half of the three and a half million Hispanics in Florida are relatively recent arrivals. We can expect that many will still be learning English, as will their children. Florida Hispanic students are expected to surge by more than 50 percent by 2018.
The rise in the Latino population has been accompanied by significant, if slower, growth among African Americans and Asians. Asians made up the third-largest minority group in the United States, with 15.2 million. American Indians and Alaska natives totaled 4.5 million while native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders were 1 million. Between 1970 and 2000, the share of foreign-born blacks in the overall black population rose nationwide (to 7.8 percent from 1.3 percent) and in all census regions. Among states, the greatest growth was seen in Florida, where over 22 percent of the black population is foreign born.
Florida’s future, and that of the United States, may well hinge on how well we educate language and other minority students for life beyond high school. That means we should all celebrate the demise of this bill in its original form. We need all children to learn to read in English and in other languages as well.
Rosa Castro Feinberg, Ph. D.
Associate Professor (Retired)
Florida International University
Manager, Sunshine State TESOL Advocacy Mailing List
Chair, LULAC Florida Education Advisory Committee
May 4th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
End of session status report on SB 286/HB 491, ESOL Inservice
With their votes in support of amendments to SB 286/HB 491 offered by Representative Carroll, the members of the Florida House of Representatives unanimously demonstrated commitment to maintaining adequate ESOL teacher training standards for Reading teachers. LULAC Florida and the FLSSTESOL Advocacy E-Group thank them for their unanimous support of ESOL students.
The bill has died and the status quo is still in force. English language learners will receive literacy instruction from teachers prepared to provide it as Reading teachers must earn ESOL Endorsement. We encourage our colleagues in Reading to look into the DOE’s reverse crosswalk option for earning ESOL Endorsement and we ask the DOE to set up a task force to seek further improvement along the lines outlined in the second section of the floor amendment. We stand ready to support the Commissioner in that effort.
We appreciate Representative Jennifer Carroll for reaching out to other legislators in an effort to formulate effective policy with regard to English Language Learners. We are grateful to Representatives Zapata, Flores, and Rivera, and to the Dade County Legislative Delegation for their response to statewide concerns by developing creative problem solving approaches.
We thank the parents, educators, community groups, civil rights organizations, education associations, superintendents, school board members and local elected officials, Deans of Colleges of Education, civic leaders, and experts in the education of ESOL students who spoke out in their favor. We thank the Miami-Dade Public School Board members, Superintendent, and staff for their leadership on behalf of ESOL students. Finally, we thank all the policy makers who supported a quality education for ESOL students with their votes, questions, statements, and related efforts over the past two years: Senators Frederica Wilson, Rudy Garcia, Alex Diaz de la Portilla, Nan Rich, Alex Villalobos, Larcenia Bullard; Representatives Anitere Flores, Janet Long, Bill Heller, Jack Seiler, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, David Rivera, Marco Rubio, Darren Soto, J.C. Planas, Yolly Roberson, Joyce Cusack, Ron Saunders, Curtis Richardson, Juan Carlos Zapata; the members of the Florida Hispanic Legislative Caucus, and Governor Charlie Crist.
Hispanics now account for about one in four children younger than 5 in the United States and make up more than 15 percent of the U.S. population. Although not all Hispanics are English language learners, almost half of the three and a half million Hispanics in Florida are relatively recent arrivals. We can expect that many will still be learning English, as will their children. Florida Hispanic students are expected to surge by more than 50 percent by 2018.
The rise in the Latino population has been accompanied by significant, if slower, growth among African Americans and Asians. Asians made up the third-largest minority group in the United States, with 15.2 million. American Indians and Alaska natives totaled 4.5 million while native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders were 1 million. Between 1970 and 2000, the share of foreign-born blacks in the overall black population rose nationwide (to 7.8 percent from 1.3 percent) and in all census regions. Among states, the greatest growth was seen in Florida, where over 22 percent of the black population is foreign born.
Florida’s future, and that of the United States, may well hinge on how well we educate language and other minority students for life beyond high school. That means we should all celebrate the demise of this bill in its original form. We need all children to learn to read in English and in other languages as well.
Rosa Castro Feinberg, Ph. D.
Associate Professor (Retired)
Florida International University
Manager, Sunshine State TESOL Advocacy Mailing List
Chair, LULAC Florida Education Advisory Committee
May 10th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Florida Sunshine State TESOL had its yearly conference in Daytona Beach this weekend and I spent a little bit of time there talking to classroom teachers from around the State.
Concerns were expressed regarding instructional services to English Language Learners.
Classroom teachers also expressed relief that SB0286 failed for a second year. The bill’s co-sponsor, Representative Jennifer Carroll, submitted an amendment establishing two courses and a practicum for Reading teachers to complete in order to serve ELLs and the establishment of an ESOL/Reading Task Force. The amended bill passed the Florida House unanimously. However, according to the Miami Herald, Senator Wise believed that the professional development hours in the amendment were still too many and announced he would let the bill die rather than bring the amended bill for Senate vote. That’s what happened, the bill died.
Florida Sunshine State TESOL Advocacy E-Group remains hopeful that the DOE will proceed with the establishment of an ESOL/Reading Task Force through which ESOL and Reading professionals, classroom teachers, and second language acquisition experts fully examine current training to determine the skills teachers need to serve ELLs and propose improvements that lead to quality training and quality outcomes.
Through this two year process, it has been clarified that:
• Teaching reading to ELLs is not the same as teaching reading to native speakers.
• Second language acquisition experts and ESOL professionals have important contributions to policy and educational decision-making.
• The 1990 META Consent Decree cannot be ignored.
March 22nd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Every time i come here I am not dissapointed, nice post