Texas or California?
You have the privilege of taking a half-year sabbatical in Texas and through family connections, you decide to take on an internship at the state legislature. Because of your teaching background, you are assigned by the senior staffers to be a specialist on the senate's education committee. The committee has considerable interest in how the state is addressing the education of English language learners, not just because of demographic changes and a general interest in standards-based reform, but also because there is a newly elected senator (Blair "Buddy" Clark) who has taken on a special interest in making sure that English learners do not fall between the cracks. He is a centrist democrat who believes in high standards and accountability for students and teachers, but also cares a lot about immigrant votes, so he wants to appear compassionate in that area. The senator finds out that you are a teacher from California, and through his staff sends you the following message:
Hello, I've heard that out in California, you've also had a lot of reforms that target English learners, so I have a few questions for you. First, how is students' language proficiency assessed in California, and are they doing anything to help ELs learn English? Are the students learning English? How well are our ELs learning English? What about high academic standards: what tests do you use to assess EL's progress? Can we compare those results to our kids here in Texas? And tell me about teacher preparation: can you give me a quick overview of teacher credentialing in the two states, especially for ELs? And one final question: Are standards really focused on addressing the needs of English learners? What are some of the pros and cons about standards?
The scope of these questions of course blow you away, so you go out for a drink with the committee staff director, who just smiles and says "Just do what you can, but remember that the senator never reads more than two pages!" As he finishes his drink and prepares to leave, he says, "If I were you, I would start by deciding on two or three things that you think this state should do to improve things for English learners. Buddy can never keep more than one or two things on his mind at any one time -- too much football without a helmet in his college days, you know (wink). You should use California as a way of making your point. You can point out things that we do better than those crazy aging hippies and surfers, or you can point out things that California does well, and that Texas should try out. By the way, when you write your memo, address it as "Dear Buddy"; he goes ballistic when people call him "Blair".
Note: In your memo, you should state in a succinct way the key features of standards-based reform and how they impact ELs. (Refer to Massell, Kirst and Hoppe ass well as to Crawford.) From the websites of California and Texas, get a general flavor of the state policies, and pick 2 or more contrasts that you'd like to highlight. As a summative comment, you might like to give your opinion as to the following: if you were a newly arrived immigrant to the U.S. and had a choice of settling in California or Texas, which would you choose?
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This page was last updated November 11, 2002