Not Just California

You have the privilege of taking a half-year sabbatical in your spouse's home state of (make one up that's interesting), 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:

What do you know about how the English learners in our state are doing in meeting high academic standards? Are they learning English? What kinds of data do the state collect? And are the teachers adequately prepared to teach these students? Now, being from California which surely has experience with these matters, what can you say about how our state stacks up against California? And a final question: what can we do in the legislature to improve the system for English learners in our state?

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, either by pointing out that we do things better than those crazy aging hippies and surfers, or by pointing to some things that California does do well in this area. By the way, when you write your memo, address it as "Dear Buddy", he goes ballistic when people call him "Blair".

Resources: The National Clearninghouse for Bilingual Education has an excellent page with data on all states, at: http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/states/index.htm