Perspective of a Local Practitioner from a Large School District

PERSPECTIVE OF A LOCAL PRACTITIONER FROM A VERY LARGE SCHOOL DISTRICT IN
NORTH CAROLINA
Interview with a Principal of a high school in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District:
One principal of a high school in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, the largest school district in the state of North Carolina, remarked that there are numerous limited English proficient (LEP) students living in the district. For example, data compiled by the North Carolina Office of State Planning on Hispanic births by calendar year for 1990 through 1999 show that births of Hispanic children in Mecklenburg county increased from 112 in 1990 to 1,117 in 1999 (http://www.ospl.state.nc.us/demog/hispdata.html.) However, she said her school is not representative of the LEP student presence in the county. There is a very small Hispanic population at her high school, and the school does not offer English-as-a-second language (ESL) classes for students. But, she continued to explain that the small Hispanic population and lack of ESL classes are, in part, due to district policy. First, the district only supports an ESL program at two school sites at the high school level. The ESL programs are mainly found at the elementary and middle schools. Second, the district established the International Center to address the growing population of minority group children in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District seeking to enter the school system and provide a range of assistance and information to these families.
When parents register their child for school in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, they must answer five language-related questions:

Does the child speak a language other than English in the home?

Does the child have a language other than English as his/her primary language?

Did the child learn a language other than English as his/her first language?

Is the child a citizen of another country?

Is the child an entrant into the United States on a visa?

The International Center assesses incoming students with languages other than English spoken at home (i.e., children for whom the answer to any of the five language-related questions is “yes”). After assessing the children's English abilities, the International Center then decides on their placements within the school system. The International Center’s staff rate the students (e.g., on a scale from 1 to 8) and, if a student is determined to be limited English proficient, then he or she is assigned to one of the two high schools at which an ESL program is offered. For these limited English proficient students, the district provides transportation to the designated ESL program site as they would if it were the child’s neighborhood school. The children remain in the ESL program, she said, until they reach English proficiency, at which point they may return to their neighborhood high school. The following are some examples of the classes offered in the ESL program at the high school level:

ESL English (Newcomer and Levels I, II, and III)

ESL Reading/Writing (Newcomer and Levels I, II, and III)

ESL Math (Levels I, II, and III)

ESL Physical Science

ESL Biology (Levels I and II)

ESL World History (Levels I and II)

ESL US History

ESL Economic/Legal/Political Systems

ESL Vocational/Study Skills Lab

ESL Applied Economics

Overall, the principal with whom I spoke said it has been a difficult process but the district and schools have done a good job handling the situation. All in all, the growing LEP population in the district has had a huge impact on course offerings, the district office, the ESL classrooms, and summer school course offerings, to name a few areas of impact. On the one hand, people at the district office and schools have had to deal with the incredible influx of immigrants into the district. On the other hand, they have had to balance the influx with the fact that the state of North Carolina only allows limited English proficient children to be, according to the guidelines, “exempted from statewide standardized testing by the same school system for up to two years from the time of initial enrollment in the school system.” (For more information, see “Guidelines for Testing Students with Limited English Proficiency: North Carolina Statewide Testing Program Grades 3-12” at: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/testing/alternate/lep ). The International Center has been a very big help and the district overall has made huge strides to make changes in their operations. For example, the district now routinely publishes information in English and Spanish and, based upon the composition of the local community, in a variety of other languages (e.g., Japanese) too. The district’s Office of Curriculum and Public Instruction has an office that oversees the ESL programs at the elementary, middle, and high schools. She said the district has done a “model job.”