New guidelines leave educators fuming, worried

The Tennessean ^ | April 6, 2003 | DIANE LONG

[sarcasm]

Tomorrow morning, Principal Oliver Smith will gather a group of 25 newly arrived immigrant students at Wright Middle School and tell them, through interpreters, that they have to take the state's annual achievement tests

[sweetliberty]

I suppose that the expectation is that we should take every foreigner from God knows where, legal or not, and not only educate them at our expense but also provide teachers for them in their own languages, also at our expense. If they don't like the rules, they can leave. I suspect that better than 90% of them are illegals anyway.

[sarcasm]

"Cheap" labor.

[netmilsmom]

Whether they are illegal or not, they should learn English.
My Grandparents did.

[arasina]

Gee, I wonder if this will inspire any immigrants to learn English within a YEAR of their arrival. Is that really too much to expect, dear whining teachers? Also, children learn languages quite fast. My adopted nephew went from speaking Russian to English in a matter of WEEKS and he didn't go to language class. He hung out with English speaking people. America is a melting pot, right? How about turning up the heat so the cultures blend a little faster without losing their individual flavors?

[Zipporah]

Well it seems that being a country of populated by immigrants .. this has been the historical case. Those immigrants weren't catered to.. they were required to learn English and go to school. The education system in the US is a failure for all students not just the non-English speaking ones.

[sweetliberty]

I absolutely agree that they should have to learn English. The thing that makes me so angry is the fact that the same law which says that the ones that are illegal cannot even be here says that we have to use government funds to educate them in the first place. The idea that we are even having a discussion about whether they should have to learn in the language of THIS country is completely ludicrous in my opinion.

[RWG]

Metro Schools Director Pedro Garcia...name says it all.

[Timesink]

''It's not best practices to test people in English-only on an assessment that they can't understand,'' she said. ''But it's required, and we really have no leeway.''

Then do it and SHUT UP, government bureaucrat.

[11x62]

........Among the 31,895 Metro students in grades 3-8 who must take the tests, 1,796 are in the ESL program........
.........That creates a testing dilemma for parents of students with special needs, including Metro's 5,184 special ed students in grades 3-8.............

22% of the kids are SpecEd or ESL. WOW

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[PatrioticAmerican]

What? English??? How un-Ameri... waitaminut...this IS an English speaking nation. nevermind...carry on.

[Gritty]

If they are here legally and want to be citizens, they should be immersed in English and using it exclusively while in school.

If they are illegal aliens they shouldn't be here sucking up tax dollars and educational resources and evading our laws. In that case, they should go back to where they came from. We shouldn't pander to their wants, or the wants of their enablers.

[Amalie]

I live in east Tennessee and the educators are not happy. This is the first i've heard about this particular problem, but a local assisant principal told me how this was so stupid, the Republicans are setting then kids up to fail, we WILL NOT DO this successfully, etc, etc. This is political fight; once again, the venomous NEA has reared it head and is doing everything possible to ensure this law is as onnerous and difficult as they can make it, esp. in media articles like this. Of course, they conveniently forget thier job is turn out GOOD students...