Reply to How to help MCPS' lowest performing students?

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[quote=Anonymous]Students new to the country are placed in a classroom based on their age, and not their prior education. We used to have schools/classes for students new to the country to start learning English and get an educational plan in place prior to being placed in a general education classroom.

ELD is very rarely pulled out at this point and is definitely not enough to fill the gaps even if they have a 3x a week 30 minute newcomer class. That's a tiny amount of time to help kids adjust.

I am a 5th-grade teacher and in the past few years have started to get ridiculous placements in my classrooms. For example, imagine a student who has zero English, zero prior schooling, and does not know how to count to 5 even in his native language just being dropped in a 5th grade classroom and the teacher told to "catch him up." Or a student whose parent is illiterate and the child has already missed 2+ years of schooling while getting to the country and then just told to start reading and learning in English when the last time they were in school was in 1st grade in a different country where they were never learned even pre-reading skills such as how to hold a book.

Whenever I get these children, I feel so bad for them. But then I also realize how students like these are being dropped into high schools and teachers there are also told to just make it work. It's not possible.

Language is not normally the largest barrier- the lack of prior education is.

I think we need to go back to the old system of having students who are not prepared for the grade level in separate classes or schools to first get them ready for education before releasing them. It would benefit the children AND benefit society.[/quote]

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