Reply to Oyster- Adams in US News...thoughts?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]http://hechingerreport.org/rising-popularity-dual-language-education-leave-latinos-behind/

"Dual language....so sexy"[/quote]

This may be a relevant issue in other cities but this article is misleading in the context of DC, where all dual language neighborhood schools, following Oyser's lead, have separate Spanish and English lotteries to ensure that Latinos have priority over English speakers until the Spanish speakers make up 50 percent.

The only reason that Cleveland and Houston for example have very low Latino populations is that they are in historically black neighborhoods where Latinos have never lived in large numbers. Cleveland (Le Droit, Shaw) has gentrified significantly so lots more whites but still very few Latinos, and I'd argue that it's not well-served by transit from the neighborhoods where DC's Latinos mostly live. Houston certainly isn't.

One important point not mentioned by the author is that lots of bilingual charters have sprung up to meet demand BUT they cannot run language lotteries like the neighborhood schools, and they cannot always find leases in Latino neighborhoods.

One valid point in the article regarding DC is that the conversion to dual language of neighborhood schools hasn't kept pace with the movement of Latinos in the District. Latinos have been moving east and north away from Columbia Heights as it gentrifies, but they don't find dual language schools everywhere they go. The district struggles to open such schools for the reasons given (bilingual teacher shortage). It's even worse in eastern MoCo where there is a growing Latino population but few dual language schools as far as I know.

But this can also be seen as a result of the large scale of recent immigration, not all of it legal. And IMO given that immigration is a Federal issue, it's unfair to blame school districts for their slowness to respond to the rapid growth in school-aged English Language Learners. The feds could provide additional funds to districts to educate these children, like a kind of Title I+ for ELLSs. Also allow more Spanish speaking teachers to come in on skilled visas if necessary.

[/quote]

I dont' think the federal government is going to be increasing funds for education at all, and what is there is being redirected at 'choice' initiatives.

This NPR story from Feb 2017 has good data on ELL students nationwide. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/23/512451228/5-million-english-language-learners-a-vast-pool-of-talent-at-risk[/quote]

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