St. Paul Public Schools says it will make changes to its programs for English-learning students in response to a spotty compliance audit and pressure from the teachers union.
A recent review by the state Education Department identified a long list of concerns the school district must address, from improperly licensed teachers and suspect spending practices to insufficient support for students with intermediate language skills.
Sam DiVita, a teacher at LEAP High School, told the school board Tuesday that the compliance issues are “a result of our leadership not listening and responding to the concerns of teachers.”
“Our EL (English learner) program is in a state of crisis,” said Kristi Herman Hill, who teaches at Washington Technology Magnet.
District officials dispute that characterization but acknowledge there is much work to do.
Thirty-four percent of all students in the district — more than 11,000 — are categorized as English language learners. They include some 1,050 immigrants who had little or no formal schooling back home.
The schools are expected to teach both core academic content and the English language, while also assessing their native language skills. In recent years, St. Paul has taken an aggressive approach to content development, hurrying students into mainstream classrooms without language help.
That’s been good for St. Paul’s graduation rates — 69 percent of district EL students last year graduated in four years, compared with 61 percent in other Minnesota public school districts — but the state says St. Paul must not neglect language development.
On Tuesday, students told the school board that some of them need more time — as many as six years in high school.
Nima Ahmed, who emigrated from East Africa and attends LEAP, said English learners often graduate high school unprepared for college or careers.
“One or two years are not enough to learn English and learn the things we need to graduate,” she said.
Ma Hsa Poe, a Karen refugee who attends Como Park Senior High, said her school has given her an extra year, but a friend at another St. Paul high school isn’t getting the same opportunity.
“It takes a long time to learn English, especially when you’re an older student,” she said, adding that she needs to improve her language skills so she can attend college.
Herman Hill said students can’t take even remedial college courses without a certain level of English proficiency.
In an interview Wednesday, Yeu Vang, who last month was appointed head of the district’s Multilingual Learning office, said the district sets high expectations for students.
“I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having an opportunity to complete the four-year plan,” she said.
But Vang acknowledged the district must do a better job of meeting individual students’ needs.
Ela Murphy, a supervisor in Vang’s office, said St. Paul has a six-year pathway for EL students, but “it’s not consistent at all of the schools, and that’s the problem.”
Another problem, according to the compliance review, is a lack of language services for students who are somewhat competent in English. In keeping with its focus on core content acquisition, St. Paul no longer offers sheltered courses for students who test at Level 4 or 5 on the WIDA language assessment.
Officials said they will look at rebalancing their EL staff by having teachers spend less time with students at lower levels of proficiency and more with those at Levels 3, 4 and 5.
“We certainly have heard this from our ELL teachers too,” said Kate Wilcox-Harris, the district’s chief academic officer. “We need to do a better job of serving ELLs at Levels 3-4-5 at our secondary level.”
Wilcox-Harris said a major effort in the coming years will be to train core content teachers how to work with EL students. They’ll also urge teachers to seek EL certification to help make up for a long-term decline in the district’s EL staff.
Other issues identified in the review include:
- Improperly licensed teachers. Wilcox-Harris said about 10 teachers of sheltered classes are licensed for EL instruction but not for the core content area they’re teaching. They’ll remedy that by encouraging the teachers to obtain the proper license or by assigning a co-teacher to the class.
- Questionable spending of federal Title III funds. The review found bilingual educational assistants paid with EL funds spend parts of their day on lunch or bus duty or in schools where their language skills aren’t needed. Vang said her department will make sure that does not happen “on a regular basis.”
Spokesman Josh Collins said the Education Department performs about six EL compliance reviews at school districts each year and it’s “not unusual for there to be findings” in need of corrective action.
It’s possible for a district to lose Title III or state EL funding, but department staff was not aware of any such penalties in the past decade or so.
“Generally, districts work to resolve the findings pretty quickly,” Collins said.