The Daily Tar Heel

Issue date: 9/26/07 Section: State & National

Media Credit: DTH File/Hannah Sharpe N.C. Senator Ellie Kinnaird watches Lay Da, an ESL student at Culbreth Middle School, work on an assignment with Claudia Haskins, an ESL teacher on Friday.

One federal grant to a state university, combined with proposed changes to No Child Left Behind, could reshape the way North Carolina instructs its non-English-speaking students.

UNC-Greensboro recently received a five-year, $1.4 million federal grant for its Teach English to Speakers of Other Languages project.

"North Carolina has a growing ESL population and needs to prepare teachers to teach all the children in their classroom," said Barbara Levin, professor of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UNC-G.

Levin said many teachers want to reach out to their English as a Second Language students but don't know how. The TESOL project funds training of ESL teachers in Chatham County and Asheboro City Schools districts, both of which have high ESL populations.

"One-third of Asheboro City students speak Spanish. That in itself is a challenge," said Joy McLaughlin, director of Limited English Proficiency programs for Asheboro City Schools. "It will be a very different state in 20 years."

Asheboro City Schools has about 15 ESL teachers for 950 ESL students. McLaughlin said the system has used cultural diversity training to help those teachers better reach out to their students.

ESL teachers face roadblocks beyond the rapid population growth of ESL students.

Levin said many students reject their native language once they start school and begin learning English. That can create a lack of support at home, she said, and actually slows their English development.

"First-language literacy speeds up the development of second-language acquisition," Levin said. "That's a challenge because we don't have bilingual programs."

That becomes problematic when ESL students take standardized tests to assess NCLB standards. "As a subgroup they are often not doing well," Levin said.

N.C. ESL students must demonstrate growth on the IDEA English Language Proficiency Test on top of the standard reading and math tests given to all N.C. students.

"What's happening in North Carolina is that the IDEA Proficiency Test is so difficult that students are not performing as well as they used to," she said, adding that the increased difficulty arose when the test was amended to comply with NCLB standards. "No district in the state is exiting students (from ESL programs) the way they used to," McLaughlin said.

Continued...

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