Kevin Patra

Twenty hands eagerly shoot up in Yajaira Ascencio's fourth-grade classroom at Normandie Elementary.  They dance, flutter and wave hoping their five-fingered jig gets them selected.  The teacher, seeing too many hands to choose, grabs her nearby bucket of names and pulls one out.

"Santos," she reads aloud. 

Santos blushes shyly; he is one of the few without his hand up. 

"Come put your answer on the board," gently entreats the 29-year-old teacher.  The young boy shakes his head in calm refusal.  "Come on Santos," she replies, "Santos! Santos! Santos!" she starts an impromptu chant.  Soon his 28 classmates join in to create a cheer the Coliseum patrons would envy. 

Santos relents to the mob, and with supreme confidence struts to the whiteboard.  Grabbing the dry-erase marker he checks his paper, marks the point on the board's makeshift chart, and correctly plugs in the coordinates: (3, 6).   He returns to his seat, never seeming to doubt he had the right answer.

"Sometimes they just need a little bit more help," Ascencio said later, when talking about the 12 English Language Learners (ELL) in her class.

ELL students make up around 40 percent of the enrollment in Los Angeles Unified School District. Spanish is the first language of more than 94 percent of the 241,000 students enrolled in the program in the 2007-2008 school year. Scores on the California English Language Development Test (CELDT), a mandated exam that tracks development of students whose first language is not English, jumped dramatically from 2007 to 2008.   The percentage scoring on advanced or early advanced levels rose 16 points, from 33 to 49 percent.

However, on the California Standardized Test (CST), which tests all students from grades 2 though 11 statewide, only 10 percent of L.A. Unified's English Learners scored at a proficient or advanced level on the English-Language Arts portion; for grades 5 though 11, only 4 percent achieved those levels.  Whereas 43 percent of their English Only speaking counterparts scored at the proficient or advanced levels, with no significant drop-off in the older grades (40 percent for grades 5-11)

Normandie elementary, where some 46 percent of the students are English Learners, employs a dual language program and has seen its scores for both the CELDT and CST rise slightly in the past year.  However, Normandie Elementary Principal Gustavo Ortiz said the prospect of losing teachers to budget cuts would harm the progress his school has made: "Obviously the fewer students you have in the classroom the more you are able to reach them." 

Mary Campbell, L.A. Unified's Language Acquisition Administrator, said one reason for the discrepancy was that the CST does not account for students who are new to the district.  However, she has acknowledged that L.A. Unified's ELL students continue to lag behind the state goals for proficiency, which is currently at 34 percent.  

The lack of significant progress, and the complexity of identifying the proper way to fight the problem frustrates administrators. "What is our plan of action for change?" asked school board Vice President Yolie Flores Aguilar at a Feb. 10 meeting. "If we pulled aside all of our EL kids, they would make up the 6^th largest school district in the nation, and we are failing the majority of these kids.  And I'm frustrated that it is not attended to in this district as if it were a crisis." 

Disagreement over what direction to take is common for school boards across the country who are dealing with large groups of English Learners.  "Evidence from research is mixed (and tends to demonstrate less than stellar results with most of the traditional approaches)," said Kathy Christie, chief of staff of the Education Commission of the States, when asked about what teaching methods have worked the best. 

Some options include: additional after school and weekend tutoring, small group instruction, classroom immersion programs, among others.  Christie said that while research doesn't favor one approach as working in every case, "the dual language immersion schools or programs have had the best results overall."

"Different educators will talk about different ways to help English Language Learners," added Vickie Ramos, chief of staff for Flores Aguilar.  "What we need to get away from is the cookie-cutter approach and look at all our options."

Back at Normandie, the math lesson is over and Ascencio begins teaching Science and English simultaneously.

"And what happens during a drought?" she asks during their discussion of the precipitation cycle.  One girl in the back is selected out of the few hands raised. 

 "Plants is drying up and dying," says the girl.

"Plants ARE drying up and dying," she seamlessly corrects the child.  "Correct, what else?" 

The quick corrections do not seem to slow the class down, but Ascencio insists that all answers be given "in a complete sentence, please."

As easy as teaching English and science simultaneously might seem, one wouldn't expect to find a basketball coach stopping practice to make sure his team used proper sentences. 

Ascencio said that using English and Spanish in the classroom helps her to connect with her students.  She said it allows the ELL students the ability to follow along without fear of falling behind or being afraid to ask a question if they don't understand it in English.  She said it is also important that she is communicate in both Spanish and English so that when her students get lost she can get them back on track.

"Sometimes when I talk to them [ELL students] one-on one they try to talk to me in Spanish, and I let them tell me in Spanish, and then I say 'Now tell me that in English' so that they have to do it in both languages." 

For those teachers without a dual-language background it can be difficult, said Ascencio.  "I know they were trying to get assistants for those teachers who don't speak Spanish, but with the budget it's been difficult." 

Economic hardships, which have the district facing a budget deficit that could reach $700 million, not only has it become difficult to provide teachers with aids, but programs for both teachers and students could be cut or curtailed. 

"Obviously everything is likely to get cut at some point," said Ramos adding, "Preserving the resources to our English Learners is a priority. But with cuts we are going to have to be creative in our approach."   

 "Ideally everyone one would have dual language certification," said Ramos, and added her office hopes programs to train teachers could continue.

Christie said that teachers trained in a foreign language have had better results, especially those who can teach English in the same way a foreign language instructor would teach Spanish.  However, when it comes to budget cuts Ramos said they couldn't necessarily target keeping those with the better credentials.  "In terms of layoffs it gets tricky because of the collective barging agreement. It something that being looked at, but it all goes back to the agreement." 

Ascencio said while she doesn't have control over district issues she has found that what helps her students grow the most are teachers with high expectations.

"What grade are you guys in?" she asks her class as they read their daily goals aloud, out of sync.

" 4^th!" Twenty-nine young voices shout.

 "So why does it sound like you guys are not in 4^th grade?  Let's start again." 

Not wanting to mistaken for younger kids, they repeat their goals in a well-timed chorus. 

"As a teacher I always expect all my students to do well," Ascencio said. "It really should not matter if the are EO's, ELL's or any other classification."

Twenty-three hundred teaching jobs avoided the guillotine when Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines said that he would not carry out mid-semester layoffs. 

             "He determined that he would postpone those kinds of layoffs in order to maintain the stability of the classroom and the cohesiveness of the students' day-to-day instructions," said Lydia Ramos, a spokeswoman for the Superintendents' office. 

            The week before to Cortines' announcement the school board gave the Superintendent the authority to layoff probationary teachers--those with less than two years experience.  The cuts would have been made in anticipation of a budget deficit that could be between $250 million and $400 million.  The actual amount of the looming deficit depends on how much the education fund is cut when the final State Budget is approved.  Cutting the 2,300 teachers mid-way through the semester would have saved the district about $50 million.  The layoffs could still occur over the summer, but the district said that early retirement of nearly 2,000 teacher could allow the LAUSD to keep its younger teachers.  

            "The younger teachers are more willing to do new things and have had greater success at bringing change," said Gustavo Ortiz, principal at Normandie Avenue Elementary.

             Ortiz said cutting teachers would have been a mistake and that his school would have particularly hard hit, as it has seven teachers with less than two years experience.  

He estimated said had the cuts taken effect he might have lost two or three of his teachers. With almost 1,000 students, Normandie's current student-to-teacher ratio is 20-to-1 for Pre-Kindergarten through 3^rd grade and 28-to-1 in 4^th and 5^th grade classrooms.

             Laying off even one of those teachers would mean that class sizes, especially for the younger grades, would be raised.  When speaking about the prospect of raising class sizes Ortiz became animated and visibly concerned for his students,  "It would have made a huge impact," he said.  "The fewer students you have in a classroom the more you are able to reach them."  

             He said that good teachers, no matter how many years they have been working are important to a child's development.  He said that when he asses teachers at Normandie he tries to evaluate it as if his own child were in the classroom, "If it isn't good enough for my own child, why should it be good enough for anyone elses'?"

 Cortines, in his official statement said that without word from the state on the pending deficit, he decided not to layoff teachers based on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest proposal, which provides more flexibility for school districts in financial trouble.

            The decision not to layoff teachers was a relief to United Teachers Los Angeles.

            "We were fighting hard against the cuts," said UTLA Director of Communications Marla Eby.  "Those teachers who have been working less than two years are the potential future of the district."

            Eby said that the union not only wanted to protect its future teachers but also the students' best interests, "When you cut a teacher, you take them away from students who've become accustomed to the way they run things."

            The district would have cut the nontenured probationary teachers because the district is only required to give those teachers two weeks notice before being let go. However, many of the newer teachers who would have been cut are the ones helping to bring change to a trying to turn around its academic standards. 

            Ramos said one reason they could avoid the cuts was that nearly 2,000 teachers expressed interest in early retirement after this current school year.  She said that the teachers who would have been cut would step into the places of the outgoing teachers, and the district would avoid hiring new teachers for next school year. 

            Eby said that UTLA is taking a neutral stance on the early retirement.  However, she also said that the district was only offering $300 if teachers let them know they were planning to retire and that the entire package that the district is offering is a few thousand dollars less than what it has been in the past. 

            While Ramos was unsure about exact incentive package, she said that "it is really difficult to give the kind of incentives that I would think we might want to give because we are already in a difficult situation." 

            Where future cuts might be made will depend on the deficit after the state budget is finalized, said Ramos. 

            However, Ortiz had his own ideas of where to make cuts: 

            "I would reduce waste and trim fat from some bureaucratic folks at some of our central offices."

There are two questions I always get when I talk to people from home (that is Michigan for those of you that don't know--I swear I'll update that "about me" page soon!):  How is the life out there? and What do you do? 

In an attempt to answer both those questions, without actually answering both questions, I will provide you with a piece that I wrote for my "News Writing" class.  It entails my trip with a police officer in Lynwood (in South LA County--like 10 minutes from where I live):

   Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said before the second Presidential Debate that the McCain campaign's decision to attack Barack Obama's character was like a football team that is down two touchdowns going into the fourth quarter and starts taking chances. 
   Schnur's assessment is valid because the tactic is a designed ploy that will either score big, or be a disastrous turnover. In sports, when a team starts using gimmicks to score points, rarely does it end well.