MITESOL participates in TESOL Advocacy Day 2008
Jackie Moase-Burke, Oakland Schools
On June 18, 2008, Jackie Moase-Burke joined a thirteen other TESOL members representing 12 U.S. based affiliates in Washington, DC for TESOL Advocacy Day 2008. This event featured a day of issue briefings and workshops, capped by visits to Congressional offices on Capitol Hill. The goals of Advocacy Day were not only to lobby on key issues for TESOL, but also to provide an interactive learning experience for affiliate representatives on elements of advocacy. By the end of the day, TESOL members had visited the offices of more than 36 representatives and senators.
As with last year's event, TESOL Advocacy Day 2008 was focused on the efforts to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). To maximize the impact of TESOL Advocacy Day, key members of Congress serving on the education committees in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives were identified for meetings. In turn, affiliates representing the constituencies of those members of Congress were selected and invited to send a representative to Advocacy Day. Since Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI 5th) and Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI 7th) serve on the education committees in Congress, MITESOL was one of the affiliates selected to send a representative to TESOL Advocacy Day.
To participate, each affiliate representative was required to do several preparatory activities. For example, participants had to set up their own individual meetings with their Congressional representatives. To assist with this, TESOL provided directions and guidance, as well as the list of specific representatives and senators to contact Contacting the Reps. Kildee's and Walberg's offices was the beginning of a establishing a relationship with the staffers who were responsible for helping to draft the reauthorization language for NCLB. Each office graciously set up appointments with key staffers in each office as well as a brief meeting with Rep. Walberg. Ms. Moase-Burke found that the staffers were knowledgeable and interested in engaging in substantive conversations about the merits and challenges of NCLB and how its reauthorization might be drafted to enhance the education of English Language Learners in Michigan.
Participants were also sent talking points and background information on NCLB so that they could begin to familiarize themselves with the issues in advance. To help make their Congressional meetings more effective, participants were encouraged to find examples from their own programs to illustrate the talking points. The challenges of NCLB include:
- Native language and literacy development should be used as the foundation for English language and academic development.
Academic instruction that includes the use of English language learners' native languages, especially if they are literate in that language, promotes learners' academic achievement while they are acquiring the English needed to benefit fully from instruction through English.
- Federal, state and local officials need to recognize that acquiring academic language proficiency - the level of English required for academic success - is more demanding than acquiring social language skills.
For most English language learners, social language skills in English can be acquired in 2-3 years. However, English language learners need more than social language skills in order to achieve academic success. The acquisition of academic language proficiency can take English language learners from 5 to 7 years to achieve parity with their native English language peers.
- Appropriate accommodations need to be provided to English language learners in order to accurately measure academic achievement - not just language capability.
Effective accountability for English language learners must be built on a framework of appropriate, valid, and reliable measures in order to accurately assess student performance. Unfortunately, many of the assessments now being used for reading and math are not appropriate for English language learners, as they have been developed for native English speakers.
- Schools and districts should have the flexibility to determine when English language learners should be given an assessment in English, rather than the 3-year timeline currently required by NCLB in terms of measuring Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
All students learn at different rates, and this holds especially true for English language learners. These students come from a broad variety of educational, cultural, and social backgrounds, all of which impact the rate at which these students will learn English.
- Track individual English Language learner's proficiency, and aggregate English language learners by language proficiency within age groups for purposes of tracking Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in academic subjects (e.g. a growth model)
Under NCLB, standards for the AYP of English language learners are set based on the number of years the learners have attended U.S. schools. This practice implies that all individuals designated as English language learners progress in their new language at the same rate, an assumption that contradicts the findings of numerous research studies in the field of second language acquisition. The length of residency in an English-speaking country is not automatically a reliable and trustworthy indicator of English language proficiency.
- Weigh the English language proficiency and academic assessments for English language learners, based on the language proficiency level of learners (e.g. an index model)
For accountability purposes, both the language proficiency assessment and academic assessments should be taken into consideration and weighed according to each student's level of language proficiency. For English language learners at the beginning levels of language proficiency, more weight should be given to language proficiency assessment results. As a learner becomes more proficient in English, gradually more weight can be given to the academic content assessment results.
TESOL Advocacy Day commenced with a welcome from TESOL President Shelley Wong. The participants were also joined by President-Elect Mark Algren and Past President Sandy Briggs. The morning workshop was led by John Segota, Advocacy and Professional Relations Manager, and was comprised of three briefings. The first featured congressional staff from both the House and the Senate discussing the "view from the Hill" on NCLB reauthorization, and the key issues under debate. The second briefing featured the education staffer from Sen. Barrack Obama's office discussing a bill on middle school reform he has proposed, the Success in the Middle Act. The final briefing featured the acting director of the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) providing an update from that office.
Following these briefings, an interactive workshop was held on how to have an effective meeting with one's congressional representative. This workshop was led by Ellen Fern and Krista Heckler of Washington Partners, LLC, TESOL's legislative consultants. Participants were provided key information to prepare for their meetings and given the opportunity to role play. The purpose of the briefings and the workshop was to help the participants practice and prepare for their meeting on Capitol Hill that afternoon.
Representative Dale Kildee is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education Committee on Education and Labor. Lloyd Horwich, Chairman Kildee's Policy Advisor in charge of educational issues, spent significant time discussing in detail the challenge facing legislators as they draft the reauthorization language of NCLB as well as what specific suggestions might shed any new light on resolving the challenges facing out legislators. Challenges included how NLCB might be revised to address how ELLs are assessed on high stakes testing (MEAP and MME); how highly qualified teacher status for ESL and Bilingual teachers is necessary to provide quality instruction to ELLs; the necessity for states to construct quality language assessments; and the necessity to provide flexibility for local districts in meeting AMAOs.
Jessica Van Beek, Legislative Assistant from Rep. Walberg's office also discussed issues impacting ELLs such as, accountability, accommodations, and the impact of high stakes testing on ELLs and the schools they attend as well as flexibility for local districts in meeting AMAOs..
At the end of the day, all the participants shared their experiences and what they learned over dinner. It was interesting to hear what other people experienced on their visit. Each participant shared their experiences of the day highlighting the need to continue this dialogue with local affiliates and legislators throughout the year. Overall, all of the participants agreed this event was a very positive experience for them and for TESOL.
Additional information about TESOL Advocacy Day, including photographs and video of the interactive workshop, is available on the TESOL web site at http://www.tesol.org. If you are interested in learning more about your Congressional representatives, and the legislative issues TESOL is tracking, go the TESOL U.S. Advocacy Action Center at http://capwiz.com/tesol.
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