Federal

Fla. Wins Flexibility in Accountability for English-Learners

By Corey Mitchell — January 05, 2015 4 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The U.S. Department of Education has granted Florida flexibility in how it assesses English-language learners, bringing an end to a months-long dispute between the federal agency and state officials that had included a threat from Gov. Rick Scott to file a lawsuit.

Federal officials last month agreed to Florida’s request to give its ELL students two years in a U.S. school before factoring their scores on annual English/language arts and mathematics tests into school grades. Florida had sought the two-year testing timeline as part of its waiver from some requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The change contradicts federal rules that demand all children be counted equally in accountability measures. This also marks the first time that the Education Department is relenting on the federal requirement that English-learners’ performance on state content tests be part of school accountability after such students have been enrolled in U.S. schools for one year.

In a Dec. 22 letter to Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart, Deborah S. Delisle, the assistant secretary for the office of elementary and secondary education, wrote that the federal department had reconsidered Florida’s request for testing flexibility because the state will still publicly report on performance of recently-arrived English-learners and include their scores in the growth component of the state’s school grading system.

With the move, federal officials are following the lead of state legislators in Florida, who changed the law in 2014 to reflect that students still learning English should not be expected to immediately excel on the state’s annual tests. That law gives students two years in a U.S. school before educators must include their test scores in schools’ annual accountability ratings.

“We are granting this waiver after carefully considering Florida’s request,” said education department spokeswoman Dorie Nolt in a statement.

“The state’s particular approach to accountability for newly arrived English-language-learner students ensures schools have baseline data beginning with each student’s first year in the United States—data that helps inform teaching and extra supports [needed] to help the students succeed—and calls for the state to fully incorporate student growth into its statewide accountability system in the second year of the waiver,” she said.

Earlier this year, the Education Department scolded Florida officials as they renewed the state’s waiver from NCLB requirements, warning that they risked having the waiver revoked if the state did not comply with federal law on using ELL test scores after one year.

National Push?

The Education Department’s reversal on Florida’s stance on ELL testing could breathe new life into the debate over how schools are judged for serving English-learners, including giving them that extra year of instructional time before testing them for accountability purposes on content in a language they are still learning.

Research indicates that it takes five to seven years for students with no English-language skills to gain fluency.

“In many cases, students fail the test, not because they don’t know the content,” said Jamal Abedi, a professor of education at the University of California, Davis. “It’s because they don’t know the language.”

Federal education officials said Florida’s exemption is not immediately applicable to other states with sizable ELL populations.

“This is one model that other states could look to when they are considering how to have a fair accountability system for ELLs,” Ms. Nolt said.

Ms. Stewart, the state education commissioner, and Gov. Scott praised the Education Department’s decision to reverse course and allow the state to retain the two-year testing timeline it had been using for recently arrived English-learners for its pre-waiver state accountability system.

“Our teachers and schools have made significant strides closing the achievement gap for English-language learners, and it is critical that we stay on the trajectory that has yielded excellent results,” Ms. Stewart said.

Measuring Impact

The growing number of English-language learners in Florida and elsewhere poses challenges for educators striving to ensure that such students get access to the core curriculum in schools and acquire academic knowledge, as well as English-language skills.

About 1 in 10 Florida students, roughly 250,000, were English-language learners in the 2013-14 academic year.

In the wake of the federal education department’s decision, Florida officials did not specify how many of those students are tested under the requirements of No Child Left Behind.

“I never got a sense of how many kids were going to be affected or the level of proficiency of these students,” said Robert Linquanti, the project director for English-learner evaluation and accountability support at WestEd, a San Francisco-based research group. “What we had here was a debate about fairness.”

Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the 345,000-student Miami-Dade County school district, said in a statement that the decision brought “reason, respect, and fairness to one of the most fragile groups of students anywhere in America, English-language learners.”

The waiver could be significant for Miami-Dade, the state’s largest school system and home to close to a third of the state’s K-12 English-learner students.

Mari Corugedo, a Miami-Dade teacher, hopes the waiver paves the way for more substantive changes in how the state educates and evaluates its language-learners, including bolstered bilingual instruction.

“Children do need more than a year,” Ms. Corugedo said. “It’s a good start. But in order (for them) to make the transition, we need to strengthen the bilingual programs and step up funding in the schools. That’s the way we make a difference.”

A version of this article appeared in the January 07, 2015 edition of Education Week as Fla. Wins Reprieve in Testing of ELLs

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Webinar
Harnessing AI to Address Chronic Absenteeism in Schools
Learn how AI can help your district improve student attendance and boost academic outcomes.
Content provided by Panorama Education
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Science Webinar
Spark Minds, Reignite Students & Teachers: STEM’s Role in Supporting Presence and Engagement
Is your district struggling with chronic absenteeism? Discover how STEM can reignite students' and teachers' passion for learning.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
Recruitment & Retention Webinar EdRecruiter 2025 Survey Results: The Outlook for Recruitment and Retention
See exclusive findings from EdWeek’s nationwide survey of K-12 job seekers and district HR professionals on recruitment, retention, and job satisfaction. 

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal Jimmy Carter's Education Legacy Stretched From the School Board to the White House
The 39th president helped create the U.S. Department of Education. He had also been a school board member and an education-minded governor.
19 min read
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter waves to the congregation after teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia on April 28, 2019. Carter, 94, has taught Sunday school at the church on a regular basis since leaving the White House in 1981, drawing hundreds of visitors who arrive hours before the 10:00 am lesson in order to get a seat and have a photograph taken with the former President and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the congregation after teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Ga., on April 28, 2019. He died Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, at age 100.
Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press
Federal White House Starts Scrapping Pending Regulations on Transgender Athletes, Student Debt
The Biden administration plans to jettison pending regulations to prevent President-elect Trump from retooling them to achieve his own aims.
6 min read
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on lowering prices for American families during an event at the YMCA Allard Center on March 11, 2024, in Goffstown, N.H.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on lowering prices for American families during an event at the YMCA Allard Center on March 11, 2024, in Goffstown, N.H. His administration is withdrawing proposed regulations that would provide some protections for transgender student<ins data-user-label="Matt Stone" data-time="12/26/2024 12:37:29 PM" data-user-id="00000185-c5a3-d6ff-a38d-d7a32f6d0001" data-target-id="">-</ins>athletes and cancel student loans for more than 38 million Americans.
Evan Vucci/AP
Federal Then & Now Will RFK Jr. Reheat the School Lunch Wars?
Trump's ally has said he wants to remove processed foods from school meals. That's not as easy as it sounds.
6 min read
Image of school lunch - Then and now
Liz Yap/Education Week with iStock/Getty and Canva
Federal 3 Ways Trump Can Weaken the Education Department Without Eliminating It
Trump's team can seek to whittle down the department's workforce, scrap guidance documents, and close offices.
4 min read
Then-Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla.
President-elect Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. Trump pledged during the campaign to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. A more plausible path could involve weakening the agency.
Evan Vucci/AP