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ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 01.08.2009
A new national report ranks Arizona on the low side of average in educating students.
And the state gets mixed reviews on how it's educating children who are learning English, according to the report, released Wednesday.
"Quality Counts," the annual report by Education Week, gave Arizona a C-minus for its overall performance. The ranking is based on a host of measurements, from test scores to how well the state holds schools accountable, prepares teachers and funds education.
The nation, as a whole, only came in with 76.2 percent.
States did not get grades for how well they're doing with the population of students who are classified as English-language learners, but the report did show that Arizona has more students making progress, at nearly 48 percent, than the national figure of 34 percent.
On the other hand, the average English-learner nationally is attaining proficiency and getting reclassified faster than in Arizona. In Arizona, fewer than 11 percent of the state's 163,165 English-language-learners "graduated" to general education classrooms, compared with nearly 13 percent nationally.
And Arizona has a wider gap between how well English- speakers and English-learners perform on state assessments than other states do. In reading, for example, 64 percent of fourth- and eighth-graders were proficient in reading. For English-learners, that number dropped to below 17 percent. Only 31 percent met the math standard, compared with 67 percent of English-speakers.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said the report was good news on a few fronts. The report recognizes that Arizona is in a minority of states that require all prospective teachers to demonstrate competence in teaching non-native speakers, he said.
But he also said that the report relies on old data. His staff told him Tuesday that the latest reclassification rate is closer to 21 percent. The report also doesn't reflect that Arizona is only midway through its first year of mandating four-hour language blocks for students not proficient in English.
"I'm anticipating a major jump in our rates of reclassifying students because for the first time ever districts are required to teach them four hours a day, instead of the 30 to 60 minutes they were getting before."
Steve Holmes, a chief academic officer with the Tucson Unified School District, estimated that two-thirds of district schools that qualify for the program have actually implemented the changes. Some schools, he said, are still struggling to find enough staff. And, he said, some schools have seen fuller general education classrooms as a result of the revamp.
Holmes said Horne could be right about seeing a jump in reclassification rates and he said that staff appreciates the heightened awareness of the needs of English-learners.
But, he said, the "local tenor" in the schools he oversees is that concerns remain. Teachers, he said, are concerned that so much focus on language will naturally cut into other content areas, so they're waiting to see how those students perform on assessment tests. And, he added, teachers aren't convinced that once students are reclassified they'll still be fully prepared to enter general education classes with English-dominant peers.
John Wright, head of the Arizona Education Association, the statewide teacher lobby, said no matter how the state's performance looks on paper, he has found "virtually no teacher who believes the current model is successfully meeting their students' needs."
"It's too bad this report card can't reflect the absurdity of ELL instruction being dictated by the state Legislature," he said. "The criteria was prepared by politicians, not by people who do this work and are trained to do this work."
Otherwise, he said the report showed a holding pattern — the only score that changed from last year was school finance, which this year tacked a plus on last year's D.
"I think what really leapt out is that we've made no progress. For Arizona to have made no progress, when the rhetoric we hear all the time is how we have to improve the education system, means our action doesn't match our words."
How we stack up
• 72.2 percent: Arizona
• 76.2 percent: United States
• 84.7 percent: Maryland, the top scorer
• 68.3 percent: Washington, D.C., the lowest
● Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at 806-7754 or at rbodfield@azstarnet.com.
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