Hourly Update

English learners among fastest-growing segment at Arizona schools

PHOENIX - Two new studies have found that children who have trouble speaking English are among the fastest-growing segments of the school population in Arizona with the growth fueled by immigration. The vast majority of schoolchildren who can't speak English well enough to pass proficiency tests are mostly segregated in a relatively small number of schools. Limited-English students also tend to be poor and live in households where little, if any, English is spoken. That's according to the studies by the Migration Policy Institute and the Urban Institute, two nonpartisan research groups in Washington. Arizona is one of the few states to ban bilingual education. It's also where the cost of educating the more than 160,000 schoolchildren classified as English-language learners has turned into a hot political issue. Since 2000, the state has been under a federal court order to increase spending for educating English-language learners. But in May, Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed a Republican-backed plan that would have added $13.5 million to the $80 million the state already spends a year on English-learner programs. Napolitano called the plan inadequate. She favors a plan that would add $185million a year to English-learner programs. In August, Tim Hogan, executive director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, asked a judge to block the state from getting federal highway funds until Napolitano and the Legislature agree on a plan. The judge has yet to rule. In 2000, Arizona voters passed Proposition 203, a ballot measure that banned bilingual education and required schools to use mostly English immersion programs to teach children with limited English proficiency. At the time, advocates of the ballot measure contended English immersion would help improve academic achievement among English-learners, but so far that hasn't happened, said Eugene Garcia, dean of the college of education at Arizona State University. A 2005 report by researchers at Arizona State University found that English-learners in Arizona continue to perform poorly in school even after the passage of Proposition 203, according to Garcia. "The achievement gap between kids who come to school not speaking English vs. those who come speaking English is the same and may have grown," he said.