What happens when recent immigrants who have had little or no schooling in their countries of origin are faced with having to take high-stakes tests? This case presents the pressures on schools, teachers, and their students—as they struggle with how best to meet these students’ academic needs, while at the same time, having to graduate kids in a traditional four-year time period. Should high school be extended for these students?
Discussion Questions:
- How should schools deal with the EL population that comes to school as older students without academic work in their first language?
- What should an education look like for students who are considered high-school age but are not high-school qualified?
- Should NCLB allow for five to six years of high school for EL populations who are not academically proficient in English and still count them as graduating?
- How do we help a school that has a majority of low-performing EL students and also is impacted socio-economically?
- Are there better methods of assessing the skills of students than high-stakes tests?
- Should some populations of students be excused from testing or be given a different type of test to test their level of performance in a different way?
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By
Connie S. Parsons
TNLI
Affiliate:
Sacramento, CA
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