Sure Feels Like Being Left Behind

Brenda Hernandez was never an F student in her hometown of Guanajuato, Mexico, but that changed when she took reading and writing lessons in the United States. She has failed her last two tests and is ready to ask her father to enroll her in a bilingual class.

“I hope he understands that I’m not learning,” the 12-year-old said in Spanish. “I’m not accustomed to doing bad in school.”

Brenda’s struggle to learn English is not unique in the Coachella Valley Unified School District, where many students are the children of Spanish-speaking migrant farmworkers. Close to 70% of the students are classified as “English language learners.”

The district on Wednesday was named one of 15 California school districts that failed to meet federal goals in standardized testing for the second year in a row. More than half of the 19 schools in the Coachella Valley Unified School District were also on the improvement list.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, the district faces losing millions in federal dollars or even a state takeover if test scores do not show greater improvement.

In a district with a never-ending flow of new, Spanish-speaking students, officials said meeting those federal goals is nearly impossible. They are considering taking legal action or asking state lawmakers to intervene.

“We’re not asking for any favors, and we totally believe in standards and being held accountable,” said Robert Bailey, assistant superintendent for educational services. “What we’re asking for is more time. Right now, we get a kid in October and we’re sticking a test in front of them in April.”

But U.S. Department of Education officials said the No Child Left Behind requirements make considerable exceptions for school districts with large numbers of English learners. As of February, No Child Left Behind gives states the option of not including the scores of students who have been enrolled in the United States for less than one academic year.

“We do understand that there’s a double challenge because they must learn language and master the content,” said Kathleen Leos, associate deputy undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Education.

Until the law was passed, however, schools had never been held accountable for children who might have previously been ignored, she said. Those students include ethnic minorities, English-language learners, special education students and socio-economically disadvantaged students, Leos said.

“I firmly believe that NCLB is an English-language learner’s civil right,” she said. “It’s the first time we can honestly say we are looking at the academic achievements of every child in our building, in each classroom and in every school in the United States.”

Under the federal law, every student must be proficient in reading, writing and math by 2014. The testing requirements ratchet up each year.

At a school with a large number of new, Spanish-speaking students, those targets only become further out of reach with each year, said Manuela Silvestre, principal at Mecca Elementary School.

“Are we ever going to catch up?” Silvestre said. “We’ll always have that same issue. New kids who don’t speak the language will always be coming into our system.”

Ninety-seven percent of students at Mecca are Latino. There are three white, non-Latino children, two Filipinos and one student who speaks an indigenous language of Mexico.

“In this community, all these students hear is Spanish,” Silvestre said. “They go to the local market, the post office, the beauty salon. They turn on the TV, and it’s all in Spanish. We [educators] are the only English models.”

Nine months ago, Brenda, her mother and four siblings joined their father, Federico, in a modest apartment in Mecca. But for almost 17 years, the Hernandez family became accustomed to spending time apart, said Brenda’s mother, Antonia. Her husband would leave his family in December in search of seasonal work in Coachella Valley grape farms and return to Mexico several months later with his earnings.

“It’s nice to finally have my family together,” Antonia said. “The kids have really applied themselves and hopefully they will be able to push ahead and do better than their parents.”

All of the school-age Hernandez children, who range in age from 7 months to 15 years, are enrolled in the rural Coachella Valley Unified district.

“The student population is changing on a daily basis here,” said Bonifacio Hernandez, a teacher at Mecca School and no relation to Brenda’s family. “As soon as you’re bonding and making an impact on a student, he’s moving. That’s the way it is in Mecca.”

Brenda’s sister, Daena, 10, is shy but says she loves attending school in the United States. She is one of about 30 children in Bonifacio Hernandez’s newcomers class at Mecca School, a class intended as an intervention course for recent arrivals.

“Right now, it’s hard, but I have my brothers and sisters and we all help each other out,” Daena said. “Once I get more used to it, it won’t be so bad.”

Some of Daena’s classmates have been in the country as little as a month, while others have been here longer and can speak the language, but continue to score poorly on standardized tests.

“I would consider them all newcomers,” said Bonifacio Hernandez. “It takes more than three years to acquire language.”

At the Mecca school, all first- through third-grade students are placed in the traditional program. The fourth- through sixth-grade new arrivals are placed in Bonifacio Hernandez’s class as well as the students who are at least two years behind their peers. These students pose the greatest challenge, he said.

“They can read something just fine, but ask them what they learn and they say, ‘I don’t know,’ ” he said. “By then, they’re discouraged, they’re falling behind, and they’re labeled as failures and they know it, they feel it. They know they shouldn’t be reciting their ABCs at this age. It’s not as simple as saying we’re going to teach them English and everything’s fixed.”