Schools Aid Transition to U.S.

After Joanna Napoles moved to Fontana from Mexico, she spent three frustrating months at Truman Middle School, struggling to understand her teachers and receiving dismal marks in every class except gym.

So when the 14-year-old was offered the option of transferring to a new school for recent immigrants, she jumped at the chance.

“It’s better -- you know everybody. We can help each other,” said Joanna, who recently spent a morning learning to write persuasive essays in a class of about two dozen students led by a teacher and two bilingual aides. “We get more attention.”

Joanna attends Fontana’s Language Acquisition Program, one of about 200 “newcomer” schools nationwide that eschew mainstreaming newly arrived immigrants to focus for a year on they what call the biggest task at hand: learning English.

“We make them work hard,” said school director Armine Der-Karabetian. “They have only a year to catch up with the basic skills.”

Supporters say that in addition to offering concentrated English classes, the schools offer a nurturing transition that helps prepare immigrant students to attend traditional American high schools by also bringing them up to par in other core subjects such as math and history.

“It’s not as daunting as going into a high school of 2,000, 3,000 students ... where English is dominant,” said Herb Chan, principal of Newcomer High School in San Francisco, which opened in 1979 and is considered the nation’s first such program. “Coming here, they know that all students are essentially starting at the same place.”

As newcomer schools have proliferated in recent years, critics question whether the programs are another form of segregation that will leave students behind academically. About a quarter of the 6.3 million public school students in California have limited English skills.

“Mainstreaming works, if you want to get ... young people to learn the larger culture quicker,” said Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. “Segregation in any of its forms, whether voluntary or involuntary, blocks communications between students of different races and cultures.... The best way to learn the larger culture is to get immersed in the larger culture.”

In Fontana, over 40% of students have limited English skills -- more than twice as many as a decade ago. In September, the district opened its first newcomer school, with six classrooms, a computer lab equipped with interactive software that allows students to practice their speaking skills and a library.

Of the school’s 136 students, all but one are native Spanish speakers. In English class, teacher Verna Van has labeled objects in the room with their names in English. Students with English-Spanish dictionaries gather in small groups based on skill level. The more advanced answer questions in English, while others speak haltingly, regularly consulting the aides.

At Newcomer High School in San Francisco, 400 mostly Chinese- and Spanish-speaking students spend half their day learning English, and the remainder in core academic classes. Beyond coursework, Chan said the school provided a haven where immigrant teens could get used to life in the United States.

“They really need that adjustment period to find themselves,” he said. “Many of them are kids who were separated from their parents for a while or they move because they have to get out of their country.... You know there’s trauma going on.”

Programs like these have been especially helpful for students who enter U.S. schools unable to read or write in their native language, said Deborah Short of the Center for Applied Linguistics. “Quite a number of students are several grade levels below their peers. They’re under-schooled,” she said. “That was the big impetus for starting these programs.”

Successful newcomer schools test to measure the progress of students and ensure that the program is truly a short-term stop for the teens, Short said.

Schools that fail to do so have been closed, including a 24-year-old Hayward, Calif., program scheduled to shut down in June after federal officials found that it segregated immigrant students and denied them access to electives, after-school sports and other opportunities offered to students at regular schools.

Students from downtown Los Angeles were bused to the Bellagio Road Newcomer Center in Bel Air for 12 years before it was closed by Los Angeles Unified School District officials in 2002. Richard Alonzo, a superintendent whose area included Bellagio, called the school a failure.

“Some students were there for three or four years, which is really against the law,” he said, adding that “the level of rigor in terms of what kids were being taught was so minimal.”

Los Angeles still has one newcomer program, at Belmont High School. The program, with stronger academics and limited stays, is at a traditional high school, allowing immigrant students to interact with English-speaking peers, Alonzo said.

But critics argue that the schools do not do enough for students, some of whom have never set foot in a classroom or know how to properly hold a pencil.

“It’s going to take more than a one-year newcomer program,” said Reynaldo Baca, director of the USC Latino and Language Minority Teacher Projects. One has “to look at how long it’s going to take a child to get to the point where they can access academic subjects in English. That could take several years.”

Fontana newcomer school director Der-Karabetian didn’t know what to expect when classes began in September. At school-year’s end, she was left with a mixture of pride over her students’ achievements and regrets about the limits on what her school can accomplish.

“It has been wonderful seeing how much they have progressed and seeing the difference from the day they walked in the first time. Now they’re able to have a decent conversation. It’s rewarding,” she said. But “there’s always a frustration, a desire to do more with the kids. You want to keep them and get them [fluent in English], but unfortunately we can’t.”