A friend of mine lives in Pike Township. She briefly lived in the Bahamas, where her son was born. Early in her son's life they moved to the United States and have here ever since.
When Pike Township school officials discovered that her son was born in the Bahamas they administered an "English as a Second Language" test to him.
What language do they speak in the Bahamas? That would be English.
The son is now enrollled in a charter school.
8 comments:
How can a school district be so criminally stupid? I'll bet the school administrator was White. Not only is The Bahamas a British Crown colony, the Black children there (and it's almost all Black) have a stronger command of the English language than most of our public-school White children.
Did the Pike administrator not understand the island accent?
Yes they speak English, rather than 'American' like we do.
Back in the 50s a couple from England moved in down the street from my parents on west 64th street. A census worker showed up one day and after asking a few questions asked the lady where she was from. When the neighbor replied "We moved here from England a year ago" the fed told her "You certainly learned our language pretty fast."
My mom tried sending a Christmas present to my brother at Ft Greely in Alaska when she was in Texas. The postal clerk wanted her to fill out a customs form and list the contents. Mom said she didn't want my brother to know what he was getting, the fed told her that foreign countries had rules about what items they let in. She had to get a supervisor to convince him Alaska was a state.
Ah, yes! Geography has always been a Hoosier specialty....
Cato, actually the kid doesn't even have an accent. He was only a few years old when he came to the U.S. That's the other stupid part of it.
Do school districts receive more funds per every student that is considered to need more help, ie, English as a second language?
I have heard that IQ levels are falling.
The school district was literally following the instructions for the state mandated report, the DOE-LM.
The DOE-LM requirement speaks to immigrants regardless of whether or not they are receiving ESL instruction. The student, however, should have been coded as a native English speaker for that report.
"Immigrant students are individuals aged 3-21 (as of October 1, 2009), who were not born in any U.S. State (or Puerto Rico or other U.S. territory) and have not been attending one or more schools in any one or more states for more than three full academic years (three years includes kindergarten and home schooling, not preschool). An immigrant student need not be an English language learner to be included in this collection. Native English-speaking immigrant students should be reported using Code 3 (Immigrant student who is a Native English Speaker), in Field 3, English Language Learner Status (formerly Language Minority Status). Use the Language Codes and the Change History for Language Codes in that document for reference."
And in answer to MCB, no ESL students don't garner more dollars for schools.
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