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A district court judge ruled on July 24, 2008, that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has failed to properly implement and monitor bilingual programs in Texas, and further found that these programs have failed to achieve results that demonstrate students with limited English proficiency (LEP) are overcoming language barriers.
The Equal Education Opportunity Act requires that “no State shall deny equal education opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex or national origin, by… the failure of an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs.” In Texas, TEA is the educational agency charged with ensuring that all students are given educational opportunities by virtue of adequate language remediation programs. In determining that TEA had failed to meet this requirement, the district court found that, although the educational theories behind TEA’s bilingual and ESL programs are sound, TEA failed to properly monitor and implement the programs, which failed to achieve results in overcoming language barriers.
The court was highly critical that TEA does not verify data or monitor school districts where significant statistical data indicates that school districts are likely under-identifying LEP students. The court also noted that monitoring data was combined across multiple levels and on a district-level, rather than a campus-level, basis. This aggregation of data can result in masking of problems. For example, dropout rates of LEP students are based upon combined dropout rates from grades 7-12. However, students are much more likely to drop out of high school than middle school. So if very few dropouts are reported for grades 7 and 8, those low numbers serve to mask the fact that there might be significant numbers of dropouts in grades 9-12. Finally, the court concluded that TEA has an inadequate number of bilingual-ESL certified monitors to conduct onsite visits of struggling programs.
The court also examined the achievements of LEP students and found that they drop out of school at a greater rate than other students and are retained from advancing a grade level more frequently than other students. LEP students also fail to progress through or exit LEP programs in a reasonable time and participate in advanced academic courses at a far lower rate than other students. After considering all of these factors together, the court concluded that “sufficient evidence of student failure can establish that educational agencies have not met their obligation to overcome language barriers. The failure of secondary LEP students under every metric clearly and convincingly demonstrates student failure, and accordingly, the failure of the ESL secondary program in Texas.”
TEA has been ordered to establish a language program and monitoring program that complies with the law by January 31, 2009. However, this case has been appealed by TEA; therefore, it could be years before changes are finally made to bilingual and ESL programs in Texas, and this decision could ultimately be overturned. However, the decision in this case highlights some of the substantial obstacles that face LEP students and the teachers who serve them.
Web posted: 09/10/08 from The Classroom Teacher, Fall 2008
