For Syracuse reading teacher Ermine Cunningham, proctoring the English language arts test was a painful experience.

She watched a fourth-grade English language learner who has only been in this country a little more than a year struggle with an ELA reading passage designed for her native-speaking peers. She urged the young girl, who reads at about a first-grade level, to try reading the passage aloud.

"I thought that might make it easier for her," Cunningham said. "She said 'blah-blah-blah' when she didn't know the words. Well, she 'read' the whole page and she only knew about two or three sight words. She'd say 'blah-blah-blah — the — then blah, blah, blah — and.' She had no idea what the passage was about. It was heart-breaking."

To Cunningham, forcing the young girl to take the test was not just unfair and demeaning — it was an inappropriate use of time.

"Why spend the time making her take this test that will give you absolutely no helpful information?" asked Cunningham, a member of the Syracuse Teachers Association. "The time could certainly be better spent on appropriate instruction."

The scene at Franklin Elementary was repeated in classrooms around the state this month, as thousands of previously exempt English language learners were required to take the same ELA test as their peers. The new federal rule, required under the No Child Left Behind law, affected roughly 60,000 students in the state. It requires students who have been in this country at least one year to take the state's ELA test for accountability purposes.

"We have a federal government that is being a bully," said NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira, who led an effort by the union to block the new testing. "This unfair assessment identifies the students as failures and then turns around and unfairly identifies their schools as failures under NCLB."

Union monitors testing

Neira, who was quoted widely in newspapers around the state on the issue, said the union will be collecting comments from educators on how the grade 3-8 ELA testing went for teachers and students (see article above). Neira said the union is also closely monitoring implementation of new testing requirements for special education students.

NYSUT fiercely lobbied the Regents, the State Education Department and the U.S. Department of Education to allow English learners to continue to take the New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test, or NYSESLAT, to meet the federal requirement.

The test, which has been used successfully since 2003 and has recently been revised to better align with New York's learning standards, was not even reviewed by the federal government panel, which found the NYSESLAT was not comparable to the ELA. Unfortunately, English learners will be double-tested later this spring when they will take the NYSESLAT to meet Title III federal requirements.

Ignoring alternatives

"What's most frustrating is that, in Washington and Albany, leaders ignored several alternatives that were educationally sound and endorsed by classroom teachers, including nearly 3,400 who sent e-mails to the Regents asking them to stand up to the bureaucrats in Washington," Neira said.

The union supports development of appropriate grade-by-grade assessments for English language learners who are here less than three years. In the interim, until SED has developed appropriate federally-approved ELA assessments for English langugage learners, SED should seek federal authorization to continue using the NYSESLAT, rather than the ELA test.

Neira noted the research clearly shows that English learners need at least five years, and often longer, if they were not formally educated in their native language, to acquire skills necessary to perform well on a standardized test in English.

The state of Virginia has asked the federal government to allow a portfolio assessment for English learners.

State Education Commissioner Richard Mills wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Education asking that the children taking this year's ELA do so for participation purposes only, and not be counted toward a school's annual academic progress under NCLB. He had received no reply as of his January report to the Regents.

Legislative support

As Congress moves forward with reauthorization plans and possible revisions to the No Child Left Behind Act, NYSUT will continue pressing for changes at both the state and federal level.

After conducting hearings last fall where Neira and a number of teachers testified on the detrimental effect of the new testing policy, the Assembly Education Committee approved a resolution supporting NYSUT's and the commissioner's advocacy on the issue.

The resolution, sponsored by Assembly Education Committee Chairwoman Cathy Nolan, D-Queens, calls for more flexibility in assessing English language learners and supports the use of alternative methods to comply with the federal law.

— Sylvia Saunders