Arizona Grades Teachers on Fluency

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: The Wall Street Journal

PHOENIX—As the academic year winds down, Creighton School Principal Rosemary Agneessens faces a wrenching decision: what to do with veteran teachers whom the state education department says don't speak English well enough.

The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.

State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators.

The teacher controversy comes amid an increasingly tense debate over immigration. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer this month signed the nation's toughest law to crack down on illegal immigrants. Critics charge that the broader political climate has emboldened state education officials to target immigrant teachers at a time when a budget crisis has forced layoffs.



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575213883276427528.html

[EFerrari]

1. Right, dumbasses, eliminate bilingual teachers!

That will surely help those children that are learning English!

:applause:

[aquart]

6. Yes, actually.

It is NOT a help to young new learners to be getting all their instructions in their original language. Pre-pubescent children can easily switch their language wiring. It's much harder for older ones and that also isn't made easier by anything but total immersion.

We have generations of people in the nation descended from immigrants who came as adults and LEARNED the language painstakingly while their children got it in one. When I was a child I honestly believed that one acquired an accent as part of the aging process, because all the old people I knew had accents.

It is an INSULT to the new immigrants to pretend they aren't capable of learning the same way the old immigrants did. But it is also much more insidious. English is a status requirement for every good job in this country. By NOT insisting on unaccented standard American from any and every one of the children we teach, we make a subclass of them. We make it easy to discriminate by accent. One way to ensure that accent is to give them teachers who have accents themselves.

Me, I code shift between standard American and heavy Queens. I can do that because my teachers spoke standard American while my neighborhood was heavy Queens. Accent matters and it matters in money.

[EFerrari]

13. You're responding to something I didn't say. n/t

[tonysam]

47. By the way, bilingual education is NOT the same thing as English as a Second Language

People need to know the difference.

[pnwmom]

7. They may be bilingual but not skilled enough in English to teach English.

And that wouldn't help their students.

[EFerrari]

12. That is supposition on your part. How many great teachers can you name

that had an accent? Einstein and Freud come to mind for me immediately.

An accent is not a measure of skill.

[pnwmom]

17. Einstein wasn't trying to teach American English. Neither was Freud.

Still, I agree that the standard of "heavily accented English" is vague. But it's obvious to me that a teacher who doesn't speak with good English GRAMMAR shouldn't be teaching English. I remember a young friend of my sister's saying things like "I ain't got no coat with me." Would you want her teaching English to your children? Or are sub-standard English teachers only okay if the students are ESL?

P.S. Einstein wasn't known as a great teacher, but as a great thinker.

[EFerrari]

22. Right. They were both teaching a subject that assumed English, which is harder.

And this is obviously more racist bullshit from the Republicans in Arizona.

[pnwmom]

23. It isn't harder if you're teaching a subject you know well.

Yes, in the context of the whole situation, every clause of that bill is suspect.

But ESL students deserve English teachers who are solid speakers of English, capable of teaching grammar, diction, and phonics.

[EFerrari]

28. Children all over the world are taught English from teachers

whose first language isn't English.

Seriously, this is racist bullshit.

[pnwmom]

31. You don't need to have English be your first language to be very competent in it.

But not every person who gets along in English is capable of teaching it.

When my children took foreign languages, I always wanted them to learn from a native speaker -- not someone whose grammar or accent was worse than mine. I'm guessing that most parents whose children are in ESL classes feel the same way.

[EFerrari]

33. But this discussion isn't about civilians, it's about teachers.

By your logic, you'd rather have Sarah Palin teach your children than someone with an accent.

[pnwmom]

37. Absolutely not. Palin's syntax is atrocious and her accent is ugly.

But I was referring to teachers, not civilians. I wanted my children's teachers of foreign languages to be native-speakers, if at all possible. And whether or not they were native speakers, I would expect them to be competent in grammar, syntax, and diction. Wouldn't you?

[EFerrari]

38. Then you wouldn't want me to teach your children.

English was my second language although that didn't stop me from being one of 17 in my graduate class in the ENGLISH Department at Cal out of an applicant pool of hundreds, not to mention, an accent is no indicator of skill.

It's unreal to me the way you can equate an accent with a lack of skill or professionalism. It must not be unreal to the Republicans because that is precisely the reactivity they bank on.

[pnwmom]

40. It's unreal to me the way you keep twisting anything I say.

And for that reason, and that reason alone, I wouldn't want you to teach one of my children.

[EFerrari]

42. Twisting what you say? You are the one who is conflating

lack of skill with an accent, just as the right wing wants you to.

And, believe me, you are safe.

[pnwmom]

48. No, I'm not. I acknowledged that an accent and facility with grammar, diction,

and syntax are separate issues.

[Yo_Mama]

49. Yes, but it is not an issue of "first language"

It's a question of how competent the teacher is in English.

There are many native English teachers who shouldn't be teaching English. There are many people who learned English as a second language who would be very competent to teach English. Indeed, learning a language as an adult may make them better at teaching it.

Whether this is racist bullshit or not depends on whether they are actually assessing English competence, or whether they are just focusing on the marginalia. And I agree that students who are not native English speakers absolutely deserve to be taught by someone who is very competent in English; these are the students who most need the proper exposure.

PS: Married to a naturalized Hispanic immigrant who learned English as an adult, who is very big on education and would be a lot more vehement on this subject than I. He wanted his children to get the best possible education.

[EFerrari]

50. You are equating an accent with incompetence in English.

Seriously, as my mom would say, this is why 9/11 happened. lol

[aquart]

2. AND I AGREE WITH THAT.

If you are teaching English it is NOT a help to students to teach them accented English. If you are teaching IN English, you should be able to be clearly understood when you speak.

I have sat in classrooms where I could understand one word in ten from a teacher whose grasp of English was tenuous at best. Knowledgeable? Sure. Probably. But how was I supposed to get that knowledge? This shouldn't even be arguable.

[TrogL]

5. The textbook? What's written on the black/white board?

[aquart]

10. Then why have a teacher at all?

You're saying the teacher's lecture is irrelevant to learning. Me, I get a lot from teachers who speak clear standard English or standard American.

[EFerrari]

18. My aunt taught in "accented English" for many years in the SF school district.

She's retired now and she has a shelf full of awards.

Your brush is much too broad and that's aside from ignoring that this is more racist bs from the Republicans in charge of Arizona at the moment.

I dropped a Psych class from an instructor that I couldn't understand because of his heavy German accent. Someone should have intervened with him, for sure, long before I got there. But all accents are not intrusive.

[pnwmom]

21. How do you teach phonics with a heavy accent? Doesn't it depend on what

the teacher is teaching? I had a teacher with a heavy German accent and she was a GREAT math teacher. But she wouldn't have been so great teaching English to ESL students.

[EFerrari]

25. Oh, please. Do you seriously believe that native Spanish speakers

can't produce or make English sounds? Then why bother to try to teach non-English speaking children in the first instance?

I'd love to see an in depth report of how many unintelligible teachers are attempting to teach English to their poor oppressed students and failing miserably. Until I see one, I call bullshit.

What we have so far is a claim by Arizona Republicans.

[pnwmom]

29. Up till the age of 11 or so children can learn a new language without an accent.

I didn't realize this law was limited to native Spanish teachers. That certainly would be wrong, if true. We have over 60 languages spoken in our district, and some sounds cannot be learned in adulthood.

[EFerrari]

30. Do you have any reference for language teachers

being unable to learn sounds in adulthood?

[pnwmom]

32. Not language teachers specifically. Human beings in general. n/t

[EFerrari]

34. So, the answer is no. Because professionals

do lifelong learning unlike civilians.

[pnwmom]

35. Here, have fun.

http://journals.tc-library.org/index.php/tesol/article/viewFile/462/278

But this whole issue is beside the point. I'm not saying that no non-native speaker is capable of teaching English. I'm making the indisputable point that there are people who don't speak English well enough to teach it -- and they shouldn't be.

[EFerrari]

39. And your "indisputable point" is the strawman

that this whole argument the Republicans in AZ depend on. Well done.

Because there is no evidence that there are any number of teachers who are not proficient enough in English to do their job.

Thanks for playing.

[pnwmom]

41. When various states have given teacher competency tests, there have always

been some teachers with poor scores in the subjects they're supposed to be teaching. And those teachers should be reviewed to see if they belong in the profession.

[EFerrari]

43. Great. Now show me the the correlation.

[madmom]

3. Will this include teachers with a New England or southern accent? They are

just as hard to understand IMO

[aquart]

8. I hope it does.

Because students who come out unable to code shift their regional accents with standard American have a really hard time achieving outside their region.

Is there anyone who thinks that Boston Southey indicates wealth and class?

[Shallah Kali]

44. I had a TX teacher who's accent was so think I could hardly understand a word

It was like Paula Deen only with a mouth full of peanut butter. Nice caucasian lady but incomprehensible to someone originally from up north like me.

[TrogL]

4. "heavily accented"??

I'm Canadian, but people swear I'm from Buffalo because I grew up listening to Irv Weinstein on WKBW.

Does that mean I can't teach there?

[truthisfreedom]

9. The point of this is that the layoffs they're facing are now going to be aimed at immigrants.

It's basically economic ethnic cleansing.

[aquart]

14. I get the bigotry in the intent.

I'm saying NO teacher should ever be hired to teach English who cannot speak the standard. That goes for teachers speaking deep Alabama to Alabama children, too.

Wanting NOT to be bigoted is not a good enough reason to condemn generations of children to an economic substrata because they cannot afford coaches to teach them the standard they should have learned in school. I received standard American from my teachers and I'm damned if I will accept less for any other child in this nation.

[EFerrari]

20. The standard in Arizona seems to be "not Latino".

[truthisfreedom]

24. That's the message they're sending. Otherwise, they'd be moving teachers to alternate

positions rather than laying them off. Teachers should be retained who have seniority and are effective, but given jobs in other departments if English is not their ideal subject.

[sinkingfeeling]

11. Sure, let's import all English teachers from England since most Americans have a

regional accent. And our version of the language is sloppy and full of phrases no one else uses.


True story: In Peru, some go to special schools to become tourist guides. Those wanting to deal with English speaking tourists may choose to learn either English or American English.

[aquart]

16. England is lousy with heavy regional accents.

They reserve their standard English for their privileged classes.

Standard American is not the same.

[iris27]

45. Which British regional accent should we be importing?

Manchester? RP? Cockney? Welsh?

Anyone who communicates in a spoken language (and actually, probably even in sign) has a regional accent, the world over.

[depakid]

46. The Geordie acent is almost unintelligible... after a couple of pints.

Then again, a broad, old school ocker dialect, complete with 'strine words will leave you stumped sometimes, even when you and the speaker are stone cold sober.

[alp227]

57. One of them can be Hugh Laurie; as his character in "House" he speaks pretty good American English

So I guess he's an exception to "an old dog can't learn new tricks" theory of learning English?

[matt819]

15. This is vile, of course, but it could be fun

Time consuming but fun. Basically record every utterance that comes out of the state's education department - memos, position papers, letters to the editor, press conferences, interviews, etc., and then publish every single grammatical error, every single incident where an accent of any sort made understanding the speaker difficult, etc.

What's remarkable about these racists - whether in the AZ legislature, or over in Virginia and MS with their confederates celebrations, or with FAIR, etc. - is that they parade their stupidity. They revel in their bigotry. There is no edit function in their brains, no delete key on their keyboards. They are proud of the vile attitudes they hold. They have no problem disagreeing with facts. Where were these clowns educated? The bathe vigorously in their cesspool and come out thinking they smell like Chanel #5.

[EFerrari]

27. Another kicker is how do these racist assholes account for

teachers all over the world teaching English as a second language?

Priceless.

[MikeW]

19. from experience

In college I had some terrible profs and grads students that I often wondered how the hell they passed the TOEFL exam.

I can see new teachers but the article says Veterans ... if they've been teaching a while this most likely isn't a
problem. Although "ungrammatical" should get you the boot under any circumstances in the education world.

[AnneD]

26. So where's the beef......

Arizona wants their teachers to be cunning linquists...that's all. :evilgrin:

Come on, you know you wish you had thought of it....so where is my Duzzy.

[greiner3]

36. That eliminates;

Any teacher from the South, East, North East, Midwest, Plains, Pacific Coast, Hawaii, Alaska and the valley of Los Angeles (couldn't resist on that one) as teachers. Oh wait, the article means 'Spanish' accents. That's different. Not!

[proteus_lives]

51. If you can't speak the language then you shouldn't teach.

I had a lot of TAs that barely spoke English and it affected how much I was able to learn from from them.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

52. ACCENT IS NOT FLUENCE OR LACK THEREOF!!!!!

:argh:

[boppers]

53. I had one of those (substandard English teacher in Arizona)...

It's frustrating having a teacher trying to explain complete sentences.... when they're unable to form complete sentences.

Nice woman, but I sort of had the feeling that the class was more for her learning than ours.

[NYC Liberal]

54. Well at least we know George W. Bush won't be able to teach in Arizona.

That's a plus, I suppose. :shrug:

[AnneD]

55. Maybe, as part of our education system.....

every American should travel overseas and be an English speaker in a non English speaking country. Nothing makes one appreciate even the smallest courtesy more. I would be so frustrated that I could not get even simple messages across at times. But some things were universal and translated well-a smile, a laugh, a thank you, a please. In fact, the first words I ever learn in another language is hello, thank you, please, and bathroom. Sign language can cover the rest. Always be sure to pack you humour. Other cultures cut non speakers more slack than we do.

[proud2BlibKansan]

56. One of the best teachers I had in high school was a German man with a heavy accent

He taught Latin. Since it is not a spoken language, I guess his accent didn't matter. :shrug: