KATY ISD BOARD MEMBERS REJECT EXPANSION OF DUAL IMMERSION PROGRAM:
In a rare example of thoughtful deliberation resulting in a common sense action, the Katy ISD Board rejected the expansion of the Dual Immersion Program to the Junior High level. The action seems to have been orchestrated by Board Trustee Charles Griffin.
When this program was first set up, it was supposed to be on a trial basis for three years. I'm betting that the program was never brought back to the Board with a discussion (in public) of the effectiveness of the effort. KISD administrators know that board members ordinarily do not pay attention when matters in the past are supposed to be reaffirmed at a later date.
Parents of Hispanic students are being influenced by MALDEF and LULAC and other pro-Mexican groups that proliferate because Hispanics do not become assimilated into the American culture.
No one is asking them to give up their culture. But if they wanted to come to America so bad and want to be a part of the benefits of OUR society, they need to become acculturated. They can't do that while they still don't understand English.
Learning English is not hard. Hispanics have been learning it in the first grade for over a hundred years. It's only since the Texas Legislature set up Bilingual programs in public schools that these students cannot learn English by the end of the first grade.
NOT learning English puts these students at a very distinct disadvantage. They can't understand what they are learning. They can't participate in the activities of our country. They can't get a decent job when they speak with a Spanish accent. That's not a political statement--that's just the truth of the matter.
They also can still be manipulated by political groups if they don't understand English very well.
In my opinion it is a crime to keep children from learning as fast as they can, the language of the country in which they have chosen to live!
The Rancher printed this account of the actions of the Board:
Parents react to Katy ISD trustees’ rejection of two-way immersion secondary program
Posted: Tuesday, February 11, 2014 4:00 am | Updated: 6:21 pm, Fri Feb 14, 2014.
By Alex Endress
Katy ISD trustees decided not to extend the district’s two-way immersion (TWI) language program into the junior high level at the January board meeting, a decision that doesn’t sit well with parents of TWI children, who say the board made a decision on the program based on inaccurate perceptions of it.
“It was frustrating not to be able to address the board’s misunderstandings during their discussion,” said Kristen Rodriguez, whose student [actually her child] is in second grade at Memorial Parkway Elementary.
“I don’t think they really understand the program,” said Manya Leach, parent of a fourth grade TWI student at Memorial Parkway. “It’s not just about learning the language.”
Katy’s TWI program “immerses” students in both English and Spanish by dividing instruction time between the two languages. Classes are split between fluent English speakers and fluent Spanish speakers. District goals for the program, presented by former ESOL and Bilingual Programs Director Elisa Farris at a previous workshop meeting, include developing “high levels of proficiency in two languages,” and fostering “positive cross-cultural attitudes.” Currently, the program is offered at Fielder and Memorial Parkway Elementary Schools. There are 452 students total in TWI.
“Seems to me if we’re going to immerse (Spanish speakers), we would send them to English classes, and if we have English speaking kids that we want to immerse, we would send them to Spanish classes,” said Trustee Charles Griffin.
Initially, Katy ISD only planned to offer the program through fifth grade, which TWI’s inaugural class is now completing. Parents in support of an expansion lobbied their case to the board in various ways — including public forum speeches, letters, and invitations to seminars featuring bilingual experts. One such seminar spotlighted Jason Rothman, full professor of multilingualism and clinical language sciences in the School of Psychology at the University of Reading.
“The goal of (dual languages programs) is to produce children who are not only bilingual — in the sense of being able to speak two languages — but also educated biliterate and bicultural speakers of these languages,” Rothman said through an email interview with The Rancher.
"None of the skills come for free; literacy in each of the languages must be taught and practiced. As a scientist who studies the cognitive side of bilingualism, we know that being bilingual changes the brain in a way that provides various advantages such as helping with minimizing the effects of task switching, increasing one's ability to ignore irrelevant information, resolve choosing conflicts among competing alternatives, increasing the efficiency and capacity of memory systems and more. Obviously, this is very useful for individuals well outside the domain of language,” Rothman said.
Rothman is also the director of the reading chapter of ‘Bilingualism Matters’.
The district formed a 22-member task force, made up of parents and district staff, in 2013 in order to assess what TWI’s future in Katy ISD could look like. Farris, now the director of professional learning for Katy ISD, presented the task force’s junior high model for TWI to the board.
For sixth graders, the model would have offered a block language arts and reading course, split between English and Spanish. Other Spanish immersion courses included a “world cultures” social studies class, exploratory Spanish electives, and an advisory course. Math, science, PE and various electives would have been taught in English. The seventh grade program tacked on Spanish one, an immersion science course, immersion Texas history, and changed language arts to English only. Eighth graders would have taken Spanish II, the advisory course, and another split language arts course as their only immersion courses.
The board’s main reason for resisting an expansion to junior high was the projected cost.
According to Farris, a sixth-grade expansion would cost $186,000, but extending the program through eighth grade could be as much as $401,000 by 2016. Farris said TWI is “certainly effective” in boosting English proficiency for Spanish speaking students, while it “may be less effective” for English speakers, loosely summarizing results from a Hanover study on the current state of TWI in Katy ISD at the workshop meeting.
TWI’s current form costs $567,014 at the elementary level, which pays for two extra immersion teachers in each grade level, instructional supplies, assessments, and professional development. Farris said that in most cases, children may not join the program beyond first grade because they would be too far behind to catch up. The elementary program currently provides 88 spots per grade level.
“You’re giving a distinct advantage to a certain group of kids at the disadvantage to the rest of the community,” Griffin said. He suggested a self-funded program may be a possibility at the secondary level.
Trustee Bill Proctor was the only board member to endorse a program expansion into junior high.
“I think this is a very innovative, very creative program,” Proctor said.
Rodriguez said that while she knew the district only committed to TWI through fifth grade, she believed KISD would expand after observing how other districts have done so once their students reach the secondary level.
Next door Spring Branch ISD offers its own dual language program from elementary to high school. SBISD’s program is stationed at three elementary schools and two middle schools. Spring Branch also utilizes a district charter school, Westchester Academy for International Studies, for dual language education at the secondary level. [ Westchester is also an International Baccalaureate United Nations school as well.] Westchester allows students to complete the program through 12th grade, and did so well before Spring Branch began offering the program at middle schools. SBISD currently plans to expand their program to a traditional high school as well.
Superintendent Alton Frailey, who at one time worked as an assistant superintendent for SBISD, had a heavy hand in the creation of Westchester, leading the committee of parents and teachers who produced the idea of an international school. [International Baccalaureate United Nations school to be more exact] Frailey told The Rancher that forming Westchester was a means of accommodating students who “weren’t being well served by the district.” He said that such a campus was a possibility for SBISD because the district was completely built out and contained unused classroom space. Westchester, once a traditional high school, was repurposed after the district shut it down in 1985 due to decreasing enrollment. [Spring Branch ISD overbuilt new schools in the 1970's and 1980's (just like Cy Fair and Katy are doing now) and had to tear down newly built schools when people of child-bearing age stopped moving there --there was a new Northbrook High School built on the Katy freeway and it was torn down and the property was sold. Spring Branch High School was also torn down. Westchester was just closed as it was only 18 years old, and it is used for other purposes now. Amazingly it was not built with air-conditioning! There were lots of unwise folks employed in Spring Branch in those days, it appears.] A charter school like Westchester would be an unlikely project for Katy ISD.
“We don’t have a school that’s not full of children already,” Frailey said. “You would have to replace a repurposed building.” Frailey indicated that regardless of what the board decided to do, Katy ISD would need to invest more resources to the district’s bilingual education department.
“This is a fast-growing population of our district, and we’ve gotten by with a skeletal crew,” Frailey said.
[Mr. Frailey is paying lip service to the Hispanic community here. Hispanics are ill-served by the Katy Independent School District. A critical look at test scores by anyone who will take the time to look will tell them that Hispanics and Black students are being taught a flawed curriculum, which leaves them uneducated after twelve years in our public schools. That's a hard pill to swallow, but it is the truth.[With any luck at all, the District will cut the program entirely! MM]