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I'm so angry right now. Incensed over the headline article in the free Town newspaper about my son's school. I want to call up the paper and scream at the editor. I want to write a nasty gram to their OpEd department (I'll write one but it won't be nasty). I want to call every person I know and rant about the unfairness of it, the intolerance, the outright racism.
The headline screams negativity and yet here is an excerpt from the very first paragraph:
...but third-year program improvement school, Cali Calmécac Charter school, made the largest gains of any site, missing their target by an upsetting four students in the english learner subgroup.
And later in the article, this little gem:
Cali increased its API base score by 38 points, and was the only campus besides the middle school to increase its scores.
And the final insult:
No school in the district achieved their federal AYP.
I also did some digging around on my own and when you take only our native English speaking students, our students outscored all the other English-instruction only schools in the district. Quite frankly, we are kicking ass and taking names.
The paper singled Cali Calmécac out from all the other schools. Why, you ask? The answer is simple. It's because Cali Calmécac is a two way dual language immersion program. For anyone who is not familiar with this type of educational program here is a quick overview:
Two-way immersion bilingual education is an educational program that provides instruction in English and [Spanish]. Classrooms are composed of both native English speakers and students for whom [Spanish] is their native tongue. Since literacy instruction is in both languages both groups of students become proficient in both languages. --From the University of Michigan Website
The program at Cali is a nine year commitment meaning children start in Kindergarten and go all the way through the 8th grade. Kinder through 2nd grade are taught 90% in Spanish and 10% in English. 3rd grade through 5th grade receive instruction half in Spanish and half in English. By the time all students reach the 8th grade, instruction is taught 90% in English and only 10% in Spanish.
Our student body is composed of a minimum of 50% of students who speak little to no English whatsoever upon starting Kindergarten. And yet, all federally mandated testing including tests under the No Child Left Behind Program (don't even get me started there), are in English. Our non-English speaking students begin to gain real proficiency in English by third and fourth grade. By the time all kids graduate from the 8th grade they are bi-lingual and bi-literate in both English and Spanish.
But there is open hostility and intolerance and outright racism within the Town and within the school district and on the school board. The majority of our students and their parents are of Hispanic and Latino descent. Many parents speak only Spanish and the district, school board and superintendent of schools seem to feel that they can try to bully them into doing whatever the board and district want.
We have special town hall type meetings all throughout the school year, trying to address some of these issues. The meetings are composed of Cali parents, the school board, and the superintendent. At one meeting, the superintendent was speaking, used a big vocabulary word, turned to the Spanish translator and openly asked him if there even was such a word in Spanish. WHAT!?!?! This is the man who helps decide the fate of my son's school and of the educational path we've chosen for him? And two members of the school board are openly hostile toward our school and our program flinging mud whenever they can at these meetings. They dismiss our Spanish speaking parents as though they don't exist or exist on some lower plane. Shameful.
And now it seems that the Town is in on the gig. I mean, really, they couldn't have put a more positive spin on that headline? And so, it seems, I will get drawn into the politics of education because I just can't let this go. I have to do something, fight back, stand up for those who are unable or are afraid to stand up for themselves. SHAME ON YOU ALL!
