LEARNING ENGLISH LAUSD STUDENTS LAG FAR BEHIND STATE.

Byline: Lisa M. Sodders Staff Writer

New English-language learners in the Los Angeles Unified School District performed far below their peers across California on the first statewide test of English proficiency, according to results released Tuesday.

Only 9.7 percent of those LAUSD students tested achieved the top two levels of proficiency on the California English Language Development Test, compared with about 21 percent of those statewide and countywide.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin said the test results underscore the monumental challenge facing California schools as they work to raise student achievement.

``The really significant challenge is for our state to direct more time and attention to our English learners to ensure English-language proficiency. No other state has a challenge of this magnitude.''

Statewide, 1.5 million public schoolchildren - or 26 percent of those in kindergarten through 12th grade - were evaluated for English fluency. In Los Angeles Unified, 243,342 took the test, which measures students' ability to speak, read, write and understand spoken English.

The test replaces other English-fluency exams formerly used by districts. It is designed to identify new students who are learning English in kindergarten through 12th grade, determine their level of English fluency and annually assess their progress.

Students are rated according to five proficiency levels: beginning, early intermediate, intermediate, early advanced and advanced. In Los Angeles Unified, 90 percent of those tested for initial identification fell into the bottom three categories while only 79 percent of those statewide and countywide were classified as such.

In the LAUSD, where students speak more than 80 different languages, the results were not surprising but district officials said the exam will provide crucial information for fine-tuning classroom instruction.

``I believe that we now have a tool that will provide more accountability for us,'' said Rita Caldera, director of the LAUSD's language acquisition branch. ``Are we doing what we're supposed to be doing for our English-learners in the district?''

Between 40 percent and 42 percent of LAUSD's 736,000 students are classified as English-language learners, said Esther Wong, assistant superintendent of planning, assessment and research for the LAUSD. Spanish is the dominant foreign language, followed by Armenian and Korean.

A total of 243,342 students districtwide took the test. Of those, 25,969 or 3.5 percent were tested as new English-learners. The bulk of those students - 94 percent - were in kindergarten through sixth grade, with 81.5 percent in kindergarten. Students in grades 7 through 12 made up only 6.1 percent of those tested.

Statewide, only 80.5 percent of those tested were in kindergarten through sixth grade - 52.9 percent in kindergarten - and nearly 20 percent in grades 7 through 12.

Such high numbers point to the demographic realities facing the LAUSD, said Yvonne Chan, principal of Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, a charter school in Pacoima where about 87 percent of students are English-learners.

``There's a whole foreign country here - that's most of Los Angeles USD,'' Chan said. ``The city of Los Angeles is diverse, but people tend to congregate by language, by race. It's a social issue.''

She said those facts make it harder to teach English-learners, especially those whose parents are first-generation immigrants with little knowledge of the language and who live in communities where street signs abound in their native languages.

``Do I have a shopping mall, a theater? I don't have any of those establishments that will support literacy,'' Chan said. ``In these communities, you have liquor stores, check cashing, adult video stores and they're all in Spanish. So a kid walks to school, and you'd think he could learn some incidental English? No way.''

Without that home and community support for learning English, students sometimes use their native language as a crutch, said Claudia Martin, a first-grade teacher at Vaughn.

If they are given a task they think is too hard, or if Martin speaks too fast, they tell her they don't understand her, when they probably understood most of what she said, Martin said.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box, chart

Photo:

(color) Vaughn Street teacher Claudia Martin, left, says English-learning students need more community support.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer

Box:

SCHOOL REPORT CARD

Source: California Department of Education 

Chart:

ENGLISH PROFICIENCY