Oregon Public Broadcasting

About 70,000 of the kids headed to Oregon public schools this week will attend special classes to help them learn to speak and read English.

Many of these “English Language Learners” have been getting help for a few years now. But under an initiative coming to this fall’s ballot, students would get cut off from such help after two years.

Advocates of Measure 58 say that spending any longer is a waste of time and money.  Critics say the deadline would make matters worse, as Rob Manning reports.

For lots of Beaverton kids who don’t speak English at home, this is where school begins.

Wei-Wei Lou: “Parents and families come here for in-takes, and as you can see, we’re quite busy today.”

Wei-Wei Lou supervises Beaverton’s Welcome Center. It's  part of her job directing English as a Second Language programs.

Beaverton kids speak more than 90 languages - and hundreds of students will stop here on their way to a public school.  Statewide, Oregon schools served 67,000 English Language Learners last year.

In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court said it was illegal to just stick a student who didn’t understand English into a regular classroom without help. Three decades later, Wei-Wei Lou says she’s balancing two mandates.

Wei-Wei Lou: “One is the English language development, and the other is ‘meaningful access to content’.”

So in  Beaverton, English Language Learners often get content in modified classes. And they may also get extra English instruction one-on-one, or in small group “pull-out” programs.

Wei-Wei Lou: “So the pull-out program allows the student to be with an ESL teacher, to deliver the English language development materials, to accelerate their English language proficiency process.”

But Measure 58 sponsor, Bill Sizemore says English proficiency can be “accelerated” a lot more. He says the current system isn’t working.

Bill Sizemore: “I’ve actually met a lot of kids who were in high school, or actually some in junior high, who have been in school for several years, in America, some were legal, some illegal, they don’t speak English very well. They don’t read and write English very well.”

Sizemore says he suspects school district leaders are keeping back students labeled as English Language Learners, on purpose. He notes that school districts get fifty percent more funding for students who are taught English as a second language.

Bill Sizemore: “The schools actually get, you know, $2600, $2700 a year more for every student that they can keep in ESL classes. So they’re actually financially motivated to keep them in those classes as long as they can.”

Oregon’s Department of Education has acted on just such  concerns  in recent years.

All school districts now use the same placement test, and the state tracks the number of students exiting ESL programs each year. But rather than Measure 58’s two-year window, state officials aim to move students out within five years.

Wei-Wei Lou says that’s consistent with the research.

Wei-Wei Lou: “Many of our students who appear proficient verbally, in the playground, still need lots of work on academic English. The federal government actually suggests it’s five years.”

Sizemore says he’s heard from ESL teachers who agree with him, that “English-immersion” works.

Beaverton bilingual teacher, Veronica Jones is not one of them. She says the trouble is that most teachers aren’t used to adjusting their teaching - or “differentiating” - for a range of language levels.

Veronica Jones: “I think that we’re very good at differentiating for English native speakers, but I don’t think that we’re quite there in differentiating for English second language learners, at a classroom level, because a majority of mainstream classroom teachers are not ESL endorsed.”

Turning perhaps thousands of teachers into, essentially, ESL teachers, would cost millions of dollars.

An official state estimate put the total cost for the measure at about a quarter of a billion dollars for the first two years.

Sponsor, Bill Sizemore says he thinks those numbers are inflated but says some investment would be worth it.

If the measure passes, it may find quiet resistance among educators.

Scott Drue is the principal of Beaverton’s Aloha-Huber Park School.  He says students who don’t understand English would still get help.

Scott Drue: “If child needs more, child gets more. So I don’t think that the services, that the very heart of the services would end for kids. The terminology may, but it doesn’t mean that kids’ needs are going to stop.”

Initiative sponsor, Bill Sizemore, says he's not surprised by resistance among educators. Sizemore has fought teachers' unions and state officials before. And he says like previous battles, he's prepared to take his case to court, if he wins at the ballot box this fall.