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Feds relent in standoff over testing students still learning English

 
Published Dec. 23, 2014

Federal education officials have backed down in a dispute with Florida over how the state should test thousands of new students who are still learning English in public schools.

The government will allow Florida to wait two years before counting those students' test scores toward a school's grade instead of the federally required one year.

The decision affects a quarter-million Florida students considered "English-language learners," often referred to as ELLs in education circles. More than 30,000 of them go to school in the Tampa Bay area, where Hills­borough County ranks third among Florida districts in the number of ELL students.

Officials in Washington previously stood by the federal law's intent — to hold schools immediately accountable for educating English-language learners. But state officials pushed back, saying it is harmful and unrealistic to expect those students to show their skills on standardized tests when they can't fully comprehend many of the questions.

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, students need five to seven years to develop the language skills of a native English speaker.

In a letter Monday, Deborah Delisle, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, told Pam Stewart, Florida's education commissioner, she would exempt the state from the federal requirement.

But Delisle had two conditions: One, by the second year of an ELL student's stay in a Florida public school, the system would measure his or her academic growth against the first year and include it in the school-grade calculation. Two, the state would continue to closely monitor and report the performance of ELL students.

The development was first reported in the national journal Education Week, which described it as the first time the federal agency had relented on the point.

The dispute began after the Florida Legislature changed the law last spring to reflect that students still learning English should not be expected to immediately excel on Florida's annual tests. Educators and advocacy groups backed the law.

But education officials in Washington said it conflicted with federal law. They threatened to end Florida's waiver from several federal education mandates if the state didn't fall in line.

Florida officials stood by the law and threatened to sue if necessary.