HISPANIC SCHOOLS COMING?

Ten school districts statewide and three nonprofit organizations filed a lawsuit against the state Wednesday for allegedly testing non-English-speaking students in English and then labeling them and their schools as "failing" under the state's implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The lawsuit, filed in federal Superior Court in San Francisco, demands that the state test its 1.6 million non-English-speaking students in a "language and form" they understand, as mandated in the federal education reform law.

The lawsuit is asking the state to change the way it tests students who do not yet understand English, said Mary Hernandez, an attorney with the Southern California-based law firm Burke, Williams & Sorensen, lawyers for the plaintiffs. "We are asking that the state comply with federal law by testing students in the language and the form that will most likely yield accurate results on what they know and what they've learned," Hernandez said during a telephone press conference out of Los Angeles on Wednesday.

No North County school districts are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, although Hernandez said the lawsuit represents students statewide and that the outcome of the lawsuit could affect how all school districts gauge skills among thousands of beginner-English students. Several local officials said they had not reviewed the lawsuit and declined to comment. Several others could not be reached.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires schools to show improvement in test scores in all subcategories of students or be labeled as "failing" and subject to sanctions that include forced student transfers, tutoring, and, in extreme cases, government takeovers.

Officials with the four firms involved with the lawsuit said the federal mandate also allows states to test English learners in their primary languages for three to five years after they enroll in schools in the United States, they said.

Spanish is the primary language for 85 percent of California¡s English-learner students. Even so, California requires that all students be tested in English only and has steadfastly refused to reword the tests for English learners to make them easier to understand.

In North County, some school districts, such as Oceanside Unified and Escondido Union, have roughly half of their students enrolled in beginner-English courses.

Currently, those students who do not fully understand English are handed standardized tests in English. Some schools and districts are facing costly federal sanctions because too many students are "falling behind" in academic standards," advocates said. "As a result, thousands of (non-native English-speaking) children are left behind because they cannot demonstrate what they know (on English tests)," Hernandez said.

California's English-only testing system is different from practices in place in 14 states, including Texas, New Mexico and New York, which test students in a language they understand, according to a press statement from four law firms involved in the lawsuit.

The state's take on No Child Left Behind is a violation of both the law and the civil rights for non-English-speaking students, the lawsuit states. The state is also charged with wasting taxpayer money by testing students in a language they do not yet understand, the suit also states.

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HOPE FOR CALIFORNIA?

Faced with the difficult task of reviving California's ailing education system, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has turned to perhaps the most controversial reformer in the state - a prosecutor-turned-schools-superintendent whose battles with parents and teachers have divided this city. Critics say that Alan Bersin, one of several outsiders appointed to superintendent positions nationwide in the late 1990s, sapped morale by ignoring his employees and making teacher education a top priority. But supporters, including the local business community, applauded his efforts to bring radical change to one of the nation's largest school districts.

Now Mr. Bersin is heading to a much larger stage. As Mr. Schwarzenegger's education secretary, the Brooklyn native and former Harvard University football player will take on a bully pulpit in a capital roiled by the governor's new brand of politics. Bersin "is probably going to make things even more lively than they have been," says Julian Betts, a professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego who specializes in education issues. "He will not be a wallflower in Sacramento."

The new job will certainly test Bersin's diplomatic skills. He will be taking over an education reform agenda for the governor that is both ambitious and controversial. In San Diego, Bersin didn't have a record of building harmony. Opposing sides warred over his reforms from the moment he took over the school district of more than 140,000 students in 1998. At the outset, teachers complained about the appointment of a noneducator to the superintendent position. Bersin had been serving as US attorney for California's Southern District, a post he was appointed to in 1993 by Bill Clinton, an old Yale Law School buddy. Both Mr. Clinton and Bersin were Rhodes Scholars and attended Oxford University in Britain.

As Bersin's tenure began, union officials balked when he began hiring consultants to educate teachers about better ways to teach subjects like reading. "He blamed teachers for any failure in student achievement and in the school," says Terry Pesta, president of the San Diego teachers union. "He came in and pretty much said that everything had to change, no one was doing it right. It was his way or the highway." Bersin gained a reputation as a staunch advocate of change, unwilling to back down even as the local school board dissolved into acrimony over his reforms. Still, he was hardly without support. Some observers agree that teachers need to be more willing to adopt new approaches to education. "Professional development and teacher learning are absolutely crucial to the success of schools," says Paula Cordeiro, an education dean at the University of San Diego. "There's hardly a week goes by that I'm not reading a study about how to do a better job of teaching a kid from Korea how to speak English. But this is not an idea that's found in the majority of districts in the United States. They have a notion that once a person is prepared, they go into a district, they teach, that's the end."

She thinks his blunt style was a key reason teachers rebelled at his calls for more professional development. "But I honestly believe that no matter how carefully it had been packaged, there would have been great resistance," she adds. "It's a sea change for some people in my profession." The merits of Bersin's reforms draw just as much debate as the way they were implemented. Mr. Pesta, the union chief, says that while some test scores rose during his tenure, others remain "abysmal." Mr. Betts, the economics professor, has a brighter view. "The growing consensus is that his reforms really did boost reading achievement in elementary schools. But it's less clear that there were similar gains elsewhere."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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