Monday, February 5, 2007

Regarding the Jan. 30 editorial "Left Behind; Immigrant children are the losers as Virginia bickers with Washington over testing":

Good for Virginia for refusing to set up for failure its students with limited proficiency in English.

The one-year exemption from testing and the exceptions allowed

in the No Child Left Behind Act do not begin to address the needs of such students. It takes five to seven years to become truly proficient in English.

The editorial mentioned that states can administer content tests in other languages but did not give due consideration to what this would entail in Fairfax County.

At Bailey's Elementary School, students speak 20 languages. Translating and scoring the tests for each subject area and each grade level would be prohibitively expensive. Allowing extra time during the Standards of Learning tests means both teacher and student are missing class time.

In addition, if you are not literate in your native language, neither translation nor access to a dictionary will help. Many of the children entering our system have never attended school before or learned to read in their native language.

Consider a fourth-grade student who enters our system in April. The following year, in May, No Child Left Behind expects this 10- or 11-year-old to be able to meet the same requirements as his or her fifth-grade American peers.

One must hope that the new version of No Child will set more realistic goals.

PHYLLIS PAYNE

Fairfax

The writer is immediate past president of the Bailey's Elementary School PTA.