This time, it's students asking, and lawmakers answering

Manu Wallace, a J.T. Barber Elementary School fifth grader, asked state legislators a hard question on Friday that sparked a discussion among local educators about how schools are held accountable for English as a Second Language students’ test scores.

Wallace was one of a small group of fourth and fifth graders from the school who attended the legislative breakfast at Grover C. Fields Middle School along with principals, administrators and other school leaders in the Craven County Schools district.

After a brief lesson about state government, the students asked state Sen. Jean Preston, R-Carteret County, and speaker pro tempore of the house Rep. William L. Wainwright, D-Craven County, about getting new playgrounds, books or technology, about teachers’ pay, and “where the education lottery money is really going?”

Ten-year-old Manu asked why students in the English as a Second Language program have to take End of Grade tests like other students in elementary and middle school.

Herman Greene, the school’s principal, said there are more than 110 students at the school in the ESL program. Some of the students have come to the school at the age of 9, never having been to school before. Some are adjusting to the norms of life in the United States.

But after the students have tested to enter the ESL program and have completed two years in school after their start date, their scores on reading and writing, science and math state tests count for the school and for the district in the state and federal accountability measures, said Cindy Manning, test coordinator for the district.

Manning said that students in the kindergarten through eighth grades who qualify for the ESL program are exempt on the reading and writing End of Grade tests after the first year.

 “It’s a noticeable struggle for children who haven’t been here a long time,” Greene said, noting that the schools’ students are accustomed to diversity and have picked up on some of the challenges that face their peers.

“They asked us: ‘Why do they have to do the same thing we do?’” he said.

Superintendent Larry Moser said he believes it is not fair that the federal No Child Left Behind standards expect certain subgroups to perform at the same level as other students. The state measures, on the other hand, include the measure of a students’ growth in a subject area, he said.

“It’s very unfair to expect certain subgroups of students to perform at the same level of other students,” Moser said.

Manning said she believes the school officials supported asking the legislators for more time for the students before their test results are counted in the accountability measures.

She added that the two-year period between when a student enters a school and when they must take the test is not counted in calendar years, but in school years, so that in some cases teachers do not have a full two years to teach the student.

“The very next year, they’re held accountable, but they may have only had two to six weeks of schooling,” she said. “And so (school officials) were asking the legislators to look at if they could go back and give us a little more time before the students would be held accountable.”

 “It deserves further discussion,” Wainwright said about the subject. “We need to look at that.”

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.