Think Piece 7-"Immigrant Students and Literacy"

            Almost immediately as I opened Immigrant Students and Literacy; Reading Writing and Remembering by Gerald Campano, I was able to make a connection to the experiences he was speaking about.  I was able to relate to the issue of immigrant and other low level English speaking students in schools because I had seen it first hand during an observation placement that preceded my student teaching. 

            In chapter one, “From the Heart of the World and Back Again,” Campano writes about the fact that New York State requires that ESL students take state examinations and assessments at all the required benchmarks/grade levels. 

During the first half of the school year, the students were required to take a fairly extensive state examination that involved, among other tasks, reading long paragraphs and marking answers by filling in circles on a test sheet.  Many of the children were from immigrant families and spoke English as a second language (p.10). 

In this case, Campano is speaking about kindergarten students, yet the issue affects students of all ages.  He also mentions that this school, once a high achieving institution in comparison to others like it, was brought down in its ranking.  This was what was happening to Lackawanna Middle school because of the influx of Muslim and other Middle Eastern families.  Many of these students had only been in the United States for less than two years.  They spoke Arabic or other native languages outside of school and in their homes, yet they were required to read, write, and comprehend all things English on the Regents exams. 

            Due to the fact that ESL students are required to take the NYS assessment exams with no regard to how long they have been living in the United States or speaking English.  Therefore, the school’s scores tend to suffer.  By no means am I saying that the ESL and immigrant students are to blame.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  New York State has such a highly acclaimed and respected education system that one would think that they could come up with a better way to test ESL/immigrant students’ progress and knowledge in a way that they could understand.  Without sounding insensitive I would like to say that I do think that ESL and immigrant students should be taught American history, language, and studies because they are a part of the United States.  On the other hand I think that perhaps there should be some leniency in testing students so that they can be first evaluated on the information in their native language before being shoved into a completely English environment in which no learning will occur.