<p>There are many legal immigrants who are ESL learners too. In fact, one of the things that makes California classrooms so challenging is that kids may come in with so many varied backgrounds. San Francisco, even years ago, had to keep translators of 28 (!) languages on hand to deal with families. The complexity has only increased. Related to that, the private schools have it easy.</p>
<p>My daughter’s in teacher training now. In her first student teaching assignment, in a room full of Hispanic and Anglo kids, she was assigned to work individually with a fifth grade child who had just come here from Korea and barely spoke English. With 40 children in the class, there would have been no one to do that without a student teacher. When she volunteered in an Oakland charter school last year, there were a half a dozen different Asian languages represented, some of them from rural cultures that have no real literacy tradition. There were African children and others who came traumatized from situations they’ve lived through. At the junior high and high school levels, there may be only one counselor for 3-500 kids.</p>
<p>The nonsensical funding situation is a consequence of Prop 13, passed all those years ago, which ended up shifting much more of the funding and control to the state level. I am heartened that this report, which was financed by foundations and includes the work of not one but many researchers over two or three years, may set the conversation at the state level to re-start. To design a system, not just add more patches. There is much in there every stakeholder can agree with. Certainly teachers and administrators can sign on to the notion that there is way too much paper work and a jungle of regulations aimed at “accountability” that are more time-consuming than productive.</p>