Immigrant students exempt from No Child reading tests in 1st year

By Fredreka Schouten
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Immigrant students struggling to learn English will get a one-year reprieve from the reading tests required under a federal school reform law.

The new policy, announced yesterday by Education Secretary Rod Paige, marks the second change to the No Child Left Behind law signed by President Bush two years ago. And it comes as lawmakers in a growing number of states move to limit spending to meet the law's requirements or opt out of them.

The law requires all public school students to take annual reading and math tests from third through eighth grade and once in high school. The goal is to make all students proficient in those subjects by 2014.

Schools face sanctions if a demographic subgroup of students fails to make yearly progress toward the goal.

Under the rule, schools will not have to administer reading tests to non-English speaking students during their first year of enrollment in a U.S. school. The students instead can take exams that measure their English proficiency.

And for two years after those students learn English, schools will be allowed to count their reading scores among those of students still learning the language. Public schools serve 5.5 million children who don't speak English as a first language.

In Hawai'i, public-school officials have cited the large number of students at some schools who are still learning English as an obstacle in meeting the requirements under the law.

Many of the students are migrants from Pacific islands who at times have struggled to adapt to a new culture.

Greg Knudsen, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the revisions are an attempt by the Bush administration to respond to the backlash against the law during a presidential election year. He said the DOE will look into how the revisions would affect ESL students in Hawai'i.

Paige said the change is "not watering down the law's intent," but provides states more flexibility. And he insisted the new rule was not issued in response to mounting criticism of the law from some state lawmakers who complain it is too intrusive and expensive.

Earlier this month, Utah's GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted to spend none of the state's money to carry out the law.

The change announced yesterday makes sense, said Ross Wiener, policy director of the Education Trust, which lobbies on behalf of poor and minority children.

"The shame of it is that it took the department more than two years to offer such a simple, common-sense solution," he said.

Previously, the administration eased testing requirements for a fraction of disabled students. And Paige said he and his staff are working on changes to provisions demanding that all students be taught by "highly qualified" teachers.

But administration officials say they don't plan to ask Congress to change the law, the centerpiece of Bush's domestic agenda when he took office.

Advertiser staff writer Derrick DePledge contributed to this story.