It seems that a lot of you readers have been contacting the folks at Storm Lake School District, where Lori Phanachone, a high school senior is waging a noble fight against a lame test that I really think is discriminatory in effect to children of immigrants. I just received an email from the superintendent in Storm Lake, which reads:

The Sioux City Journal stories contain some erroneous information. And I have hesitated to send this email for some time and yet I want the correct information to be analyzed and discussed on this matter. The District can not (and will not) respond to questions about individual students but will respond in overall terms such as 'no student' or 'all students' or 'any student'.

"Some erroneous information has been circulating regarding this year’s I-ELDA testing at the high school. No student is currently being removed from regular instructional class attendance (and all students have been in their regular classes since March 5, 2009 from any behavior related to I-ELDA testing) and the district is not pursuing expulsion and will not be denying graduation ceremonies or attendance at the prom to any student based on behavior during I-ELDA testing."

There are more items in the articles that the reporter for the Sioux City Journal did not cross check his information before including it in his story. For example, we believe a reporter should check directly with the person being credited with making a statement before using the person's name in the article as actually making the statement.

I hope this helps to get the correct information to all concerned individuals.

Thanks for your concerns.

Dr. Tedesco

According to Dr. Tedesco, superintendent in Storm Lake, no student is being suspended from senior privileges or class attendance.  However, the Iowa-English Language Development Assessment (I-ELDA) continues to be maintained so the state can stay in compliance with No Child Left Behind regulations that require states to assess the progress of non-native English speakers in their English proficiency. Let's be clear that "non-native English speakers," includes significant numbers of people who immigrated to the US at an early age and many who are second generation Americans, who were born in the US to immigrants. According to Portes & Rumbaut in their book, Legacies: The Immigrant Second Generation,

Not only is knowledge of English near universal, but preference for the language is overwhelming as well.... While a foreign language is spoken in almost all immigrant homes, 72 percent of the children had opted for English as their preferred means of expression in junior high school, with the figure increasing to 88 percent by the time of high school graduation. ... The story is quite different, however, when we turn to command and use of foreign languages. While over 90 percent of the sample report knowing a language other than English, their fluency in that language is significantly poorer. (p. 119-120).

For us 1.5 and second generation kids whose mother tongue, whether it be Laotian, Vietnamese, Hindi, Korean, Chinese, or Spanish, is already butchered from the process of American acculturation, please leave us alone with your crazy tests. We seem to be doing alright in our English, according to Portes & Rumbault's studies. We're already struggling to keep our remaining abilities to speak another language. Now you make us take a test, questioning our abilities of speaking English, even when we're not enrolled in ESL/ELL/ESOL classes, because we don't need them? That just seems like an test that implicitly targets the children of immigrants. Ok Iowa, if you don't want to be one of the states rebelling against NCLB, you can comply with the requirement to assess English proficiency progress by administering the test for students who are enrolled in ESL/ELL/ESOL classes. Or you can administer the test to all your students, because I know that there are plenty of students out there that are barely able to write a complete paragraph, regardless of what language they speak at home. Or... choose not to add to the battery of tests that students are already overburdened with.