When Arizona children register for school next year, they'll be asked just one question — instead of the three used for decades — to determine whether they need help learning English.
The decision by Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne to winnow the screening has triggered concerns from some educators that students who need help reading or learning academic English will slip through the cracks.
Currently, school officials determining who should be placed in English-immersion programs for four hours ask:
• The first language a student learned to speak.
• The language a student speaks mostly.
• The language most often spoken at home.
Horne's mandate cuts those to one that most closely mirrors the second question: What is the student's primary language?
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If the answer comes back "English," then Horne wants that student placed in mainstream classes.
Horne said he made the change because of "serious injustices" that were brought to his attention.
With 150,000 English language learners in the state, Horne said he has heard of cases in which a student is perfectly proficient in English but was put in an English-learner classroom because a parent spoke another language at home.
And while students who don't answer "English" to all three are tested as a follow-up to the questions, Horne said a student might perform poorly on the test for academic reasons, not language gaps.
"So then the student finds himself in a class where he's learning that this is a table and this is a chair. It's a horrible injustice," he said, adding the majority of the complaints are from Navajo and Hispanic families, although he didn't have a specific number.
Horne said he checked with the federal Department of Education to see if he could proceed and he heard no objection, although the agency's Office of Civil Rights is looking into the move.
In the Tucson Unified School District, 25 percent of the 5,000 English-language learners were identified through the soon-to-be-eliminated first or third questions, said Steve Holmes, a chief academic officer.
"We probably won't catch all the kids. The safety net will be gone," said Holmes, who worries that the change will result in too many children being placed in special education because shortcomings will be blamed on cognitive difficulties instead of language hurdles.
Holmes said the district likely will continue asking the questions. It won't be able to label a student as an English-learner, but it will provide more information if it turns out later that the student is having a hard time academically, he said.
John Wright, head of the Arizona Education Association, which represents the state's teachers, also predicted Horne's decision will end up underidentifying students who need assistance.
"If you only ask one question and then move on, you miss an opportunity for real dialogue," he said, questioning the extent of the problem. "He's receiving and reading anecdotal reports that the rest of us in education are missing."
Wright speculated that Horne, who has been at the center of a federal court battle to properly fund English-learner instruction, made the move to lower the costs of teaching those students.
He also said parents will have motivation to disguise the fact a child might need help.
"They could very well be first-generation parents in poverty — and scared to death of anti-immigration action against them," he said. "We've created a real culture of fear."
Horne denied funding was behind the decision, saying he just fixed an "illogical" process.
And he dismissed suggestions that students will be misidentified. "As far as students falling between the cracks, that's assuming parents will not answer the question honestly," he said, adding parents want their children to have a strong education. And if that fails, he said, "I have no doubt the teacher will spot it."
