L.A. Unified backs No Child Left Behind

WASHINGTON -- Representatives from the Los Angeles Unified School District kicked off a two-day lobbying trip to Capitol Hill on Thursday by advocating reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind education reform law, which Congress will consider before the end of the year.

“I’m here representing 700,000 children who absolutely need critical attention on No Child Left Behind. Your work to better serve English-language learners . . . is super, super important,” L.A. Board of Education President Monica Garcia told aides to lawmakers.

Peter Zamora, co-chairman of the Hispanic Education Coalition, made up of organizations seeking to improve educational opportunities for the nation’s Latinos, emphasized that the majority of the district’s English learners are native-born, many of them second- or third-generation citizens.

“As a political matter, these people are Americans. They are future voters. They are our future economic machine,” Zamora said.

Members of the lobbying group, which included Supt. David L. Brewer and two board members, are advocates of a new version of the act. They wrote the portion of the draft legislation that would expand the teaching of English-language learners.

The law, the Bush administration’s signature domestic effort that was signed in 2002, emphasizes annual testing to ensure that all students achieve grade-level proficiency in math and reading by 2014. Its accountability provisions have been controversial, though -- particularly the performance benchmarks set for schools.

But flaws aside, the law “allowed for students we failed for so long to come out of the shadows,” board member Yolie Flores Aguilar said, and English learners were among them.

In L.A. Unified, 94% of English-language learners are Spanish-speakers. All told, state records list English learners in Los Angeles speaking 55 different languages. More than 266,000 L.A. Unified students are English learners, about 37.6% of the total enrollment.

The school district last year redesignated 13.4% of its English learners as fully proficient in English, well above the state average. The district is concerned, however, that under No Child Left Behind, it has been and could continue to be labeled as failing for taking students out of the pool of English learners. The rules of the law require that all groups improve, including English learners. But the group of English learners changes from year to year, with some of the best students exiting as lower-performing students enter.

The English-learners group is among the lowest-scoring in the school system. Only 16% of English learners in elementary school scored proficient or better in English Language Arts on state standardized tests. This compares with 61% of students who started off as English learners but achieved fluency. The numbers are more stark at the secondary level for those students who have yet to master English. Only 3% tested as proficient or better in English Language Arts; only 4% were proficient in math.

Draft legislation reauthorizing the law was released last week, and Garcia said the purpose of this trip was to persuade legislators to support that draft.

Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Lakewood) said she was pleased to have met with the group but did not say whether she would support the law’s reauthorization. “As the second-largest school district in the nation . . . with a sizable number of English-language learners, it’s very important that LAUSD’s perspectives be heard in Washington as Congress works to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act,” she said.

Provisions recommended by the district would allow student testing in another language if 10% of the enrollment of that language group isn’t fluent in English. Brewer also took issue with the requirement that 95% of students be tested. Schools that fall below that participation rate also are labeled as failing federal standards.

tina.macias@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Howard Blume in Los Angeles contributed to this report.