What a shame; Davis’ celebrated Language Institute gets watered down

Modesto City Schools is dismantling its award-winning program for immigrant students, saying it must comply with a debatable reading of state law.

The Language Institute housed at Davis High offers fast-tracked English lessons, courses tailored to immigrants, networking with families and a community of classmates who have faced many of the same hardships.

Immigrants make up a sliver of Modesto’s English learner population, but need very different supports. Kids who grew up here may be missing academic vocabulary, but they know we read left to right and it’s OK for girls and boys to be in the same classroom.

In 2016, 31 of 35 of Language Institute graduates were heading to college. The program earned the California Gold Ribbon Schools Award and the California School Boards Association Golden Bell Award. Stanislaus State partnered with the program to train future teachers. California Educator magazine featured it in a four-page spread in 2014. Program coordinator Lindsey Bird was named one of five Outstanding Teachers of America and in 2016 was one of 10 teachers flown to Washington, D.C. to share expertise in teaching refugees with then-U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr.

What she told officials at the U.S. Education Department likely mirrored the Language Institute philosophy I saw in action while reporting on the program.

• First: Respect the mountains these kids have already climbed. Be sensitive to the trauma that still haunts many of them and the heavy burden of helping their families begin a new life.
• Second: Motivate students by putting them in the driver’s seat. Teachers guide, but students advance at their own pace. Want the American dream? Get going.

Starting this fall, only first-year immigrants will be in the original program at Davis. Second- and third-year immigrants will get help in regular classes at any Modesto campus. Though still in an immigrant program on paper, it seems inevitable the nearly-newcomers will lean on the same supports used for Modesto’s long-term English learners, who are struggling. In 2019, 13% of English learners across California met grade-level standards in language arts and math. Across Modesto City Schools, percentages were less than half that.

The district insists its changes to the Language Institute were mandated by a state Federal Program Monitoring audit released in January. Among its many findings: a lack of high-level oversight of student bullying complaints, too many inexperienced teachers teaching low-income students, and missteps in spending targeted federal funding. The audit called out paying for classroom teachers as an added service. That’s not extra — every class gets a teacher.

The audit says immigrants’ English lessons must be tied to language arts standards, and they should attend a full slate of core and college prep courses. That mirrors California laws designed to ensure English learners are not denied opportunities. But plopping teens with little schooling and less English into lit classes and advanced algebra makes no sense.

Lawmakers knew that. Ed Code section 60811.8 — the law cited by Modesto City — carves out an exception for immigrants, bowing to federal law giving new arrivals special status for three years. The audit’s conclusions, and Modesto’s swift surgery on the program, cannot be justified by this law.

At Davis I met Afghan girls who had grown up under the Taliban. They started school as teenagers, yet went on to graduate. They headed to college with aspirations only made possible here.

This is the American dream in action. At least, it was.