Educating Somali children who don't speak English

Jonathan D. Glater:

An agreement intended to improve educational opportunities for Somali children enrolled in schools in Springfield, Mass., was reached by the federal Education Department and Springfield Public Schools late last month, representatives of both entities said.

Under the agreement, the school district said it would hire more tutors who speak both English and Somali and provide after-school programs to help Somali high school students improve their English, among other things.

It comes in response to a civil rights complaint filed last fall with the Education Department which charged that the schools had illegally discriminated against the Somalis on the basis of their national origin by failing to provide necessary educational services.

"The Somali children were not getting an effective education," said Jean Caldwell, who helped file the complaint and who, along with other Springfield residents, has spoken out on behalf of the Somalis.

Ms. Caldwell called the recent agreement "a tremendous victory."

Mary Beach, assistant to the superintendent of the Springfield schools, said the system had had difficulty helping the Somali children largely because officials could not find enough Somali speakers to be translators or tutors.

"We keep posting for translators," but finding people who can do the job is difficult, Dr. Beach said. The schools hope that additional outreach efforts will lead to more bilingual tutors.

The school district has also agreed to allow any student who is the only Somali enrolled in a school to transfer.

The district is also to offer a summer program in English language and other subjects, and by next fall is to ensure that the Somali students have been assigned to a smaller number of schools. Currently, 84 students are spread across 21 schools.

Dr. Beach defended how the district had placed the students.

"Students in the city go to schools where they live," she said. "That's our design. If they ended up being sent to other schools, they'd be treated differently, which wouldn't be appropriate either."

Both Ms. Caldwell and Roger Rice, a lawyer at Multicultural Education Training and Advocacy, an organization that monitors educational access for immigrant students that helped file the complaint with the Education Department, disputed that contention.

"It's discrimination to put them in one place because they're Somalis," Ms. Caldwell said. "It's not discrimination to put them in one place because they speak Somali and don't know English."

Several Somali refugee families have settled in Massachusetts in recent years, sponsored by local charities. The Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department conducted an investigation into accusations about the Somali children's treatment in response to the complaint against the school district and found "concerns," said a department spokesman, David Thomas.

Mr. Thomas said the department would continue to monitor the district's progress in carrying out the agreement.

According to a letter on Friday to a lawyer involved in filing the complaint, Education Department investigators interviewed 30 teachers at eight district schools, 32 Somali students and a Somali translator, among others.

Many middle and high school teachers did not hold bilingual education certifications, the department found, and teachers also said they could not communicate with Somali students to check whether they understood class materials.

Another excuse to waste taxpayers' money.