"Twenty-year-old Charlottesville High School senior Zobair Alijan is anxious about whether he will pass his Standards of Learning tests, as this year is his last chance to get a high school diploma.

Alijan has been in the United States for two years and takes advanced English as a Second Language courses at CHS. His father died 18 years ago in Afghanistan during fighting with the Soviet Union, which occupied the country from 1979 to 1989. He and his family left Afghanistan in 1998 and, after living in Pakistan and Turkey, moved to the United States.

The pinch to get ESL students to pass SOLs comes in high school, and stigmas and stereotypes present additional hurdles beyond the academics.

To receive a standard high school diploma in Virginia, all students, including those in ESL programs, must pass six SOL subject tests, including one each for reading and writing.

"Those are the hardest for ESL students and they present a substantial obstacle to graduating," CHS ESL teacher Tina Vasquez said.

She said the system isn't realistic for her students.

Vasquez said: "I wish there was a modified diploma for ESL, or an alternative form of assessment. It is virtually impossible for a student to progress from no English to the specific and academic vocabulary necessary to pass the standardized tests in less than four years."

In Virginia high schools, SOL tests accompany certain math, English, social studies and science courses.

Vasquez said that in many instances, ESL students receive passing grades in these classes, but do not pass their accompanying SOL tests. The ESL students move on to the next grade anyway, she said, leaving them with an accumulation of SOL tests that they must pass before graduation.

"It is so painful for me to witness my senior students suffer in their last year," Vasquez said. "They not only need to pass their challenging classes, but also spend hours of extra time in SOL remediation sessions and retaking SOL exams they had previously failed."

Alijan, one of Vasquez's three seniors, agreed.

"It's really hard to take the same exam [as all students] - the writing and the reading," he said.

ESL students who move to the U.S. and are enrolled immediately in high school are expected, in many cases, to receive the equivalent of 13 years of education in four, Vasquez said.

The stigma of staying in school longer discourages ESL students from doing so, she said, even though they are allowed to stay in school until age 21.

For those ESL students who enroll before high school, schools are generally more lenient about promoting them to the next grade despite their failing SOL scores.

"At this point, in middle school, they don't generally keep kids back," said Kara Perkuchin, ESL teacher at Jack Jouett Middle School in Albemarle County. "They might be in high school a little longer getting the credits they need or the training they need to get a job."

Sheltering pros and cons

As emphasis on ESL instruction increases and the number of ESL students in local schools continues to surge, educators must decide the most effective way to teach the students so they succeed on the SOLs and also gel with the greater student body.

The ESL programs in both city and county schools have four academic levels, and students in the highest two levels take the mainstream classes that require the SOLs.

ESL students, especially those in the lowest two levels, enroll in a class where they learn exclusively with other ESL students.

ESL researcher Virginia Collier said this method, called sheltering, has produced higher achievement scores than placing ESL students in mainstream classes or singling them out for remedial work.

In addition, Ruth Ferree, a professor at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education who teaches future ESL teachers, said that ESL students in a sheltered class are less intimidated to participate in class discussions or to raise their hand for help because they reach a comfort level that they do not feel in mainstream classrooms.

Perkuchin remembered how much more she learned in a sheltered classroom - about language and history - when studying abroad in Denmark.

"I got a lot more out of my sheltered Danish language class than I did with my Danish history class," she said.

Sheltered learning, however, can affect the views ESL students form of mainstream students, and vice versa.

"They don't care about us," CHS junior and advanced ESL student Anelya Mkrtumova said. "Some people don't pay any attention to us."

More multi-cultural education is needed in the schools, Vasquez said.

"It's not in the high school curriculum," she said. "It'd be great if there were more awareness here and in the wider community to fight those stereotypes. If you don't know anything about a person, you're just going to fall back on what you do know, whether you get it from TV or the newspapers or what your friend said. Everyone has [stereotypes]. It's the people who say, 'I have these stereotypes, but that's because I don't know enough about this person. I'm going to learn about them.' That's when you can break through."

Last spring, four of Vasquez's students, from Togo, Somalia, Afghanistan and El Salvador, answered questions from Walker Upper Elementary students during a "Cultural Awareness Panel." The Walker students were eager to hear about life in their countries, she said.

"It was a powerful experience of true intercultural communication," Vasquez said. "I would love to see more events like this."

Caitlin Sournworth, a senior at CHS who volunteers as an aide in an ESL math class, said the stereotypes she developed toward Hispanic immigrants were shattered once she started working with them. She saw firsthand how they struggled with English despite trying hard to grasp the language.

More than academic hurdles

Teaching ESL students so they gain the skills to pass the SOLs is challenging in itself. But refugees and immigrants face additional hurdles outside the classroom that affect their ability to learn.

Their cultural standing can challenge ESL students, said Vasquez and Courtney Stewart, the director of Albemarle County's ESL program.

Many feel pressure to drop out of school and work to help their families pay bills, Vasquez said.

Undocumented students may also drop out after they realize college is beyond their reach.

Most colleges do not accept undocumented students who do not have a Social Security number, making it difficult to motivate some high school students who have been in the schools since kindergarten, Stewart said at a recent meeting of Creciendo Juntos, a group that addresses issues in the region's Hispanic community.

"It's a difficult time for the schools right now," she said about these students' college ambitions. "There's a lot of hopelessness. It's hard to keep the kids in school right now who understand it and see that hopelessness."

Only 24 percent of foreign-born Hispanic students in the United States graduated high school in 2005, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

The role of advocates

Vasquez, Ferree, Stewart and Perkuchin said ESL students and their families need advocates who can help them overcome their insecurities and make known the disadvantages some face because of their financial situations and their lack of English abilities.

Stewart and Vasquez said that by middle and high school, many ESL students know English better than their parents.

As a result, communicating with families can be difficult, Vasquez said.

"Sometimes students don't relay school information to the parents because they don't want to burden them or don't know how to explain the system," she said.

Only one ESL family showed up last year for parent-teacher conferences, Vasquez said. By assigning as homework the task of letting their family know about the conferences this year and making arrangements for an interpreter to accompany their parents, families of 22 students met with her.

Parents of ESL students - who often work long hours because language barriers limit them to low-paying jobs - need help to support and motivate their children as they move through the school system, Vasquez and Stewart said.

"They are working hard so their kids can have an education, but they are not able to be at home to read with their children or help them with their homework," Vasquez said.

High ambitions

Alijan spoke of members of the Taliban who stopped him on the street and asked him to quote a specific passage from the Koran. He could not recite it verbatim, and he was beaten with a stick.

The aspiring computer engineer is thankful for the opportunity he has in the United States to receive higher education. He hopes to attend Piedmont Virginia Community College and then transfer to UVa.

But dominating his academic thoughts now is passing the SOLs." (Matt Deegan, The Daily Progress, December 18, 2006)