"Virginia education officials do not foresee support from the U.S. Department of Education on a reading test for students with limited English skills that acts as an alternative to its Standards of Learning test, and the Charlottesville School Board is responding by backing the state’s stance.

Beverly Catlin, the director of the city’s English as a Second Language program, drafted a resolution Tuesday for the board requesting that the state use its substitute SOL reading test for an additional year. It also asks that Limited English Proficient students in grades 3 through 8 be exempt from federal evaluation for 24 months. Currently, their SOL test results are counted after one year.

State Superintendent Billy K. Cannaday Jr., Superintendent for Harrisonburg city schools Donald Ford and Teddi Predaris, Fairfax County’s director of English for Speakers of Other Languages, met Monday with federal education officials to ask for what Catlin outlined in the resolution.

“I came away from the meeting with a clear belief that [the U.S. Department of Education] is not in concurrence,” Ford said. “It seemed to me their focus was different from what we were presenting.”

This summer, Department of Education officials told Virginia educators that its Stanford English Language Proficiency test does not comply with tenets in the No Child Left Behind Act. The test is a substitute for the reading SOL given to LEP students in grades 3 through 8.

With little time to create another assessment, state officials asked for more time to implement another system, Predaris said. She said federal officials at the meeting did not anticipate that U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings would allow flexibility.

Chad Colby, deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, said federal officials will look over amendments to Virginia’s requests and will review them in the coming weeks before making any final decisions.

Ford said federal officials at the meeting focused on complying with the law in place.

“What’s good for kids was not a part of their discussion,” he said.

Ford, Predaris and other Virginia officials presented possible consequences of not applying their requests.

“Many of the LEP students may not pass grade-level standards, even if they are making progress,” Predaris said. “This would discourage them.”

An excerpt from the No Child act, Predaris said, seemingly allows state and local educators to implement programs for LEP students. The act said it “provides state educational agencies and local educational agencies with the flexibility to implement language instructional educational programs, based on scientifically based research … that the agencies believe to be the most effective for teaching English.”

LEP student enrollment has almost tripled in city schools since 2000, a steady six-year growth of 243 students.

Fifty-eight percent are immigrants or refugees who have been in the country for less than three years, Catlin said recently." (Matt Deegan, The Daily Progress, December 13, 2006)