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Monday, January 22, 2007
The ESOL Dilemma
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My colleague Laura Diamond had an interesting story in Sunday’s newspaper about the growth in the number of non-English speaking pupils in Gwinnett County. These kids make up just a fraction of the 1.6 million pupils in Georgia’s public schools. But in Gwinnett, particularly in the primary grades, their numbers are substantial.
As Laura found, children whose native tongue is not English represent nearly one in three Gwinnett kindergarteners. That means roughly one of every three 5-year-olds enrolling in the state’s largest school system needs to learn English.
Two years ago, I reported that Gwinnett had quietly become a minority-majority district with African-Americans, Asians, Latinos and other minority groups together making up more than 50 percent of the student body. It was a historic shift, and a trend that shows no sign of reversing.
It’s also costly. This year alone, Gwinnett expects to spend $33 million on ESOL instruction.
Now I know some of you will say the U.S.A. should just ship all these kids back to the countries they came from (even if they were born right here in Georgia), but what’s a school superintendent, principal or teacher to do?
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