Advocacy

Did you know the TESOL U.S. Advocacy Action Center now features weekly updates on what’s happening in English language education in Washington, DC? You can view the updates online at http://capwiz.com/tesol


TESOL Advocacy Day 2011

On June 6-7, 2011, TESOL (the international TESOL organization of which MinneTESOL is an affiliate) hosted its annual day on the hill, allowing dozens of TESOL professionals around the country to talk with their representatives about key issues.  To see an article with pictures and video clips about this year’s event, please click HERE and read a write-up from John Segota, TESOL’s Director of Advocacy, Standards, and Professional Relations.

Susan Ranney, a University of Minnesota professor in the Curriculum & Instruction Department and a long-time MinneTESOL member and leader, went to Washington to represent MinneTESOL.  Keep reading to hear her perspective as a TESOL Advocacy Day participant!

MinneTESOL participates in TESOL Advocacy Day 2011

My experience at TESOL Advocacy Day was a fantastic learning and political action experience.  I learned that citizens can have a voice in developing policy and that legislators want to hear about issues in their states.  I also learned  about how to effectively communicate with legislators and about current perspectives on NCLB from TESOL and other education groups and officials.  I left feeling inspired to get more people involved in advocacy, and I hope that some of you will be interested in taking part in some way.  Please read on for details on how advocacy works and what some current perspectives are on reauthorization of the ESEA (NCLB) legislation.

TESOL Advocacy Day goals and format

I was honored to be asked to serve as the MinneTESOL representative at TESOL Advocacy Day 2011.  On June 6-7, I joined over 40 other TESOL members representing over 25 U.S. based affiliates in Washington, DC. This year was the sixth consecutive year for TESOL Advocacy Day, and featured new format with a full day of issue briefings and activities around education legislation and advocacy, followed by a full day of visits to Congressional offices on Capitol Hill.  By the end of the event, I had visited with staff of four members of the Minnesota Congressional delegation and the group overall had visited the offices of more than 100 Representatives and Senators.

Responding to recent action in Congress and from the White House, TESOL Advocacy Day 2011 was focused on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently revised as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). To maximize the impact of TESOL Advocacy Day, key members of Congress serving on the education and appropriations committees in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives were identified for meetings. As the MinneTESOL representative, I was asked to particularly try to meet with Sen. Al Franken, who is a member of the Senate Education Committee, and with Rep. John Kline, the Chair of the Education and Workforce Committee in the House of Representatives.  TESOL also suggested trying to get meetings with Rep. Betty McCollum and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.  I was able to meet with legislative aides in all these offices.

Preparing for a meeting with a member of Congress

Getting the meetings was the first lesson of the experience.  First, it was new to me to even think about asking a legislator to meet with me, but I discovered that this is a right we have in our democracy.  That doesn’t mean that it is easy; legislators receive a large number of meeting requests so you need to send requests well in advance, yet responses may come at the last minute.  We were encouraged to be persistent and also not to be disappointed if we were given a meeting with an aide rather than the Representative or Senator.  It took online requests, some phone calls, and many emails to set up the meetings.  I found that “constituent” seemed to be a magic word, although I was able to meet with people in McCollum’s and Kline’s offices without living in their districts.

In preparation for this trip, I read materials provided by TESOL about ESEA reauthorization.  Since they said that stories from our states are useful, I also contacted people at the Minnesota Department of Education, colleagues at the University of Minnesota, ELL district coordinators, and some K-12 teachers.  I learned that people gave mixed reviews to NCLB.  As Patty Richards in District 196 put it: “I always say ‘The good thing about NCLB was that it put ELLs above the radar’ and ‘The bad thing about NCLB is that it put ELLs above the radar.’”  This ambivalence was a common theme that I heard: the attention to ELL issues has been useful, but the punitive nature of the law has been harmful.  Testing was the big complaint; the overtesting and the interpretation of results are harmful.  I also heard stories about the impact of the use of test scores, such as a Somali girl in Rochester who was not allowed to graduate from high school despite passing all her required courses due to falling one point short on the reading test.  I learned from people at the MDE that this was more of a local issue than with the federal law, as states and districts make policies regarding how the tests are used for graduation decisions.  Overall, though, the message I took with me was a plea for change in the testing and accountability measures in the law.

TESOL training on advocacy and NCLB issues

The first day was an intense learning experience, with sessions from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm.  We were welcomed by TESOL Past President Brock Brady, TESOL Executive Director Rosa Aronson, John Segota, Director of Advocacy, Standards, and Professional Relations, and Ellen Fern of Washington Partners, LLC, TESOL’s legislative consultants. Then we had our first glimpse into the workings of Congress as we had a briefing from two Congressional staff working from opposite sides of the aisle on ESEA reauthorization and the key issues under debate, as well as presentations by representatives from the National Education Association, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

What I found interesting about all the speakers was that of all the different perspectives represented, no one was advocating for keeping NCLB as it currently exists.  The burdens of the testing requirements seem to be widely recognized and condemned from all political perspectives.  Also, in spite of the bitter partisan divisions in our country now, the legislative aides working for Democrats and Republicans had a good working relationship and seemed dedicated to developing good policy rather than making political points.  Some of the ideas for changes in the law were finding ways to make it more flexible, changing ways of evaluating teaching, providing teacher incentives and teacher preparation.

Dr. Rosalinda Barrera, Assistant Deputy Secretary and Director of the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) at the US Department of Education, laid out the Obama administration’s goals as supporting early learning through post-secondary education.  They want to end the punitive nature of NCLB and strengthen ESL by working on ELP assessment, developing systems to evaluate programs, and grants for innovative programs such as dual language education.  They recognize the need for more valid and reliable assessments for ELs, the loss of instructional time due to testing, the need for all teachers to learn strategies for teaching ELs, and the need for greater family engagement.  Dr. Barrera also voiced support for the DREAM Act, in order to stop squandering our nation’s bilingual resources.  It was encouraging to hear someone in power expressing support for these policies, but she also said something that surprised me.  In speaking about the political system, Barrera said “You have more power than I have – Use it!”  It drove home the point that in a democracy, the electorate has more power than bureaucrats in setting policy.  We tend to view Washington as a remote place where people think up policies that govern our lives, but our voices as citizens do matter.

In the afternoon sessions that day, we enjoyed some interactive activities such as a role play of the process of passing legislation in Congress and a game that highlighted the use of political capital that comes from constituent letters.  Later, John Segota and Ellen Fern gave us very useful information about what to expect in our meetings on the Hill and how to prepare for them. We learned that it helps to build relationships with people in lawmakers’ offices and to become resources to the them on topics of our expertise. Also, legislators like to hear about federal money coming into the state and if it has been worthwhile.  We were advised to give them stories about our EL students and their families, as people in Washington don’t know about the variety of students we see or what the issues are on the ground. From the TESOL perspective, there is a danger of the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction as NCLB is revised, and losing the benefit of having the federal guidelines that lead states to pay more attention to EL education than they may have done otherwise.  They also recommended telling representatives about the EL situation in our states and making the point that investing in education now saves money later. On the practical level, we were told to be prepared to talk for about 15 minutes, to leave plenty of time for lines and security (going through metal detectors in each office building), and to follow up with a thank you by email and offer to serve as a resource.

This was all vital information that helped me reshape my approach to the meetings.  I realized that the message about the need to change testing requirements of NCLB had to be balanced with a discussion of why we still need federal guidelines and support.  After a reception for the group and dinner with several other participants, I sat down to write my talking points and prepare for a day of meetings.  I decided to add information about the federal grants that I was familiar with – TEAM UP, a professional development grant directed by my UM colleague Connie Walker and coordinated by Tina Edstam, and the MDE Refugee grant that supported tutoring programs I had evaluated some years back.  I also included points about the number and spread of ELs in Minnesota, the particular needs of our large population of LFS students, the need to change the testing requirements in NCLB but to keep guidelines that focus attention on ELs, the length of time and instruction it takes for ELs to develop academic language, and the need for professional development for teachers. I used the story of the graduation problem in Rochester as evidence that local governments don’t always make the wisest policies.  I ended my talking points by asking for support for the DREAM act.

Talking to people on Capitol Hill

On June 7, I set out by metro to Capitol Hill and went first to Rep. Betty McCollum’s office. I was a bit nervous as I waited for the appointment, having never done this type of political action before.  Rep. McCollum was on a trip to the Mideast but I met with a young woman in her office and she was very interested in listening to my points.  She assured me that Rep. McCollum strongly supports the DREAM Act.  Getting through the first appointment with an empathetic listener built my confidence for the rest of the day.  The next appointment was with an aide to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and again it was a pleasant conversation, with the aide mainly listening and taking notes on my points, and assuring me that Sen. Klobuchar recognizes the importance of our EL students as our future workforce.  The third meeting was perhaps the most interesting and important meeting of the day, as it was with a staffer for Rep. John Kline, who as Chair of the Education and Workforce Committee for the House is one of the most influential congressmen on these issues.  This session involved more of a discussion of the issues, and some pushback against my ideas for federal guidelines and funding for professional development.  According to the staffer, Rep. Kline is interested in prioritizing local needs and in getting the federal government out of mandating policies.  She questioned the value of professional development funding, saying that they’ve been told that a lot of professional development funds are not used effectively.  It was very helpful to be able to tell her about TEAM UP and illustrate what good professional development can do to improve education for ELs, and we both agreed that an approach that is sustained over time can be more effective than one-day workshops.  We also agreed on the advisability of extending the EL category to include those no longer receiving services in order to capture their growth in the accountability measures, and we talked about alternatives to standardized tests, such as multiple types of assessments.  In our wrap-up session later, the TESOL people were very interested in hearing about this meeting and in learning that there is some opening for the types of thinking that they are advocating.  The last meeting of the day was with an aide to Sen. Al Franken, who happens to be on the education committee in the Senate.  She conveyed Sen. Franken’s desire to see the testing requirements of NCLB changed and she was interested in learning about what happens with ELs who arrive in Minnesota at high school age with limited formal schooling.

What can we do in Minnesota?

After this exhilarating day, it was great to reconnect with others over dinner and to hear about their experiences.  The repeated theme was that people felt they had made their voices heard and had learned a lot in the process. From this wonderful group of TESOL members from all parts of the U.S., I learned that we have connections with people around the country (The Ohio members told me that their Somali students had moved to Minnesota; teachers in Oregon are feeling the same pressures about teachers being judged based on student test scores, etc.), and that other affiliates have advocacy representatives and have done some actions.  For example, the Massachusetts affiliate organized an action at their state legislature to advocate for more flexibility in offering bilingual programs, and wore a variety of ill-fitting T-shirts that said “One size does not fit all” (The measure passed!).  I felt that the day at the Hill was just the beginning, and I would love to see MinneTESOL become more involved in advocacy at both the state and the federal level.  One creative idea that came up in our discussions was to get our ELs to take part in meeting with legislators, to give the legislators a chance to hear first- hand about their experiences.  Could this be something for MinneTESOL to organize?  After learning about how important Rep. Kline is in educational policy, I would love to involve MinneTESOL members who live in his district to try to meet with him and inform him on ESL issues.  You don’t have to travel to Washington to be active: We can work in St Paul at the state level and we can contact our federal representatives through their local offices.

The lessons that I took from Washington are that citizens really do have a voice in our democracy if we are willing to work at it and make our voices heard.  I hope to present more on this experience at the MinneTESOL fall conference and I would love to see more people become involved in advocacy.  If you would like more information about TESOL Advocacy Day, look for it on the TESOL web site at http://www.tesol.org and to learn more about your Congressional representatives, and the legislative issues TESOL is tracking, go the TESOL U.S. Advocacy Action Center at http://capwiz.com/tesol.  And please respond when MinneTESOL asks for people to become engaged in advocacy!

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Advocacy Issues: Get Involved!

MinneTESOL is working to do more in the area of advocacy for ESL teachers and learners, as well as issues related to our profession such as immigration, language, and education policy. Are you interested in getting involved? We are forming an Advocacy Committee, and we need your help! Please contact Patsy Vinogradov at patsy@minnetesol.org.

Watch this page for more links and information related to advocacy issues. And if you have a link or resource we should share with our membership, please let us know!

Click here to access our ADVOCACY RESOURCES.

Notice from International TESOL


Position Statements:

TESOL Position Statement on EFL for Young Learners available here (368)

July 2009

At its recent meeting, the TESOL Executive Committee approved two position statements for the association:

Copies of each of these position statements are attached; copies are also available online at http://www.tesol.org/PositionStatements.

Minnesota Legislative Reports on World Language

The legislature requires an annual district survey and report on the status of world languages published in February from 2008-2012.  The reports are posted on the Minnesota Department of Education Website.  There are several other reports with related information.  Each report contains an executive summary, background information, research and legislative recommendations.

http://education.state.mn.us/mde/Legislation/Reports_to_Legislature/index.html

Status of K-12 World Languages in Minnesota (2010)

http://www.education.state.mn.us/mdeprod/groups/Communications/documents/Report/016330.pdf