 Okay, so we're here with Senator Jose Rodriguez and he's been listening to all of this research about English language learners and what school funding has been taking place over the last three years and what difference that seems to make. So what's your reaction to this and what's important about this? Well let me say first of all I want to congratulate Iira for sponsoring this conference. I think it's very, very important for the future of education in this state especially for our Latino students and I think what we heard from the research is confirmation that Texas is not doing right by our English language learners. We're not adequately funding the programs, we're not providing even the adequate base funding we just heard for the English language learners students which of course applies across the board. And so I think this data will be very useful in this current session, certainly will be useful for me in terms of the work of the Senate Education Committee that I'm now serving to propose better funding and better additional base funding as well as more emphasis on the bilingual and dual language programs that are necessary to ensure that our Latino students mainly the English language learners students can excel in school. And as we also heard confirmation of what we have been hearing for quite some time from our former state demographer Steve Murdoch that Texas needs to do better in investing in education for the Latino students who are projected to be the future labor force of this state. That's why it's important. That's why it's extremely important. I think if Texas wants to compete, if it wants to stay ahead in the 21st century economy then Texas and indeed the whole nation need to do a lot more for our English language learners and our students and the programs that they have to go through the teacher preparation more teachers that are certified that are that are qualified to teach our students so that we can have a labor force that is going to be trained and educated to meet the needs of the state. And we're here with Dr. Julian Vasquez-Helik who was one of the panelists earlier this morning on this conversation and by the way did tweet out that link to your blog post so that people can people can find it. Tell me tell me what what you've learned here today. Sure. I think one of the most this is a very important issue for the state of Texas and the Americans in general one fifth almost one fifth of all students in the state of Texas are what are called English language learners. So that's a key piece nearly millions of kids across the United States fall into this category of students who are learning the English language. So that's I think the important context of the conversation. The second thing is that the question is are we properly funding schools to benefit these kids these students because we know that English language learners are considered a special population in Texas they have an additional weight to the poor people monies that are allotted to schools and the question is is that weight enough unfortunately Texas has a sort of sordid history when it comes to school finance they've been in court five times over the last couple of decades in terms of funding students they have a the legislature has a constitutional obligation to provide an adequate education and the courts have said five times or four times that they aren't doing so and English language learners are when you disaggregate the group are the group that underperforms across the board in terms of student outcomes dropout rates grade retention rates test scores and so are we providing schools with the resources necessary to adequately serve it and so this conference get provided the opportunity a to look at the data to look at the school finance data b what are some of the best practices educators talked about them we talked about empirically based best practices for English language learners so what should come from this I think that folks would will be interested to know the data about school finance so that the legislature will act we clearly there's higher ways for the various special education categories some districts are spending 10 20% more on educating ELLs beyond what the state is allotting to them because this is a population that needs high quality teachers these resources needs community liaisons with the community there's a variety of things that we need to provide these students for them to be successful and money does matter especially for English language learners and ultimately what is the importance of making sure that English language learners are helped in when their students well we're a nation of immigrants 100 years ago it was the Germans it was the Italians and and now the waves of immigration are coming from Latin America Central America Mexico and other places this is our future this is the we're talking here about the vibrance of our democracy a decade from now two decades from now so we must provide these children an opportunity an equal opportunity to live out their American dream obviously there's there's a great deal of interest but there is some concern about where we are as it relates to providing quality programs especially for secondary level students based on the comments I've heard there's clearly an understanding that we are not going to be certainly in the areas of teacher preparation curriculum materials providing support to help districts both identified but also retain teachers and clearly that if we don't do a more effective job that they're going to be serious economic consequences and that's that that gets to the other part of it why this is important I mean what's the the global sort of significance of this clearly based on on the data that we cited today too many of our EL students are not achieving at levels required by the state to meet state graduation requirements many of them don't get through our high schools they're going to drop out we don't base just on on extensive research has been done on the impact of level of education on not only earning but there are related studies that suggests that people that are better educated have better health situations they can people the better educated higher levels of taxes that they pay out so benefits in multiple areas the downside is that you don't have an educated workforce as a business person and you have to invest resources just retrain your workers and bottom line is if you don't invest up front then there are the negative costs associated in terms of income transfer programs health you know care benefit needs and also just job training implications that will be required so it has some far-reaching very far-reaching implications far reaching you know we have to get beyond a notion that well if we don't do well it's just this one individual the problem will be gone next year or a couple years no it's it's an issue that our failures stay with us and what people are talking about the tables right now are what what what are the next steps they're all the next steps given what the research has said about not only the characteristics of schools that are successful what are the kinds of changes that we need to start making schools in terms of how we identify the students the kinds of instructional programs we provide for them how we support our teachers how we make sure that we don't use data around test you know assessment is important we understand that there's concerns about too much testing at the same time if we don't have some measure then how do we know how they're gonna talk about well what is next not only in Texas but Texas look upon in other parts of the country for new ways of addressing these kinds of issues and we hope to provide some of those answers right all right well also we have a robust online audience and I've been telling them and I had please repeat to them that their ideas about these things are welcome yes of course you know while we are you know physically around these tables we understand that there is a vast amount of expertise out in the field those of you that are joining us online we would not only welcome you with really seriously asked when you share your insights with perspective your expertise so you can share them as we put the proceedings together so even beyond today beyond today there will be a non-point non-point both conversation thank you so much thank you today I've learned that the importance of making resources and funding equitable for English language learners and the importance of that why because we need to make sure that they're getting equitable services instructionally and academically in the classroom you're going to be taking some of this back to you yes I will be taking this because you're ahead of services yes right why is all of this important it's important because I think it's important that for everyone to understand that our English language learners are students first most but also because it's important to look at their linguistic needs and academic needs individually and then determine how to plan for them appropriately so that they're able to get the services they need and Highland Hill has one of the highest percentages if I recall correctly in the San Antonio area of people who are English language learners I don't know where the high is but we have quite a few we have about 2,500 students in our district and so what happens if what happens if we don't address this issue right now I think it's important for our students if we don't address the issue I don't think the students will get the support and services that they need and then there'll be a huge gap you know well it's already a gap but even the gap will just continue to grow and the students are will not be able to just have the same opportunities that everyone else has and that is a cost to the rest of society as well yes and so that also will have a huge impact actually because because we're such a large population of our ELLs it will have a bigger impact on what our future is and our future of our kids so there's a pretty good audience online out there watching us right now and many of them it sounds like our educators and people who are pretty passionate about this as well feel free to let them know that you're interested in hearing what they have to say. Well I appreciate you taking time to listen to even just in today's segment but also just to continue to support students and continue to fight for students and of course reach out to me in any way that I can help support as well. Linda, you're with our Lady of the Lake University and you've been partnering with IDRA on this. Yes I'm a tenured faculty member here at our Lady of the Lake. I'm the coordinator of bilingual education and so our Lady of the Lake was one of the first bilingual education work was the first bilingual education program that was certifying teachers in the state and so we're going we had a 40th anniversary a couple years ago and a lot of people from IDRA were here I know Albert Cortez and I've been a lot of the other all graduates of our Lady of the Lake and so a lot of the leaders in bilingual education have come out of this program. It's very exciting when you talk about bilingual education although it's very difficult to train teachers in bilingual education because of the lack of resources not only at the K-12 level but also at the university level and so here at our Lady of the Lake recently what we did was we even took like linguistic classes that were offered only to bilingual educators and now we're offering them to all students but as I sat through the day and listening to the gentleman from the civil rights office speaking he was talking about the training that we do in terms of ESL students and I thought to myself we're offering these courses but we only offer them for bilingual educators so we're sure that the bilingual educators are receiving training and learning strategies and English language learners but then I thought to myself not all mainstream teachers are doing that so I think that coming away from this meeting today I'm going to go back up with the education faculty and start talking about that although we have pieces of it in there we have actual classes in the bilingual education program that focus specifically all semester on working on cognitive academic language learning strategies and that's important for people who are teaching all sorts of subjects yes all subject areas because of the amount and the increasing number of ELL in our communities especially here in San Antonio and so there is a very high likelihood that they're gonna they're gonna come in contact with kids who are ELL so they need to at least have a bit of a hand up yes and we are looking to train more bilingual teachers I mean we have a lot of spaces available from districts to call all the time stating that we're not training enough bilingual educators and so every student that has come out of our Lady of the Lake in our program to receive jobs right out of the gate as soon as they take their tests we have a 98% pass rate for our tests 76% of our teachers after five years are still in the classroom teaching and so we're doing a really good job we just don't have enough of them at the national level for the National Association of Bilingual Education coming up in March the Bessel Organization which is our bilingual educator student organization is going to be discussing along with UTSA the pipeline and how we are not training enough teachers in bilingual education at ESL education that they're not coming into the field and so without them coming into the field we have more alternative certification teachers in the classrooms which aren't always trained at the highest levels and we also have a lot of permanent subs in classrooms because we just aren't producing enough teachers so so say you could talk to a kid in high school who's getting ready to come to you know get getting ready to think about college and careers and stuff like that what do you say to the kid that says they really should focus on not just being a teacher but being a bilingual teacher what do you tell them so what's in it for them what's in it for them the joy of teaching because we know we're not here to make the big bucks as part of our Lady of the Lake and being from the Sisters of Providence we call teaching a colleague we're like it's not really so much profession as it is a colleague because we don't want teachers in the classroom who don't want to be there who are not happy or who don't understand going above and beyond to work with ESL learners or to work with children who come from a second language we have so many new immigrants into the community especially from Catholic Charities how they've been bringing a lot of children over so we have schools that we have adjunct professors teaching at principals and they have kids from 60 60 different language communities in their classes and yet we're not training the teachers fast enough to work with them so when we talk about bilingual education we're not only talking Spanish English anymore although that is huge for South Texas we're starting to train for all languages and so when I prepare teachers here they'll ask me why are we studying Hungarian or why are we studying Devon here why are we studying Tagalog and I say because you never know who you're going to get in your bilingual class and it's not enough to know phonemic awareness and morphology and orthography for the English and Spanish language only you have to understand it and be able to research and find this material in other languages and so that's been a huge push as well that we're working on but yes anyone who would like to become bilingual educator I say come to our Lady of the Lake and come to our program and look at it and see we've got small numbers in our classroom I teach maybe 12 to 15 per class sometimes there are as low as 10 kids in the classroom but we're very hands-on and we're training leaders you know we're out at national conferences we're at state conferences my students are presenting I try to kind of stand back and just build leaders and let them do the work I think it's been a very educated educational experience particularly I think that it has been where you bring people who are on the ground teaching students that are English learners and people from colleges and universities research community policy makers and so forth so that that exchange and finding out where people are coming from has been very informative now right next right next to you is another college of education at UTSA and you are also dealing with the pipeline of people who are bilingual educators yeah right next door yeah this is this is a broader importance oh yeah so not only do you have the bilingual pipeline but you also have the schools to prison pipeline since college department of criminal justice is in our college and we've seen a significant increase of kids going to detention starts with the tension and so forth and all of a sudden they have people being expelled from school and so forth and all of a sudden you have the the the kind of the road into the juvenile justice system and so forth so that's a major part and particularly because you have students who are poor for example from this economically disadvantaged backgrounds students who are English learners and so forth are the ones that are more likely to get into trouble with the criminal justice system so those are the ramifications of doing nothing right exactly yeah and what is what is the upside of doing something oh the upside is I think that but a small investment in terms of the education of kids and improving the academic preparation of kids who don't speak English fluently and so forth getting them ahead and so forth getting them to finish school getting them to go to community colleges to four-year institutions have careers and so forth that they become taxpayers and so forth they contribute back to the community and these are individuals who are more likely to be civically engaged and so forth and participate in the larger society compared to kids who all of a sudden are are marginalized and kept from from these kinds of opportunities yeah exactly and events like this I mean what what IDRA has pulled together today tell me tell me about what yeah well Idra has always been a major leader not only here in San Antonio but nationally in terms of the work that they do and pulling the research in and that intersection I think between the academics and the practitioners is very important and the policymakers so they bring all these three together and you can see it here in this event today and there is a robust audience online oh yeah I got to Rhode Island to to the Rio Grande Valley I got an email from somebody from Alabama and we're asking them to contribute their ideas as well because it's so important yeah I learned a lot there are people all around us all around me in my place of work at IDRA and schools and communities with parent groups and if we listen a little bit we learn a lot today of course we're talking about English language learners which are almost one out of five students in the state of Texas these are students that are learning English and that unfortunately are not being well served by schools in Texas and so we are taking a look at what needs to be done to assure that they're prepared for college right now for example only one out of ten English language learners is prepared to go to college that's outrageous when we know that college is needed almost 70% of the new jobs so we're taking a look at that taking a look at how we make sure the teachers are well prepared to teach students who are learning another language and need to be able to keep learning in their own language while they learn English so that's what we are up to parents tell us importantly that they want their kids to learn English they want their kids to succeed they want their kids to maintain their own language so that they can keep their familial connections and they want them to succeed and do well so the people who are gathered in the room today that includes students and teachers and school administrators superintendents university people all are gathered to find solutions to what are persistent problems we know that among other things we need to make sure of two things very importantly one is that we put our money where our mouth is that there is more money that is needed to assure that English language learners have high quality education it is unfair and not right that they are relegated to the poorest schools secondly we also know that we have to make sure that teachers know how to educate students who are learning another language so teacher training is one other thing that we've been talking about today and that is crucial and then also making sure that we're putting something in place that measures that we're improving that's right that's right but with some caveats that's right so we need to know how we're doing you know if if you or I want to lose weight we need to know how much we weigh have we lost anything and are our efforts producing results I think in much the same way we rely on certain measures to know if what we're doing for children is producing the result that we want which is learning and preparation but we don't want to do is to hurt students by testing them and then saying well you know what you didn't pass that test so now we're gonna have to hold you behind there's plenty of evidence that says that high stakes testing which means making big decisions for children on the basis of a test score is just plain wrong and so that is not what we need but what we do need is to be able to do sample testing just like we do with the water in a river to know that it's you know high quality we test a few drops and we say oh yeah this is working this is what we need in the state of Texas and the people who are here are taking a look at that senator José Rodriguez who is here has also committed to working to increase the amount of dollars that are available to English language learner and students in schools or high quality teaching for good curriculum we heard that materials are just not available in the school so that's another important thing and so I think together we can get this done and and what is what is it I think at stake is the future certainly of the students who are being relegated to second-class citizenship but perhaps from the perspective of all of us what is at stake is our common and survival our common ground education is the key in terms of economic prosperity IDRA just did a paper together with UTSA and the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber and we found out that education is the key economic strategy so that all of us have good neighborhoods have neighborhoods in which we can raise our families and in which our kids can thrive have good jobs so that is what is at stake and I have to tell you that during you know Saturday night's gala by the Hispanic Chamber they talked about that white paper wonder how important that is yes yes and I think really that the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber among all of the chambers in Texas is really taking a lead role to get this message across they've been working with city council and with superintendents locally to make sure that local school districts get on board and say you know we are going to prepare every student to go on to college they may not all go to college they may not all want to go college but they will have a choice instead of being ill-prepared and therefore unable to have that choice and that's also because it's not just academic it's not just an issue for teachers that's exactly right that's exactly right for the workforce entrepreneurship you know it's it's about all of us living a good and decent and common life in which all of us are productive and contribute our best yeah I have to I have to share one story with you when I was when I was named business editor of the Express News I went and immediately Tom Frost said senior said he wanted to speak with me and he said okay so what is it what is the business story and I said education that's the story that's right that's exactly right it is the business story and and I think more and more of the business community is finding that out and I find the business community really willing to do their share to to make sure that all of these issues are addressed and we address educational ones and for others no reason why we can't by the way we have everything that it takes we have the knowledge we have the commitment we have the entrepreneurship that would be required to create the solutions that and I think it's time Maldives been involved in this issue for a long time and you've been involved in this issue for a long time right yeah absolutely I mean I think it's 35 40 years and counting that all that has been involved in this battle me a little bit less than that what what's new for you here today I mean what's new is is to realize exactly how few successful secondary programs there are for English learners because you hear a lot of rhetoric about oh well you know this school here is doing excellent for English learners they have a great superintendent they have a great plan but yet when you dig into the data and you realize wait there are so few successful schools and that's just you know using the limited definition of success based on you know standardized testing and those results but I think it's a real challenge you know for still politically as far as we've come we still have so much further to go especially for secondary and so yes we heard earlier today about political solutions or you know the political process and you're also involved in a couple of still involved right in a couple of lawsuits about this yeah whether it's a whether it's a lawsuit about the funding for English learners or it's a lawsuit about the lack of educational opportunities in the classroom for English learners you know Texas has far better policy on paper for English learners than many other states but when it comes to funding policy that is so divorced from the actual resources those students need to succeed and when it comes to monitoring and implementing the programmatic policies that we have on paper that's practically non-existent and it's essentially set up so that the state can do the least amount of monitoring and intervention to support school districts that are already strapped for resources what are the consequences well I mean if you're talking about the individual student it means that student never reaches his or her full potential and that's just the wrong thing that we should be doing for any child in Texas if you're talking about for the family then it's of course it's going to be lack of support if you're talking about the community then you have people who aren't going to be staying in certain communities you have state and national economic consequences whether it's dealing with pay whether it's dealing with professions filling certain professions as we move to a more advanced technological world or if you're looking at health and housing and criminal justice system I mean all of these are going to be impacted if we fail to educate students and fail to deliver the educational opportunities they need to succeed so where do we have to go from here I mean what's like what are the next steps you're talking next steps at your table yeah absolutely and I think you know the real real real progress that we need now is one to ensure that you know certain policies are changed so that we can build a better bigger and better pipeline of qualified teachers for English learner students I think that we need to look at our policies regarding testing and what that testing is and how we're diverting so much of the resources to testing companies as opposed to you know the students who actually needed in the classroom it just has to be a comprehensive solution that has a marriage between education policy and the research that shows what can work absolutely that's what is really been missing largely over the years since the great battles won in the early 1980s but now here we are you know in a new era and we need to push and progress the movement thank you