THE NEW YORK IMMIGRATION COALITION

275 Seventh Avenue, 9th Floor

New York, NY  10001

Tel:   (212) 627-2227

Fax:  (212) 627-9314

Testimony of José Davila, Education Reform Program Coordinator for the New York Immigration Coalition, before the New York City Council’s Commission on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity

October 19, 2004

Good evening.  Chairmen Jones and Levine, and members of the New York City Council’s Commission on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, thank you for allowing our organization to testify at this very important hearing on the need for state funds to reduce class and school sizes for English Language Learner (ELL) and all students.  My name is José Davila, and I am the Education Reform Program Coordinator for the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella policy and advocacy organization for over 160 member groups that work with newcomers to our country.

Our education system is in crisis, and immigrant and ELL students are disproportionately its victims.  Their schooling is not sufficiently funded by federal, state, or local governments – the same governments who have increased promotion and graduation standards without putting sufficient resources in place to help students meet them.  As a result, good school programs to meet the needs of immigrant and English Language Learner students are not widely available, which has led to skyrocketing dropout and push out rates for these students.  In New York City, over half of ELL students never graduate high school.  If we’re not educating the majority of our immigrant youth, what kind of future is in store for our growing immigrant City?

New York City public schools teach hundreds of thousands of foreign-born students and

over 140,000 students (13%) whose native language is not English and who are classified as

English Language Learners (ELLs).  Today’s immigrant and ELL students have the same goals as

previous generations of immigrants – to receive a high school diploma and have access to higher

education.  We know that when immigrant and ELL students get the help they need, they can

succeed.  This can be seen when one looks at the success achieved by former ELL students, or those

who have become proficient in English and pass into “mainstream” English classes.  As a group,

they score higher on standardized tests and graduate at higher rates than all other students. 

New York City students have been shortchanged by the state for decades and the recent Campaign for Fiscal Equity court decision provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the state to provide desperately-needed resources for our most at-risk students including immigrant and ELL students.  Further funding shortfalls will continue to translate into fewer qualified teachers, higher student-to-teacher ratios, less time for needed English language instruction and tutoring, and ultimately, more dropouts. 

The solution is for the state and city government to tackle the immigrant and ELL dropout crisis head on.  The state and city must ensure immigrant and ELL students get their fair share of state funds from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court settlement to support smaller class sizes, additional English instruction and funding to recruit, increase pay for, and train qualified teachers.  The New York Immigration Coalition is very encouraged by the State Assembly’s school funding proposal to allocate $94.25 million for ELL instruction services through LEP categorical grants.

Regarding class and school size, U.S. census data clearly shows that the continued growth of our city in recent years is largely due to immigration.  Two out of every three New York City residents are either an immigrant or a child of an immigrant.  Immigrant students of all ages commonly find themselves in overcrowded classrooms and struggle to learn English and other vital subjects in order to reach the next grade and work towards a high school diploma.  Thus, there is a clear need to ease the burden of these communities by building new schools throughout New York’s immigrant neighborhoods and by recruiting and training more teachers to serve these smaller classes.

Meanwhile, the growing small school movement could prove to be a means to ensure small class and school size and foster a strong, unique learning environment.  However, we are concerned that immigrant and ELL students are not benefiting from these new small schools due to poor parent outreach in languages other than English and due to an inability to provide appropriate programs for ESL, bilingual and dual language students in these smaller settings.  Aside from the international high schools and the recently opened Chinese dual language high school, immigrant and ELL students are not proportionately benefiting from the fruits of the Mayor’s small school reforms.  In addition, the creation of small schools should not lead to increasingly overcrowded classes in our large, already overburdened high schools, where many immigrant and ELL students are currently striving to graduate and go on to college.

In closing, the state and city must dramatically increase the level of LEP aid as part of the

CFE settlement to help increase the amount and quality of English instruction and allow parents to

be equal partners in their children’s education through the availability of translation and

interpretation services.  In addition, the state and city must commit to significantly increase funds to

build more schools in immigrant neighborhoods, as well as ensure access to these schools whether

small or large.  Thank you for your time and consideration.

###