More than half of the Santa Barbara Unified School District’s emerging language learners increased language proficiency in the 2022-23 school year.
The increase is measured based on test results from the annual English Language Proficiency Assessment of California test, which places students on a continuum, from Level 1 to Level 4.
About 30% of the students maintained proficiency at Level 2 or Level 3 and another 1.2% maintained at Level 4. It takes about two years for students to jump levels.
About 16% of students fell back a level; 1,300 students were assessed.
School board member Bill Banning stressed that although he is encouraged by the numbers, they don’t tell the whole story.
“Everything there, those are snapshots that are interesting, but all they really do is shine a light on what more we don’t know about the individuals,” Banning said. “That only happens in a system that we are trying to build where we are looking at every child and knowing their story and hearing it.”
The district tests and monitors English language learners and makes decisions every year about whether to increase their level and eventually reclassify them as Fluid English Proficient.
In an attempt to show the rigor of the tests, district Superintendent Hilda Maldonado asked the board members to take a portion of the test that students have to take when showing English comprehension.
The board members watched a video of someone explaining the history of clocks. In the test, students are asked to explain in English a summary of what they heard and answer specific questions about the content, including how telling time has changed.
The board members participated in the exercise without microphones and did not report the results.
“This gives you an insight into the cognitive demand that is required,” Maldonado said. “Imagine if we did the same thing in Spanish, for those of you who are not Spanish-native speakers and you would have been asked to do that activity in that language, so that’s the cognitive load and the language demands that we are looking for.”
Board member Gabe Escobedo said he was impressed with all of the work that goes into teaching students and helping them through their language journey.
He asked if there was another way to measure proficiency. The 16% who dropped levels, he noted, were close to passing the test. Each year, however, the test gets more difficult, so those students are facing an uphill battle.
“The LPAC seems problematic in that it happens once a year. It’s a really tough test. If they don’t pass it, and they are real close, it gets that much tougher the next year,” Escobedo said.
Maldonado said there are so many factors that determine a student’s ability to learn English, but that Santa Barbara Unified set the proficiency bar “at the Olympics level.” Often, cognitive abilities of emerging language learners are greater than students who speak only English, Maldonado said, at older grades.
“This is a journey that takes time to learn the language,” Maldonado said.
Santa Barbara Teachers Association Speaks Out
Several unionized teachers spoke at the start of Tuesday’s board meeting asking the district to reopen contract negotiations.
“Due to your inaction, the district is struggling to properly staff schools to meet the needs of our community’s students, our children,” Santa Barbara Teachers Association president Hozby Galindo told the board.
According to the news release, SBTA submitted its “sunshine” letter, a required public declaration of bargaining topics, to the district on Sept. 8.
The press release stated that the district administration has not shared that letter with the school board or the public.
“Our district says our main focus is educational equity, and yet most of our most vulnerable students are facing a teacher shortage and a lack of services,” said Bethany Güereña, a special educator at Santa Barbara Junior High School. “The students are the ones who are paying the price for these vacancies in special education and across the district.”
The board did not comment on the issue.