Suburban News Publications

5/17/2006

By MARK REAL

As I enter the Welcome Center in 95-year-old North High School at 7:15 a.m.

I see young Somali Bantu women in colorful hijabs — Islamic head scarves — and long skirts.

The jewel colors of their tribal garb are a bright contrast to the standard-issue desks and classroom walls. Colorful art projects adorn the hallways.

I can hear boys speaking Spanish. Some wear T-shirts with Latin soccer logos. They greet their teachers with smiles and open face.

Welcome to a Columbus Public Schools high school without serious discipline problems and one where enrollment is increasing.

Most of the 600 students enrolled in the Columbus district’s three Welcome Center schools arrived in America within the past year or two and speak little or no English. This Welcome Center began the school year with 109 students. Today, in mid-May, 260 are enrolled in a space intended for 100. Six new students have enrolled during the past week.

Each teacher has an aide who is bi- or multilingual, speaking various combinations of Hindi, Farsi, Spanish, French, Somali, Portuguese and Mandarin. Nevertheless, to immerse these students in the language of their new country, all classes are taught in English and all textbooks are in English.

Students read many lessons aloud and are coached in diction, grammar and clarity of pronunciation. For many youngsters, mastering English involves learning a new alphabet.

I watch students from Kazakhstan struggle with writing new letters.

All immigrant students must take state tests even if they just arrived and speak no English. That rule was established to keep schools from excluding large numbers of students learning English. Test scores are not counted for students enrolled fewer than 120 days.

This is the new face of Columbus Public Schools: Nearly one in 10 students is an immigrant.

Columbus Public Schools reflect changes in the larger Central Ohio community. More students are arriving from abroad with their own languages and customs. Many have had little or no formal schooling, and many lack school records. Some classes have more girls enrolled than boys.

In many of these children’s home countries, students must pay tuition, buy books and uniforms, and produce birth certificates for enrollment. If there was money at home to educate a child, it generally went to send boys to school. Now, the girls are catching up.

More than 4,000 youngsters in the Columbus schools are receiving help learning English, mastering U.S. customs and studying the same subjects as their American-born counterparts, not only in the district’s three Welcome Centers but also in ESL programs in 50 buildings across the district. This enrollment gain for the district partially offsets the enrollment of 7,000 district students in charter schools.

Mexican and Somali children comprise the largest nationality groups by far, but the following 34 countries are represented here by at least a dozen students each:

• Europe: Albania, Germany, Italy and Russia;

• Africa: Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Togo;

• Asia: Bangladesh, China, India, Korea, Pakistan, Philippines and Vietnam; and

• Central and South America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Brazil, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Jamaica.

Despite the obvious challenges, immigrant children have a higher graduation rate than U.S.-born students here.

Teachers say the immigrant students, for the most part, are more appreciative of their education than native-born students, are more focused on completing their work and have far fewer behavior problems. In fact, the graduation rate for students studying English as a second language has been continuously higher than that of other CPS students since 2000.

Columbus officials say this is the only Welcome Center of its type in the Midwest.

“Some people don’t understand what we do,” said Principal Ken Woodard.

“But we believe that helping youngsters become fluent in English and helping them to use a computer, get a library card and prepare for work is important for our school district and community. The program’s consistently higher graduation rate underscores its value.”

Mark Real is president of KidsOhio.org, a nonpartisan organization which conducts ongoing analyses of policy and budget issues in the Columbus Public Schools. Reports are available at kidsohio.org.

All Information Contained Copyright © Suburban News Publications, 2006