The 2014-15 Marin County Civil
Grand Jury, in its latest report on local schools, echoes a priority that local
residents share: No child should be left behind.
But some kids are falling short
of graduating from high schools.
The grand jury looked at how
well the San Rafael and Novato high schools were doing in helping students who
are not fluent in English reach graduation, and found that too many are falling
short of earning a diploma.
The grand jury, a
court-empaneled group of civic-spirited citizens, looked at graduation rates at
Novato and San Rafael because they have the largest populations of
English-learner students, a population that also has the lowest graduation
rates.
At Novato’s high schools, 93.1
percent of its seniors earned 2013 diplomas. But among English-learner
students, the rate is just 55 percent. San Rafael’s numbers are closer to the
Marin-wide statistics, with nearly 90 percent of students receiving diplomas,
but when looking just at English learners, that number drops to 69.4 percent.
Nobody is saying that it is not
a challenge to help students, many of whom have to learn English, to build the
academic credits needed to graduate. There are obstacles for both the students
and their schools.
“Imagine sitting in a history class in a
foreign country without understanding the language,” the grand jury report
states. Imagine a student who may be up to speed when it comes to math or
science, but whose difficulties speaking and reading English pose a huge
educational hurdle.
Our public schools have a
responsibility, as the grand jury puts it, “to provide high quality, successful
education for all students, including English learners — an education that
leads to graduation.”
The graduation, their earning
of the required credits, has to be a top priority for every public school.
Students may give up, but public schools can’t.
The grand jury concluded that
not enough is being done. That may be a simplistic assumption. The 2013 numbers
cited in the report do not reflect recent increases in school funding and the
focus of newly adopted local school plans and goals aimed at this very issue.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a
gap.
The school districts are
required to respond to the grand jury. Details of their plans and objectives
should echo local residents’ expectations of their public schools that no child
is left behind.
June 28, 2015
Marin
Independent Journal
Editorial
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