State Puts the Burden of Foreign Language Exams on the District

Mal.

Mauvaise.

Male.

It's means bad in any language, and that's the reaction from Half Hollow Hills school officials upon learning the state will no longer fund or create foreign language proficiency exams at both the middle school and high school Regents level.

The move, which will save the state $700,000, was not unexpected, as the , and starting next year, the 10th grade Regents will fall on the burden of the individual districts as well. It's a message local administrators did not want to hear from the state.

"What they have done essentially is say to the local school district, we no longer can create these assessments due to financial reasons, but you now must create them," according to Francesco Fratto, Half Hollow Hills' director of world languages and ESL.

Half Hollow Hills has joined with 90 other districts statewide to form a consortium to create its own exams called FLACS. It's a step to make sure a uniform standard remains in place regarding the teaching and testing of foreign language skills.

It's just that, however. A step. Districts must bear the printing costs for the exams, covering multiple grades and languages, not to mention answer keys and the listening portion of exams. And of course, the task of creating the tests themselves is a daunting one.

It's a classic case of being stuck between a foreign language rock and a hard place: the state mandate to give the exams remains, but the districts must handle everything from that point on.

"It's a very tricky thing, it's an unfunded mandate," Fratto said, adding that copyright laws make it tough to simply 'cut and paste' questions from a textbook, and that the state won't even give districts access to unused exam materials to help write the new assessments.

The concern goes beyond the borders of Half Hollow Hills. While FLACS has one standard, what about districts that are on their own? What of schools in urban and rural areas that are already lagging behind due to budget cuts?

"What about those assessments created by other school districts, our students are taking a challenging assessment, but a student in another school district taking [a different] assessment, are they at the same level?" Fratto asked. "Is the state there to check? We don't believe so."

Also, Fratto says FLACS has asked the state to mandate that all exams be given on one set date, and were told 'no'. That means Half Hollow Hills students could take a test one day, with another district not having to do so until the following morning, creating a host of security concerns.

Also, what of the future, period? In today's world economy, learning a foreign language is becoming a near-necessity. Much like what the state has asked the schools, it's all about having someone do more, with less.

"In order to have our children compete in the global market, foreign language, not only speaking but understanding the culture, is extremely important, and the state is sending out an extremely bad message," Fratto said.

Half Hollow Hills foreign language teachers expressed their concerns at a recent department meeting.

"[The cuts] diminish world languages in general," Hills East Italian teacher Andrea Nesteruk said. "By keeping in English, social studies, math, that's the subliminal message to the students, that this is what's important ... instead of preparing them for the global economy to be competitive."

Spanish instructor Gonzalo Gonzalez said: "I think it's terribly counterproductive to what the state originally said, which was to raise the standards. Now they're pulling the rug right from underneath the kids."

Moving forward, the schools have a powerful ally in State Sen. John Flanagan, R-Northport, who was named chairman of the Senate Education Committee earlier this year. The hope is a way will be found to fund Regents exams once more, but of course, the spectre of a massive budget deficit continues to loom over the future of foreign language assessments.

"Tax cap in place, doing more with less, cutting back on its responsibilities of assessments, giving those assessments to the local districts to create," Fratto said of the state. "What else do they want from us?"