Who Are They Trying to Kid?

Arizona is going off the deep end. Now they're after legal immigrants.

As the academic year winds down, Creighton School Principal Rosemary Agneessens faces a wrenching decision: what to do with veteran teachers whom the state education department says don't speak English well enough.

The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.

State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators.

It strikes me (and granted, this is based on limited information) that too much is being left to the individual interpretation of the evaluators. I'd like to know what objective criteria they are using.

"The teacher obviously must be fluent in every aspect of the English language," said Adela Santa Cruz, director of the Arizona education-department office charged with enforcing standards in classes for students with limited English.

I wonder how many teachers in the U.S. overall would satisfy that requirement. Especially those who expect to communicate with their students.