Voicing Concern for English-Learners in Debate Over NCLB

Peter Zamora brings varied experience to role as advocate.

Washington

Peter Zamora—lawyer, former high school teacher, and energetic advocate for the needs of English-language learners—can trace his concern for such students to time spent in a California high school.

Over a three-year stint teaching English, before he quit to go to law school, he chafed at what he describes as a “rigid tracking system” that left Latino and African-American students behind.

“All these issues of class and race and policy hang together,” said Mr. Zamora, Washington counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. While English-language learners may need to receive different kinds of instruction from that given other students, it shouldn’t be “differently paced in terms of...