English-Learners' Lot Improves With Federal Pressure
Nurta Muktar, a 17-year-old refugee of Somali heritage, learned to read this school year at East High School here. It likely wouldn’t have happened if East High didn’t provide classes in basic reading skills for English-language learners.
And the school likely wouldn’t have such classes, some teachers here say, if the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights hadn’t forced the Salt Lake City district to bolster its services for English-learners in response to a complaint by a local activist in 2001.
Salt Lake City’s experience illustrates the array of changes a district may need to undergo to meet federal mandates on educating such students. After five site visits and eight years of monitoring, OCR officials released the school district from scrutiny in March, saying in a letter that ELLs “have meaningful access to...
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