On April 11, 2014, the United States Department of Education (“ED”) announced that the Hazleton Area School District (“HASD”) entered a formal agreement to improve its English language learner (“ELL”) program. The agreement concluded a compliance review by ED, which found that HASD had violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (“Title VI”) by inadequately identifying students in need of ELL services, inadequately staffing and evaluating its ELL program, and inadequately communicating with the parents of ELL students.
The agreement shows that HASD has a long way to go in providing needed services to its ELL students (who are overwhelmingly Latino). The agreement does not, however, provide resources for HASD to improve its services, reveal the social forces which brought about the agreement, or show how far HASD and the larger Hazleton community have come in supporting ELL students. Penn State researchers illuminated some of these issues in two studies presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in Philadelphia four days before ED released the agreement. In a qualitative study, Hilario Lomeli, Jenna Christian, and Eric Farmer explored local efforts to integrate Hazleton’s Latino residents within the larger community. In a separate policy analysis, Santosh Madahar examined the national emphasis on civil rights in education by the Obama administration.
In the qualitative study, the researchers examined how notions of belonging are shaped through Hazleton’s school community. Hazleton gained national attention in 2006 when the city government passed a series of ordinances to discourage undocumented immigrants from settling in the community. Although the ordinances were never enforced and ultimately ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the ordinances produced tension between some of Hazleton’s longtime, primarily White residents and its Latino newcomers. In the midst of this tension, a group of community members comprised of Latino, White, longtime, and newly arrived residents founded an advocacy organization, Concerned Parents of the Hazleton Area (“Concerned Parents”), to help parents facing language barriers to navigate the HASD system. Cofounder Niurka de la Rosa described Concerned Parents as “acting like a bridge” to connect newcomer families with community resources. The researchers credit Concerned Parents for playing a crucial role in reducing ethnic tensions in Hazleton.
Latino parents’ greater social influence in Hazleton’s school community coincided with a broader federal effort to improve support for civil rights in education. In the policy analysis, Santosh Madahar examined Title VI enforcement under the Obama administration and found that ED’s Office for Civil Rights increased efforts to enforce and raise awareness of students’ rights. For instance, complaint investigations by ED rose by 23 percent over President Obama’s first term, compared to a rise of 12 percent over President Bush’s second term. Madahar attributes this increase to a combination of greater community outreach by ED, closer cooperation between ED and the Department of Justice, and the perception among advocates that ED has been more receptive to complaints. ED initiated its compliance review of HASD’s ELL services in the context of multiple complaints filed by disadvantaged parents in HASD.
While the agreement between ED and HASD reflects a successful convergence of local and federal pressure to improve ELL education, fixing HASD’s ELL program will be no small task. HASD Superintendent Francis Antonelli and Concerned Parents cofounder Eugenio Sosa note that HASD faces a scarcity of qualified staff to address the deficiencies. To ensure that schools can adequately serve Pennsylvania’s growing ELL population, state and local policymakers must provide the financial resources for schools to hire and train educators to meet students’ needs.
February 2, 2015