Opinion ID: 3051186
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Statewide Changes

Text: As is required by the Flores consent decree, Arizona has significantly improved its ELL infrastructure. It has also increased overall school funding and, to a lesser degree, ELL program-specific funding. Nonetheless, Arizona’s 134,000 ELL students continue to lag behind statewide average test results for all students. The new administrative structure created by HB 2064 augments Arizona’s efforts to further improve and standardize ELL programs statewide. The state Department of Education holds regular seminars and training sessions and has develFLORES v. HORNE 1827 oped monitoring protocols for school districts. Statedeveloped proficiency standards for ELL students are used to evaluate programs and to identify problems. Arizona has also made efforts to standardize the testing used to classify children as ELL or English proficient.17 Perhaps most importantly, after August 31, 2006, all classroom teachers, supervisors, principals, and superintendents are required to obtain an endorsement in ELL teaching methods. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-756.09; ARIZ. ADMIN. CODE R7-2-613(J). Along with these ELL-specific structural changes, Arizona has increased overall school funding.18 On an inflationadjusted statewide basis, including all sources of funding, support for education has increased from $3,139 per pupil in 2000 to an estimated $3,570 per pupil in 2006. Adding in all county and local sources, funding has gone from $5,677 per pupil in 2000 to an estimated $6,412 per pupil in 2006. Finally, federal funding has increased. In 2000, the federal government provided an additional $526 per pupil; in 2006, it provided an estimated $953.19 17 Before 2004, Arizona allowed districts to select among four different tests to decide when to “reclassify” students out of ELL programs into mainstream classes. Beginning in 2004, Arizona instituted the Stanford English Language Proficiency Assessment (“SELP”), which was in use from 2004 through 2006. SELP was generally regarded as too easy to pass, and reclassification rates increased measurably during its use. Arizona fine-tuned SELP, renaming it the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment (“AZELLA”), and has been using the new test since the fall of 2006. The transition from SELP to AZELLA appears to have measurably decreased reclassification rates. As a result of these shifts in testing methodology, ELL reclassification rates are not easily comparable over the years. 18 Broader state efforts for at-risk children generally benefit some ELL students. These efforts include several funding streams for tutoring programs. In one tutoring program, 88% of ELL students were able to raise their scores by one achievement level in at least one subject area of Arizona’s standardized academic achievement tests; 92% of non-ELL students in the same program so raised their scores. 19 Arizona has also significantly increased spending on school physical plant needs, largely in response to another class-action suit. See Roosevelt Elementary Sch. Dist. No. 66 v. Arizona, 74 P.3d 258, 259-263 (“Roosevelt II”) (Ariz. Ct. App. 2003). 1828 FLORES v. HORNE Arizona’s ELL-specific funding increases are associated with HB 2010 and HB 2064. At the hearing, two important points concerning HB 2064 emerged: First, none of the defense witnesses were able to establish what data, if any, the Group B weights are based upon. The weights do not appear to have been set with regard to any specific program costs, known or estimated. Second, Flores’ expert on federal educational funding statutes, Thomas Fagan, testified that if the federal government concluded that HB 2064 was in violation of federal statutes, it could take significant enforcement actions, including a cut-off of some or all federal education funds.20 Despite Arizona’s expanded ELL infrastructure and budget, ELL students still achieve below — and often far below — state average passage rates on Arizona’s “AIMS” academic achievement test and fall below the minimum passage rates Arizona must meet to reach the “annual measurable objectives” required by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (“NCLB”), Pub. L. No.107-110, 115 Stat. 1425, as test results from the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years show.21 See 20 U.S.C. § 6842 (federal standards). These test results must be viewed with two significant caveats: First, because AIMS testing was not carried out in 2000, we do not know whether the performance of ELL students has improved relative to that time. Second, Arizona has changed the AIMS test itself, including altering the passing score, and has twice changed the system it uses for reclassifying ELL students — once at the beginning of the 2004-05 school year, and again at the start of the 2006-07 school year. Results for those students classified as ELL across those years are therefore not clearly comparable. 20 We discuss these potential violations and their consequences below. 21 Standardized tests do not, of course, provide a full measure of a school’s successes and failures. Educational quality is too complex to be reflected in a single score. But test scores do provide us with at least a rough sense of relative performance, and so are useful here. FLORES v. HORNE 1829 Due to these limitations, and to a general lack of longitudinal data on individual ELL students, we do not have data that conclusively demonstrates whether ELL programs ultimately succeed — that is, whether children pass through them rapidly and ultimately perform as well as non-ELL students. So, while the test results we next discuss are certainly troubling, it is important to understand the limits of their analytic reach. With these caveats, we turn to the data. While Arizona students generally exceeded NCLB-mandated passage rates in math and reading, passing the AIMS test at rates of between 60% and 70%, ELL students were far behind. For example, among third graders, who pass the exam at a higher rate than older ELL students, only 50% passed the math exam in 2005 and just under 40% passed the reading exam in the same year.22 The situation grows worse at higher grades — in 2005 only 33% of ELL tenth graders passed math and only 20% passed in 2006. In reading, only 30% passed in 2005 and that number fell to barely more than 10% in 2006. In neither year did ELL reading scores in any grade meet federal standards, and in 2006 ELL students’ math test results for all grades also fell below the federal line at every grade level. Nor do students necessarily leave ELL status rapidly. While all witnesses agreed that some students may swiftly become proficient in English, they also agreed that many will need ELL instruction for more than two years, and that some will still need help after three years of training. In short, despite considerable efforts, and some improvements in outcomes, Arizona, as a state, does not appear to have turned the corner on ELL education performance. 22 The passage rates for third graders in 2006 were even lower: 40% for math and 30% for reading. 1830 FLORES v. HORNE