News

How do you pass No Child Left Behind . . . when you don’t speak English?

By Bradley Campbell 

Kathy Francescani sits inside a library storage closet at Joseph Gallagher School on West 65th. It's a small, rectangular space with glass walls and the feel of a bunker. Stacks of textbooks reach from floor to ceiling, bindings bright in blues, yellows, and reds, making the place feel like a fortified rainbow. This is her office.

Francescani is one of 12 literacy coaches who work at Cleveland schools that are deemed failing by the state. And Joseph Gallagher may be the worst: It hasn't met yearly progress goals for six years.

Francescani's blond hair dances across her shoulders, and she has soft blue eyes, almost like a doe. Before landing her current job, she taught primary grades for 20 years. It's apparent in the way she speaks. Her words are clear and melodic, spilling out like a sugary bedtime story.

But this is the first time she's worked in a school full of kids who barely speak English.

Their lack of language skills is evident in the stacks of test data that sit behind her desk. They're filled with statistics and scores for all 822 students in the Pre-K-8 school. And what they say isn't good: Joseph Gallagher is teetering on the edge of failure yet again.

The designation comes from the No Child Left Behind Act. It's that one-size-fits-all law passed by Congress, decreeing that every child's test scores must improve. And when they fail to as repeatedly as they have at Joseph Gallagher, the state has the right to kill the school. It's tough love to the max.

But Congress didn't seem to have Joseph Gallagher in mind when it passed the law. Inside the school's brick halls is a miniature gathering of the United Nations. Bosnian students walk in single file to gym class with Puerto Ricans and Albanians, while Ukrainians and Burundians take sips off a drinking fountain.

Many don't speak English. The ones who do don't do it well enough. It's like asking the children of Strongsville to suddenly become conversant in Farsi.

So due to a simple law, the entire staff at Joseph Gallagher may soon be fired because some 11-year-old named Nzeyimana can't use the word "prowl" in a sentence.

Joseph Gallagher rests between a row of ornate Victorian houses on Franklin and a row of beat-up colonials on Bridge. It's a three-story hunk of brick, with crisp angles and few exterior windows.

Surrounding the school is Detroit Shoreway, where multi-bedroom homes with cheap rent are ideal for immigrants and refugees. It's close to the bus lines, and up the street, there's a mosque where Turks and Somalis worship.

Among the refugees at Joseph Gallagher is Sheikhabdi Aweys, a petite 22-year-old who grew up in refugee camps in Somalia and Kenya.

When the teacher's aide was a teenager, Catholic Charities offered his family the chance to come to the United States. They boarded a plane without knowing what city it would land in. "Then we were given four months to find work, learn basic English, and find a place to live," he says. "It was frustrating."

As Aweys walks through the halls with soft steps, kids ask him questions. In one 20-second period, he talks to three different students in three different languages.

Whenever a new refugee parent comes into the school, Aweys is pulled from his classroom duties to translate. Depending on the family, the language of the day may be Maay-Maay, Swahili, or Somali. And within those languages are numerous dialects. The difficulty of such translations makes Sunday Times crossword puzzles seem like a game of Bop the Gopher.

At 10:30 in the morning, after math tutoring, he heads to the second floor and into a class for students who are newcomers to the United States. He greets the teacher, Holly Morell, and sits down to one-on-one reading lessons.

For Morell, a woman with a smile that could soothe an angry bull, every day is a fight. A gold cross hangs from her neck to provide hope.

Morell gives out her home number to every student, in case they have any questions about their schoolwork or what to do on a snow day. If there is something comforting about America, it's her.

The program she leads is designed to help the immigrant and refugee students, who pour steadily into the school each year. Morell gives them a crash course in survival English, teaching them things as simple as saying "Hello." In another lesson, she explains that "Sam" — SSAAAAMM — is a name, just like Muzamil, Congera, Npaweni, and Kapa are names.

This year, her students are a mix from Somalia and Burundi. They wear their poverty on their shirts, which were once white, but now tinged yellow. Like every student in the school, they're on the free lunch program. Many are forced to communicate like mutes, tapping and pointing to express something as minor as needing a pencil.

Along with language, Morell teaches simple customs. This year, she finds herself trying to break the students' habit of holding each other's hands. It's something she feels uncertain about, but knows that if they continue, they'll open themselves up to ridicule in the neighborhoods.

Fourteen-year-old Abdikadir is her unofficial aide-de-camp. He's about to finish the program and move into the English-as-a-second-language classroom. He's a round kid who wears a Shawn Marion jersey beneath his white shirt and airbrushed images of Tupac stenciled on his shoes.

Abdikadir functions as the school's interpreter when Aweys is away. He's the only kid who can speak Swahili, Maay-Maay, and Somali, and translate them to English. It's a ridiculous feat for a 14-year-old, but he'll get no acknowledgment from the state. The Ohio Achievement Test, on which the school's fate rests, does not give points to pint-size boys who've mastered multiple languages. The only language that matters is English.

• 1
• 2
• 3
Next Page »