Just days after Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced a major revamping of civil rights enforcement in public schools, officials say L.A.'s public schools are the first target of the federal investigation.
The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is set to evaluate whether the English-language program in Los Angeles' schools is violating civil rights law by failing to provide students with a decent education. If it is, the district could lose much-needed federal funding. But the government says the probe is not about punitive measures.
"This is about helping kids receive a good education, the education they deserve," Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights for the Education Department, told the Los Angeles Times.
AP Photo/Nick Ut
L.A. public schools Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines, pictured here speaking at a school board meeting on March 2, is welcoming the federal probe into the Los Angeles Unified School District.
The probe is one of 38 such compliance reviews the department plans to conduct in school districts across the country. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Office for Civil Rights is looking for "policies and practices" that contribute to the gaping achievement gap among minorities in the district's schools.
L.A. public schools Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines said the investigation is necessary. "I don't think we have done well in making sure our young people continue to develop both written and oral language," he told the Times. "And if there are egregious areas of misconduct by the district, I will move on it immediately."
One out of three students in the massive urban district is an English-language learner, and studies suggest many of them are never classified as "proficient" in the English language, making it difficult for the students to graduate and nearly impossible for them to enroll in honors classes.
According to one study published last October by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, a California nonprofit group that researches issues affecting Latinos, nearly 30 percent of students in Los Angeles' schools are never classified as "proficient" in English. And federal authorities say only 3 percent of English-language learners are considered proficient in English and math by the time they reach high school.
In a letter to Cortines, Ali said the Department of Education will decide whether English-language learners in Los Angeles have been discriminated against "on the basis of national origin," the Los Angeles Daily Breeze reports.
The discrimination does not have to be intentional for the federal government to get involved. If investigators find policies that result in a "disparate impact," the school district can still be held in violation of civil rights laws. For example, the probe will scrutinize the way students are classified as proficient in English and examine teacher quality in English-learning programs, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Yolie Flores, a board member in the Los Angeles public school district who represents a heavily Spanish-speaking area of the city, said the investigation was overdue.
"We have kids in this district that come to us as kindergartners not knowing English, and five years later they are still considered English learners," she told The Daily Breeze. "Something is just not right."
