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GREG
DERR /The Patriot Ledger
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| Muna
Bittar, 18, a native Argentinian who has lived in Holbrook
for two years, failed the MCAS English test by 2 points. |
Many
immigrant students worry
about parents’ hopes, dashed dreams
By DINA GERDEMAN
The Patriot Ledger
 ighteen-year-old
Joe Cao is afraid to tell his parents he has not passed the MCAS
exam. His parents emigrated to the United States from China with
the hope that their children would get a solid American education,
go to college and get better jobs than they have found.
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| LISA
BUL /The Patriot Ledger |
| Joe Cao, a Chinese student
at Quincy High School, has had trouble passing the MCAS.
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His parents, who do not speak English and never attended college,
struggled with poverty in China as they tried to keep their furniture
business going. And today they still work a good 60 hours a week
as cooks in a Chinese restaurant in Boston.
They want more for their Joe. They are counting on him to attend
college and find a successful career.
As much as Joe Cao also wants to beat the prospect of working
long hours in a hot kitchen, he doesn’t know how realistic his
parents’ plan is. He is starting to think college might be a pipe
dream, partly because he is not sure he will be able to pass the
MCAS.
“I’m too scared to tell my parents about the MCAS,’’ said Cao,
who works part time making sushi in a Chinese restaurant in Quincy.
“They want me to go to college and get a good job. Working in
a Chinese restaurant is not good. They’re not OK with me not going
to college.”
About one out of six high school seniors statewide, like Cao,
has failed the MCAS. These students in the Class of 2003 will
find out in a few weeks whether they passed the December retest.
Those test results will determine whether they get high school
diplomas in June.
Immigrants like Cao who are struggling to learn English clearly
have a tougher time with the MCAS than other students. While only
13 percent of regular education students in the Class of 2003
have failed the exam, 65 percent of the 2,335 seniors with limited
English skills have failed.
Cao is one of about 50 students who are enrolled in the English
as a second language program at Quincy High School, where students
come from 41 cultures, predominantly Asian. Half of the 11 seniors
at Quincy High who have not passed the MCAS are students with
limited English skills. And about 30 percent of the 46 seniors
at Weymouth High School who haven’t passed are immigrants.
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Felipe dos Anjos, an eighth-grader in the English as a second
language program at Holbrook Junior-Senior High School, is two
years away from taking the 10th-grade MCAS.
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“I’m too scared to tell my
parents about the MCAS. “They want me to go to college and
get a good job. Working in a Chinese restaurant is not good.
They’re not OK with me not going to college.”
Joe Cao,
Quincy High senior |
Yet, it is clear that Felipe, a Brazilian immigrant who entered
the school about a month ago, has a long way to go before he is
ready to take on the exam. Arriving with no English skills, Felipe
is working on identifying items in his living room. During a recent
class, facilitator Ana Peach stopped speaking in English a few
times to translate for Felipe in Portuguese. And Felipe began
a writing assignment tentatively with, “My neime is Felipe.”
For immigrants who have had little or no exposure to the English
language in their native countries, arriving in the United States
during their high school years is often overwhelming.
Peach said many immigrants struggling with culture shock go
through a “silence period,” drinking in their surroundings and
shying away from talking in class. Teenagers tend to be even more
hesitant about testing out the English language than younger students.
“Just when they start to feel comfortable with their surroundings,
they are getting hit with a tremendous amount of information they
have to know to pass the MCAS,’’ Peach said. “In such a short
period of time, it is very difficult to get them up to the level
they need to be (at) to pass the test.’’
Research has found that it typically takes immigrant students
five to seven years to reach fluency in reading and writing at
the same level as their American-born peers, said Maria daSilva,
who teaches English as a second language at Plymouth North High
School.
“If you come here as a junior, the MCAS will be a huge hurdle,’’
she said. “When you’re reading a passage and you don’t understand
the story, how can you even get to the questions? Some kids have
done amazing things. They have been here only two years and have
passed the MCAS. But for others, it’s not enough time.”
DaSilva said students coming from areas that use the alphabet
and have a similar sentence structure acquire the English language
much more quickly than students from parts of the world that use
symbolic languages.
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“If you come from a system with symbols, and instead of reading
left to right, you’re used to reading top to bottom, the switch
is a lot more difficult to make,’’ daSilva said. “To come from
China is one of the most difficult.”
Many teachers who work with immigrants believe students who
have been in this country for less than three or four years should
not be required to pass the MCAS to graduate.
“When you take these students from other countries, and they’re
smart and they’re really trying to adapt to the country and master
the language, that kind of mandatory requirement is a little tough
to take,’’ Peach said. “If they’ve done extremely well in their
other courses but don’t have the ability to pass, there should
be some consideration for these folks.”
For many immigrants whose families put a premium on a college
education, the prospect of being denied a diploma because of a
test can be devastating.
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“The language is absolutely
a barrier,’’ she said. The MCAS ‘‘took me a lot of time
because I had to translate a lot of words I didn’t know.’’
Muna Bittar,
Holbrook High senior
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One of Peach’s students left the country because she was afraid
of the MCAS. The student had moved from Brazil in the seventh
grade and decided to move back in the ninth grade as the pressure
of the exam loomed.
“She was mastering English so nicely, too, but the terror started
to set in,’’ Peach said. “She wanted to be a pediatrician, and
she was so concerned that if she didn’t pass the MCAS, she wouldn’t
get into college. My concern is maintaining the psyche of these
students and not letting the disappointment set in so they will
throw in the towel and we’ll lose them.”
Muna Bittar, a senior at Holbrook High School, was stunned to
learn shortly after she arrived during her sophomore year that
she would have to pass the exam to graduate. Bittar, 18, who did
not speak English when she arrived from Argentina two years ago,
took the test for the first time in her junior year and failed
the math and English sections.
“The language is absolutely a barrier,’’ she said. The MCAS
‘‘took me a lot of time because I had to translate a lot of words
I didn’t know.’’
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Bittar, who feels more confident about the retest she took in
December, is planning on going to college to study medicine. One
day she hopes to become a cardiac surgeon.
“I always wanted to be a doctor since I was a little kid,’’
she said.
Bittar, who teachers say is an ambitious, hard-working student,
said the obstacle of the MCAS has made her think about giving
up on school. If she finds out in a few weeks that she failed
the MCAS again, she said, she will probably return to her homeland
to pursue her dream.
“When they put you in that situation where if you don’t pass
you don’t graduate, you think, ‘I’m not going to pass, so I don’t
want to even try it.’ A lot of times, I just wanted to give up
because I just felt so bad about it.”
Cao, who emigrated from China in sixth grade, did not speak
a word of English when he arrived.
“At the time, it was so scary,’’ he said. “People talk to you,
and you don’t understand them.”
Although Cao is able to speak English conversationally, he still
has trouble understanding many of the words in MCAS reading passages
and using proper sentence structure in essays. He has passed the
math portion of the MCAS, but has failed the English section three
times.
“The essay part is the most difficult,’’ he said. “Spelling
is hard, and the vocabulary and grammar.’’
Cao believes high school students should take the MCAS to measure
the performance of a school, but that the exam should not be used
as a graduation requirement.
“If you go to high school for four years (and do well in school),
you should get a diploma,’’ Cao said. “If you don’t get the diploma,
you waste the four years.”
If he can’t pass the test, he is planning to study for an equivalency
diploma. He hopes that will help him land a decent job, maybe
in computer graphics. But sometimes he feels so frustrated that
he considers quitting school.
“I feel like giving up, but I don’t because my parents look
up on me,’’ he said. “The pressure is difficult, but it keeps
me going.”
Dina Gerdeman may be reached at dgerdeman@ledger.com.
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