Today is the last day to apply for Federal aid from the Race to the Top fund which has been put in place by the Obama Administration. There are approximately 4.3 billion dollars available for 40 states across the country to create innovative reform programs for their school districts. However, in order to qualify for a piece of the pie, states must take several definitive measures such as close failing schools, increase academic standards and evaluate teachers based on their students performance.
Knowing that there is a significant education gap between ELL and native English speaking students, does the Race to the Top program affect ELL students in a negative or positive manner? For instance, in the Hispanic/Latino community the education gap disproportionately affects Latino students. According to Arlene Hambrick, Ph.D., of the North Central Regional Educational Library, “By Grade 12 … 4 percent of Hispanic students reach the proficient level in mathematics, as opposed to the 20 percent of white students.” Would this statistic make schools with high ELL populations vulnerable to closure? Or would it serve as a catalyst in fund allocation to improve student performance?
A host of factors, from historical to cultural to financial, contribute to the unique experience of ESL and ELL families that impact their scholastic accomplishments. Unfortunately, all too often these details are overlooked within the education system at-large due to budget limitations. Would Race to the Top programs begin to address such questions as “What communications medium is preferred by ELL audiences?” and “What languages are they communicating in?” The answers to these questions will ultimately determine how school districts will engage their English Language Learning (ELL) students, decrease the education gap and ultimately improve academic achievement.
Keep Learning!
Maggie
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Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
Will ELL Students be Left Behind in the Race to the Top?
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010Haitian Earthquake Disaster
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
It is with a very heavy heart this morning that I read about the national disaster in Haiti. With tens of thousands of lives lost in the impoverished Caribbean nation, I am reeling over the devastation caused by the 7.3 earthquake. Approximately 850,000 -1 million people living in the United States are of Haitian descent and of those about ½ million speak Haitian Creole. My thoughts and well wishes go out to all Haitians and their families across the world today.
Sincerely,
Maggie
K12Translate
Budgeting for Education Translation: Sharing Documents across School Districts
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Sometimes it can really help to pool your resources and documents within your district or sister-education organizations. If several schools within your larger district send out the same document and only the school name or phone numbers change, consider translating a document to use as a template throughout your district. Setting things like the date and the teacher’s name within square brackets and letting your LSP (Language Service Provider) know not to translate this material can be a simple way to distribute translated material throughout the system.
Education budgets are sometimes not based on the calendar year, so it can be helpful to plan your year so that some material is translated in the calendar year of 2009 and some in 2010, for example. That way you can focus your funds on the times of the year when the most documents need to be translated (for example towards the end of the school year and Fall registration of each year).
With frequently limited funds to school districts these days, any money saved or stretched is welcome! If you have any innovative ideas about how to serve the largest portion of your ELL community with efficiency, please send your ideas to me at mnickles@k12translate.com.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate
Budgeting for Education Translation: Leveraging Past Translations and Maximizing Existing Translations
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Are there documents your school district uses that require small updates every year, but the majority of the text stays the same? For instance, does your district send out registration forms every single year in Spanish, Vietnamese and Russian but only the date changes? Or did your district spend $10,000 translating your parent handbook into five languages last year and only 25% of the content has been updated for the current school year? In that case, ask your LSP (Language Service Provider) to archive past projects for quick reference and use later. The next time the document needs to be translated, you’ll likely only have to consider minor revisions instead of the cost of translating the entire set of materials again from scratch.
Also, keep in mind that some web content, once translated, can be repurposed into documents for distribution many times over. Or, you may be able to locate translated information available by reputable sources online instead of translating directly from scratch. For instance, the California Department of Education publishes a clearinghouse of notification translations into several languages such as Spanish, Korean, Hmong, Chinese and Vietnamese. You might just find the translation you are looking for already online!
Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate
Budgeting for Education Translation: Don’t Forget Governmental Compliance and Federal Funding
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
In order to stay in compliance with some specific federal and state regulations such as NCLB and Title III requirements, not to mention any conditions agreed upon by accepting some governmental grants and funds, there are some documents that your school district should figure into the budget right off the bat.
Every state and school district has unique translation requirements however there are certain documents such as AYP (Annual Yearly Progress), Home Language Surveys or school registration forms that are more frequently required than other materials. Often, translations of specific documents are a prerequisite to receive federal or state funding. For example, assessment results such as AYP, including translated versions, must be sent to families 15 days in advance of school starting as mandated by Title I.
These types of education publications should automatically be incorporated into the annual translation budget so that your school district doesn’t run into any surprises six months into the school year.
Keep Learning!
Maggie
Budgeting For Education Translation
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Thinking Ahead…
Do you ever stop to think about how many documents your school district produces for LEP parents and ELL students in a typical school year? Whether it’s information related to NCLB, student handbooks, swine flu informative pieces, community outreach, or even your Web site, there is a lot of content that gets published in one way or another. Now, think about how much of that material you need to translate into other languages for your community’s ESL population. All of those documents really add up over the year in terms of time and money.
Over the next few posts, I want to take some time to address easy ways your school district can get a handle on making the education translation budgeting process easier and planning ahead to look at your ongoing need for translation services from your Language Service Provider.
Keep Learning!
Maggie
The State of English Language Learners
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
I just finished reading a rather concerning Los Angeles Times article about English Language Learners in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The article discusses a study that was released on Wednesday which suggests that 30% of ELL students in LAUSD remain in English languages classes far too long – from primary grades into high school.
What the study doesn’t address is why these students remain in English Language Learning classrooms for so long. Is there an egregious lack of ELL education funding? Have culturally appropriate education translations been made available? What socio-political factors play a role in this learning gap? The article even mentions; “researchers say schools may avoid moving English learners into mainstream classes to keep test scores high.”
With such a variety of variables affecting how and when our ELL students are entering into mainstream classrooms, we need to get very serious about how we address English Language Learning. Considering 20% of elementary and secondary school children speak a language other than English at home it is absolutely crucial for our non-native English speaking students to become more competitive in school.
Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate
Education Translation Style Guides
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Most school districts translate into several languages. In fact, a common requirement for many districts is to provide written translations into the top 5 languages spoken in their region or translation for every 100 speakers of a language. Inevitably if you are translating into more than one language and working with numerous linguistic teams, you are bound to run into consistency issues.
Language inconsistencies may crop up in a variety of ways such as formatting preferences, fonts, literacy levels and how acronyms are translated. One way to minimize the amount of variance across languages and translation projects is to create a reference guide that captures the specifics for your school district. This reference document, or style guide, will provide clear direction to your translators on how the final education translations should be delivered while maintaining linguistic symmetry. For instance, I always make sure to include entries in my style guides that cover date preferences – should we use the US standard of month/day/year or should we use the more common European/Latin American standard of day/month/year pending on language?
By defining your district’s expectations through a style guide at the beginning of the translation process, you will be taking big strides toward preventing future headaches.
Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate
Education Translation Glossaries
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Every school district across the country has their own unique terminology. On the West Coast, school districts in California may say “teachers” whereas on the East Coast the term “educators” may be more commonly used. To further illustrate, one quick Google search for the word “student” comes up with several synonyms such as “learner”, “pupil” and “scholar”. This same language diversity holds true for education translations. Language translations are further complicated by regional nuances such as the differences between Cuban Spanish and Mexican Spanish.
In order to bridge this multilingual gap and ensure that your education translations are hitting the mark with your ELL audience, I would recommend developing multilingual glossaries prior to translation. A glossary is a comprehensive list of commonly used terms, phrases and proper names specific to your school district. The terms are translated accordingly with your specific target ELL audience in mind. The creation of a multilingual glossary provides a baseline for all of your future translation projects.
By determining what the commonly used terms are and their corresponding translations are up front, your school district will minimize the risk of an unfavorable community review or inaccurate translation down the road.
Here you go with a few popular K12 English glossaries to get you started:
Illinois State Board of Education Acronym Glossary
North Central Regional Education Laboratory – Education Glossary
Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate
Education Translation Toolbox
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
It is common knowledge that different regions across the United States have unique accents ranging from the Southern drawl to the long O’s of Minnesota and everything in between. Along with accents, folks tend to speak with their own local flair which encompasses terminology and colloquialisms. For instance, in Wisconsin a “water fountain” is often referred to as a “bubbler” and soda is known as “pop”. Keeping this in mind, there are usually several ways in which to say the exact same thing and convey the same meaning.
However, unique language doesn’t just stop at English but extends across all languages and cultural groups. What may be common place terminology for folks in Northern Somalia may be completely different for those in Southern Somalia. Thus, in order to ensure that your school districts’ language translations are effectively reaching your ELL populations, it can be beneficial and even imperative that education translations are using the appropriate terminology and style of a specific culture or region.
Over the next few posts, I will be sharing with you some tips on how to equip your language translators with the right tools to reach your unique ELL audience – essentially a translator’s toolbox to hit the mark every time.
Keep Learning!
Maggie
K12Translate
