I'm surprised I even have to explain this here but testing for basic language proficiency is not the only thing these types of tests are for. They test elements of writing, grammar, critical analysis, and vocabulary that students are still learning.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any easy way to get example questions - they're all locked behind a login that requires student id.

Furthermore, this isn't entirely an ESL issue - according to the article, scores for African-American students were the lowest, and they're obviously native speakers. So we would need more information to figure out the origin of this disparity.

One final point - these numbers are the percentage of students who scored above a threshold, NOT their average scores. All of the scores for every ethnic group are likely on something like a normal distribution, shifted to the right or left. Of the groups who performed below the standard, it's likely that the majority of them performed very close to the standard even if they were just below it.

>scores for African-American students were the lowest, and they're obviously native speakers.

This isn't entirely true. There is a great diversity of dialects of English. Schools test and grade students on their abilities with "standard" English.

For historical and racist reasons, African American Vernacular English is considered by many to be "stupid English", which puts many African American students at a disadvantage [0].

Setting dialectal variations aside; no one speaks standard English. In fact, "standard English" (that is, "correct" written English) contains rules that are not, and have never been, part of any dialect of English that I am aware of. For example, in standard English you cannot split infinitives, and must use commas (which aren't a "thing" in spoken English) in certain places. Further, the phonology of standard (written) English is miles away from what anyone says. This result of this is that being a native speaker of English is not sufficient for anyone to learn standard English. To do so, one must be exposed to sufficient written material; and exposure to written material tends to correlate with class.

[0] Admitidally, it is true that, as far as English dialects spoken in America go, AAVE is relativly distinctive from standard English (likely due to our history of segregation).

I wouldn't throw out accusations of racism and make the discussion inflammatory when it's not particularly relevant. You can just mention the differences.

Knowing "African American English" still puts one at a severe advantage compared to immigrants who don't know English or American children who have immigrant parents who can barely speak English. There are noticeable and helpful similarities between the AAVE and standard English.

African Americans also have cultural advantages compared to immigrants and immigrant children because their parents and family all grew up in America. Knowing and understanding American cultural references helps them learn standard English vocabulary and concepts much quicker.

Sample questions seem to be available here for students to practice: http://capt.tds.airast.org/student

Wow. Practice tests are abysmally convoluted and don't even give results feedback.

True, so is there a listening sub-component of the English Language Arts exam? How has that been trending?

Half the population not basicly proficient in math is a sign of weak education and shouldnt be dismissed with left hand.

The white and Asian population is passing with a high rate. It's not the schools failing then.

http://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/sjm-l-...

> The white and Asian population is passing with a high rate. It's not the schools failing then.

If the schools are only effectively serving White and Asian students, they are failing.

If the schools are effectively doing nothing and success is determined mostly by parents educational attainment which just correlates with race, then the schools are still failing.

So, no, I think your basis for concluding that the schools are not founding is inadequate to that conclusion.

Schools can't fix parents who don't value education.

I'll mention it has nothing to do with money. Instead it's a cultural values problem.

Jews & Chinese are two groups of people that went from poor to affluent over the course of a few generations. The primary cause of this socio economic change has to do with their value of education.

If they could do it, so can the Hispanic/African Americans.

In my city there are schools that are 80% white / Asian and schools that are 80% Latino / black. There’s almost nothing in between.

To go to one of the majority-white / Asian schools you need to live in neighborhoods where the houses are easily 3x the cost of the houses in Latino /black neighborhoods. There are few if any apartments to rent. These schools routinely have fundraisers where parents are asked to donate thousands of dollars to their specific schools. Stay-again-home mothers help teachers out in the classroom. There aren’t ESL classes, just Spanish or Chinese immersion classes.

So I wouldn’t be so sure that the schools don’t make a difference.

So it's not the schools fault, but California policies.

Thinks like housing, school districting, and sanctuary state.

I don't think it's fair to blame the teachers or education curriculum.

I’m not blaming the teachers for having to work with a lack of resources. And yes, you can place the blame upstream with policies, home prices, or something else. My point is merely that you can’t look at county-wide averages and say that children of all races receive the same education, as the OP was doing.

Is English the native language for most of California?

Yes. Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers. As with most second-generation or later immigrants.

Though I have heard tales of Californians being native speakers of Lisp, this is probably just a rumor.

> Most of the hispanics whose families arrived in California before the English speakers arrived have long since become native English speakers.

That's true of most Californios, sure, but they are, by far, a minority of California Hispanics, who are mostly from families that immigrated much more recently.

If you had read my comment past the first sentence, you would see that the second addressed your the larger population too.

Even if they are immigrants, knowing Spanish makes them half-way native English speakers because of the similarities between English and Spanish.

English is a Germanic language, with vocab borrowed from lots of other sources but mostly French, Spanish is a Romance language (with, especially in it's Latin American form) a bunch of vocabulary borrowed from Nahuatl and Quechua. They are extremely dissimilar grammatically, and though they have some overlap and similarities in vocabulary, it's nowhere close to making fluency with either making you even minimally functional (much less halfway native) in the other.

This chart shows approximate linguistic distances between most European languages. It looks pretty accurate; in my experience Dutch speakers do indeed have an easier time learning English compared to native speakers of other languages.

http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/a-map-of-lexical-distances-...

There are enough similarities to give them significant advantages compared to immigrants coming from other parts of the language tree. English and Spanish have thousands of cognates. Having almost exactly the same alphabet is also a huge advantage. Having already learned thousands of permutations of the same alphabet letters (words) will make memorizing and learning the next thousand permutations much easier.

> There are enough similarities to give them significant advantages compared to immigrants coming from other parts of the language tree.

Depends which other parts. Disadvantaged compared to German or Dutch speakers, and even French speakers, but, sure, advantages compared to other, say, people whose only prior language is Mandarin. And, of course, a big disadvantage compared to immigrants who already speak English, even if it's not American English.

But still very far from starting off even functional, much less halfway to native fluency.

> but, sure, advantages compared to other, say, people whose only prior language is Mandarin

I wouldn't understate the significant advantages.

> And, of course, a big disadvantage compared to immigrants who already speak English, even if it's not American English.

Not necessarily. A large percentage of children of immigrants speak with their family (nuclear and extended) mostly in their native language even if their parents can speak decent English. The English skills don't transfer much unless the parents are very active in their child's English education.

Among immigrants and their languages, Spanish is about as close to English as you can get, though. Not a lot of German/Swedish/Dutch immigration going on to California.

I'm pretty sure it is. This seems to suggest most people speak english: "Nearly 43% of California residents speak a language other than English at home, a proportion far higher than any other state."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California

While there is no "official" language for the United States (and thus California), it is widely considered that English is the de facto national language. It is the majority language for both the country and California.

So having difficulty with English is a really, really bad thing for these students.

Having difficultu with English is definitely really bad. Especially in California, where poor English skills can continue to thrive in immigrant populations after schooling and lead to less opportunities in general.

Wow, that's actually an element of these standardized tests I've never thought of before - that ESL folks would do a big part in shifting numbers around due to unfamiliarity with the language. Thank you.

Are you curious to see Californian standardized testing acheivement excluding ESL students?

Not only that, but also - language is more of a skill, a habit, which grows and evolves with circumstances, while math is a "study", with objects, operations, rules, processes, correctness criteria etc.

Eventually both are needed - as well as computers - but how to get there, opinions can differ widely.

Yes-- it's about 65% English, 28% Spanish.

Why is it acceptable to suck at math? I'm not talking about calculus or combinatorics either.