Local School Districts Join Group to Develop Language Tests

With New York State no longer developing final exams for select foreign languages and threatening to eliminate more due to budget restrictions, a group of Long Island school administrators has met in an effort to develop proficiency tests for middle school and high school students.

Both the Lawrence and Hewlett-Woodmere school districts have joined the Foreign Language Association of Chairpersons and Supervisors (FLACS), which includes representatives from 60 school districts across Nassau and Suffolk counties. FLACS officials said the group is working to fill the void created by the state. Districts that do not join the consortium will have to create these exams for themselves, since the state is no longer providing them.

"It's a wonderful way to resolve an issue because of the state budgeting problems," said Denise Hannaoui, head of Lawrence's world languages department. "It's an excellent endeavor to join districts in maintaining the program at its highest quality."

Recently, New York eliminated the creation of all non-English language exams at the middle school level and of Hebrew, Latin and German Regents exams at the high school level. The state will continue to create Regents exams for Spanish, French and Italian, but it also considering eliminating the creation of the Italian exam for the 2011-12 school year.

As a result of these decisions, the burden of creating exams now falls to local schools. In addition, costs associated with the development of the test is also passed to local school districts, but exact figures on what it will cost Long Island school districts are not available.

"What we are doing is not sexy but it is critically important," said Francesco L. Fratto, public relations officer for FLACS. "We have to protect our foreign language programs. It is vital to our students' success. We have to ensure that our children have the appropriate assessments. The state is putting us at risk, but we are going to react properly."

According to Fratto, the state made the decision to cut the exams in October and is now threatening to charge school districts for each child that takes a Regents or assessment exam. "Even though the state has given us such a hard task to handle, we are all coming together and we don't have a problem sharing our process," he added.

And with the state likely to put forward further cuts in state aid next year, administrators are preparing for more challenges in the future. "We're not seeing a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow yet," said Carmen Campos, president of FLACS and head of the foreign language department with the Cold Spring Harbor School District. "And we'll probably have even more work next year. But it has to be done."

While the future is expected to offer FLACS additional hurdles in the months ahead, Campos is confident the group's work will be successful. "This is the quiet tale of a group of professionals doing work for free behind the scenes," she said.  "We are doing it because we believe in it. This is coming from the heart."