Connecticut’s education system suffers the worst achievement gap in the nation between its white and non-white students—and now another gap between those who do and don’t speak English from birth is manifesting itself in schools. Non-English speaking students are becoming a larger segment of the population, and the immigrant population in the state is expected to double in coming years. But some educators and critics are looking for a plan in a season when Common Core, charter school reform and healthy school lunches are the issues du jour and political talking points. “I think the state sees this tsunami coming off in the distance, but if they don’t prepare for it they’re going to be overwhelmed by it, and the existing conditions they have to address it are going to fall short,” says Hamlet Hernandez, school superintendent in Branford, a suburban district facing an increase in students in need of language services. The son of Cuban immigrants, Hernandez learned to speak English in first grade at public school in Hamden. Immigrants account for 14 percent of the state’s population. Of that, 22 percent speak a language other than English while 38 percent do not speak English “very well.” “As Connecticut moves into the next decade, or two decades and so on, our minorities are going to be our majority—this is the future,” says Dianne Kaplan deVries, founder of Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding. “Either we educate them or we are in serious trouble—not only as a state, but as a nation.” Educating students whose first language is not English is a difficult task that’s expected of school districts. Recent test scores in schools receiving the most aid show a downward spiral has already begun. “This is absolutely a major piece of the unequal education opportunities that exist thanks to our failed government structures,” says Kaplan deVries. “This is a policy failure—this is not a failure of schools per se, it is certainly not a failure of parents who come here looking for a better life—this is something we all need to worry about.” The Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding is currently suing the state for its education funding system. Still in litigation, the lawsuit prompted Gov. Jodi Rell to modify the state’s funding formula to provide more money to school districts for each English language learner (ELL) they instructed. Under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, that weight for ELL students was eliminated—though the governor maintains he’s spent more money on education as a whole than his predecessors. The highest percentage of ELL students are in lower grades and disproportionately perform worse in school. According to the most recent data from the state State Department of Education, there are nearly 30,000 ELL students in the state, comprising more than 5 percent of the total students and 97 percent of whom receive language services. The highest concentration of these students are in the urban districts (though increasingly moving out toward suburbs), further taxing school districts already serving a high-need population. An analysis of eighth grade reading scores from Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) shows that ELL students’ performance has fallen. Of the 30 worst-performing school districts that are a part of Gov. Malloy’s education initiative, there have been four districts—Danbury, Meriden, Windham and West Haven—where zero percent of ELL students met the state’s goal for reading, while other districts had single-digit scores. Of the state’s largest cities, Bridgeport’s school district has the highest population of students—40.8 percent—who say English is not the primary language spoken at home. Hartford’s school district has the highest percent of parents who don’t speak English at 12.9 percent. Overall, the state has increased funding to school districts, although it falls short of the totals required by the state’s highly debated funding formula. Districts don’t receive money specifically earmarked for educating students who need language help unless they are applying for grants to comply with mandates for providing bilingual education. The state provided $1.9 million to help schools educate bilingual students in 2013. Decisions about how a district spends its money are “generated at the local level, and identified by what they need,” says Malloy spokesman Andrew Doba. “If a district thinks they need services for a growing ELL population—they’ve got the additional money to do that.” Doba maintains the change to ECS was done at a time when education funding went up. Overall, districts are getting more money. It was decided that giving extra consideration to ELL students wasn’t an effective way of measuring a district’s need. But some disagree with that assessment and believe that if the state does not do more going forward, it will be left with an underserved population, further expanding the achievement gap, which is already the worst in the nation. Indicators of how ELL students currently do on standardized testing signal the gap will only continue to get bigger. Some, like Hernandez, fear the extra money only comes in when a district starts performing extremely poorly. In the meantime, superintendents of better-performing districts are left watching a rising tide of need and don’t get help until the problem is too hard to ignore. He says districts not typically thought of as being in need, like his own, are “left dying on the vine.” “The way it’s structured now, I think, will yield two different outcomes for students,” he says. “I don’t think it’s by design, but I can’t remember the last time we had a critical review of the way we address that student population—and it’s growing.” Hernandez wants a signal that those above him see the issue as a priority, and so far he hasn’t. He wants increased funding, but it doesn’t stop there. “I would want to see that people are making it part of the narrative when talking about closing the education gap—as opposed to just talking about African-American or Hispanic students,” he says. “Let’s close the gap, but let’s also understand the gap. Let’s understand we have an opportunity gap, we don’t have a cognition gap. All someone need to do is look at the projections of the Census bureau and know that this wave is not only here in Connecticut, this is a wave that is coming in the U.S. We need to be able to do a better job of educating these kids.” my story viktoria sundqvist “You’re not a U.S. citizen?” people ask me regularly. “Why not?” Answer: It’s complicated. As a green card holder—a permanent legal resident—I am afforded many of the same rights as a citizen. I can work, pay taxes, and (eventually) get Social Security that I’ve earned. However, I cannot vote, run for office or become a police officer (or federal agent). And if I decide to leave the U.S. for a period longer than 6 months, there’s a chance I will lose my resident status. Some people confuse attaining legal status with becoming a citizen. There are many different immigration statuses and visas, all allowing you temporary legal status in this country. Some allow you to work on a limited basis; others allow you only to study or to travel. As a Swedish national, for example, I have the right to visit the U.S. for up to 90 days without any visa at all. In order to work, you need special permission— and a Social Security number, which is difficult to obtain, even with all the proper paperwork in place. I’ve held many different U.S. visas and work permits in the 16 years that I have been here— J1 exchange visa when I came as an au-pair; F-1 student visa to attend college for four years, which allowed me to work on campus; Optical Practical Training extension after graduating, which let me work for a year in my field of study (journalism); a 3-year H1-B work visa that got extended for a second term; and then, finally, permanent resident status after marrying an American citizen (and fellow journalist). None of these documents come cheap. Application fees run in the thousands and—for an additional fee—you can have some of the paperwork processed faster. With the exception of the H1-B applications, which were submitted by the company petitioning to keep me in the country, I filed all my own paperwork, saving me several thousands of dollars in legal fees. After 16 years of various legal statuses, I can finally consider the final step—applying for citizenship. But do I care enough about exercising my right to vote? Do I want to work in law enforcement? Do I want to retain my Swedish citizenship? These are all things I still have to think about. Viktoria Sundqvist is the Investigations Editor for The Middletown Press and The Register Citizen. my story enxhi myslymi July 6, 2000, is a day that has come to define who I am. I was just about eight years old when my parents made the decision to immigrate to the United States of America, with the desire to achieve the “American dream.” My mother was surrounded by talk of the U.S. after hearing stories and reading letters about her uncles who escaped the communist regime in Albania in the 1950-60s. it ignited desires in her and my father to emigrate in search of a better life. Since the year I was born, my parents both participated in the annual immigrant visa program, a lottery of sorts that selects individuals at random to immigrate to the U.S. However, they did not realize the importance of the lottery until 1997, when a civil war broke out in Albania and brought political instability with it. Realizing the struggles of our homeland, my parents knew that we needed to leave immediately, taking into account that my father was the general director of audits at customs control at the time. A year after we were accepted for the lottery, we set foot on U.S. soil on that fateful day in July. I remember looking over at my parents and my older sister as our plane was departing, and at such a young age, I could not comprehend why they were overcome with tears. As time passes, the more I think of that scene, and the more I understand the tears that fell that day. We were leaving financial security, immediate family and close friends to move to a country where we did not know the language, and we did not have jobs, but merely followed many before us in chasing after that “dream.” Following the pattern of my mother’s uncles that settled here with their families, we moved to Waterbury, Connecticut. I started the second grade, my sister the seventh, and my parents found jobs in human resources at companies close to home. I remember that first year bringing an array of struggles, most famously when I was mistaken for a boy because of my short hair, to which my mother humorously responded, “next time someone tells you that, just pull your pants down.” With my knowledge of English also limited to “Bathroom please,” I was placed in English as a second language. It also meant mathematics was my favorite subject for quite some time. However, what has been most difficult for me in immigrating to the U.S. was forming an identity that encompassed two dueling cultures. As an immigrant, I was aware of needing to learn a new language, a new education system and adapting to a different lifestyle, but I never realized what a struggle it would be to answer the question, “Where are you from?” Being an immigrant inherently brought an identity crisis with it. It made me too Albanian for the Americans, and too American for the Albanians, which made me believe that I did not have a country to call home. But, from being the second-grader who was mistaken for a boy to graduating from fairfield university in a year, I can safely say that I figured out where I belong. Instead of not having a country, as an Albanian-American, I now have two. Enxhi Myslymi is attending Fairfield University, where she is studying journalism.