JoAnne Negrin, Ed.D. & Sandee McBride, NJTESOL/NJBE

New Jersey Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages/New Jersey Bilingual Educators (NJTESOL/NJBE) is a combined organization representing over 1,500 ESL and bilingual professionals and 70,000 ELLs in the state of New Jersey, or 4% of the state’s student population. Through concerted efforts, our organization has been growing in terms of both our size and our sphere of influence. We have made a conscious attempt to become a force for advocacy, education, and change at the state level. This article describes some of the initiatives we are taking part in. We are open to suggestions for how to be more effective, and we would be pleased to offer our assistance to state affiliates that are looking to ramp up their advocacy efforts.

One initiative that has been a great success for us, both in terms of collaboration and student impact, has been bringing the Seal of Biliteracy initiative from the realm of great ideas into state law. Through a grassroots partnership with the Foreign Language Educators of New Jersey (FLENJ), we developed the criteria both in English and in another language by which students could attain the Seal of Biliteracy. We gave out the certificates through our organizations. The first year of the pilot, we had seven pilot districts. By the end of the pilot period, we had 25 school districts participating, and we graduated over 500 seniors with the seal during that period. Meanwhile, we worked with the Partnership for a New American Economy and with key legislators to introduce and shepherd the legislation through the process. Partnership for a New American Economy also provided research on how many New Jersey employers were looking for bilingual candidates. A teacher introduced the hashtag #SealofBiliteracyNJ, which was used by teachers and students throughout the state to show their support of the legislation. The New Jersey Seal of Biliteracy was signed into law on January 19, 2016, and will be managed by the New Jersey Department of Education beginning in the 2016–2017 school year.

Another area where NJTESOL/NJBE has been very active is standardized assessment and graduation requirements for ELLs. This past year, New Jersey changed its graduation requirement so that students must pass either the PARCC test or a series of other exams, including the SAT, ASVAB, or Accuplacer. None of these tests were normed on ELLs. In New Jersey, only 9% of ELLs have received a passing score on the PARCC exam, and the figures were not much better with the other tests. We found that our high school ELLs, even those who were honors students, were taking test after test, unsure whether they would be able to graduate.

NJTESOL/NJBE provided testimony to the New Jersey State Board of Education and actively lobbied for a test that would be more appropriate for our ELLs. In April, the state approved the use of the ESL Accuplacer as a graduation assessment. This test became the path to graduation for a large number of New Jersey’s ELLs. The assessment issues are still not resolved, and NJTESOL/NJBE continues to look for viable paths to graduation for ELLs in the longer term, as the requirements evolve.

Outreach and collaboration with other organizations is a major goal of NJTESOL/NJBE. In that spirit, we enjoy active partnerships with the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, two teachers’ unions that are most active in the state, the School Boards Association, FLENJ, the Teacher Education Council, and various community and business organizations. We are always looking to deepen and broaden these relationships through liaison relationships to each other’s Boards. We also work to ensure that we present at each other’s conferences and write articles for each other’s newsletters so that our members, as well as the members of the other organization, can see the clear links and common interests that we share. We also partner with teacher education programs to assist in the recruiting of ESL and bilingual teachers, support district/university partnerships, and encourage all teacher training programs to provide teacher candidates with training in New Jersey’s bilingual code and how to work with ELLs.

NJTESOL/NJBE works hard to raise awareness of the issues in both our own professional area and across the board with general educators. We have an e-mail distribution list where people can ask and answer questions. It is vetted so that members have the assurance that the answers on the list are correct. Our state Department of Education also participates and provides answers to individual teacher questions. We also have a presence on Twitter and Facebook, with approximately 1,000 likes on the Facebook page alone. This makes it easy for us to disseminate information and action alerts, as well as articles on best practices. We also have a chapter in every county and region of the state, and each chapter holds several professional development events each year. In addition, the state affiliate holds several regional conferences around the state, as well as an annual, statewide, three-day conference. This year’s keynote speakers included Debbie Zacarian, Michael Smith, and Eli Hinkel. Our workshops are mostly of a very practical orientation, grounding theory in what teachers can change in their classrooms the very next day. The conference was attended by about 700 people each day, and we hope that we will be able to continue to reach more members in the future.

We are an all-volunteer Board, and most everyone on the Board works full-time. These initiatives are a labor of love for our students and for our profession. It is deeply satisfying to be able to effect change for some of our most vulnerable students. We are proud of our accomplishments and look forward to our challenges.

JoAnne Negrin, Ed.D. is Supervisor of ESL, Bilingual Education, World Languages, Performing Arts, and ESSA for the Vineland, New Jersey (USA) school district. Her district's K–5 Bilingual Program was recently selected as a model program by the New Jersey Department of Education. She is President of NJTESOL/NJBE.

Sandee McBride’s teaching experience includes more than 25 years of teaching ESL at the elementary level and 10 years with adult learners. She has been a part-time lecturer/adjunct for the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education and currently teaches English language learners in the Program of Academic Language Studies. She is the currently the Past-President of the New Jersey Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages/New Jersey Bilingual Educators.