November 8, 2015

Irony can be cruel.

This weekend, in a Bloomington, MN hotel, the state conference for English as a Second Language teachers was held. At the conference, I am told, several of the breakout sessions highlighted the work of Jana Hilleren.

Ouch.

Hilleren, until very recently, was the director of the Minneapolis Public Schools Multilingual Department. She became head of the department five years ago, and was tasked with managing both the World Languages division, for foreign language teachers, and the ELL side, which provides English language programming to district students.

Those familiar with Hilleren’s work say it has brought about measurable, worthwhile structure and progress to MPS’s once floundering ELL department.

But just two weeks ago, Minneapolis’ Interim Superintendent, Michael Goar, announced to Davis Center staff that Hilleren was being removed from her position. Sources say she has also been pushed out of the district altogether Why? To make room for a new “Global Education” department, and a new boss: Elia Bruggeman.

After almost two weeks, a message about this was finally sent to staff, on behalf of Bruggeman:

To staff:

In order to gain efficiency and better align programs for students, Interim Superintendent Michael Goar is moving the Multilingual Department of Minneapolis Public Schools under the Office of the Deputy Education Officer. This move includes the elimination of the position of Multilingual Department executive director.

The email goes on to list “some exciting initiatives and events,” and states that the “mission of the Multilingual Department is to empower educators and leaders to develop language-rich learning environments that raise the achievement of English Learners, making it a natural fit for the Office of the Deputy Education Officer.” That would be Bruggeman, of course.

But frustration on the ground is boiling over, with district EL staff expressing dismay and anger over Hilleren’s ouster. Why? Because they say that Hilleren is the one who should be credited for turning the Multilingual Department from chaos to the “language-rich learning environment” it is becoming.

To avoid participating in unnecessary hagiography, I have asked for specifics regarding Hilleren’s work. In response, I received a deluge of detailed answers. Here, an experienced MPS teacher, who asked not to be named, expounds on Hilleren’s legacy:

Before Jana became director, ELs were nearly invisible to district leadership (and most administrators). Jana came into the district to respond to an Office of Civil Rights complaint. We weren’t exiting students who were ready to be exited. We weren’t providing service to dual eligible (special ed students are also ELs) students). There were other compliance issues as well. Jana developed systems to bring us into compliance.

Student placement for ELs still isn’t perfect, but in recent years, many of the issues have been ironed out, such as assessing students so the school knows what type of service they need. There are now around 215 ESL teachers in MPS. Over half were hired in the past 5 years since Jana took leadership. She’s made a huge investment to ensure there is programming at nearly every school and much more adequate staffing to ensure all ELs are getting service.

In the area of EL service, under Jana’s leadership the district developed a program framework, defining what service students at each grade level, at each level of proficiency, receives. She worked with HR to ensure that each school was adequately staffed to provide service to each and every EL.Many schools such as Green Central have seen steady gains in test scores due to investment in the co-teaching model, which benefits all students. And, the co-teaching model has been implemented as a way to develop academic language for students who aren’t new-to country but still have gaps. 

With the EL staff often doubling at most schools in recent years, a Lead Teacher structure has also been established, so there can be a point person at each site to handle the Title III compliance, and to ensure that all ELs are getting the proper level of service. The Lead Teachers also sit on the Instructional Leadership Team at their school, and keep their principal up to speed about EL issues.

Jana worked with the communications department to get Language Line into the district. Now any staff at any school can communicate with parents in any language (no need for an interpreter).

There has been a lot of work of the past 5 years,and it’s been exciting to be part of the change and implementation. Meaningful change does not happen overnight. We still have a long way to go. ELs are still invisible at most of the high schools. Goar thinks it is politically prudent to act with impatience over MCA scores being lower for ELs….but people don’t get that if they were proficient on the MCA, they would not be ELs!

Take a look at the district Multilingual website. None of this was in place before Jana took over. http://multilingual.mpls.k12.mn.us/.

…Speaking of outcomes, our English learners exceed the state target for progress in academic language and proficiency rates each and every year the ACCESS results come out.