Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
Sign language program at LCC faces several hurdles | Lansing State Journal | lansingstatejournal.com
The proposal put forward by college administrators three weeks ago was to put it on hold for a while, to bring the curriculum into line with a new state certification test that too few students were passing, and hope that in the meantime the state finally would release a new set of rules on interpreter education and certification that have been years in the making.
Faculty and students in the program and many in the deaf community saw it as something else, the beginning of the end, a sign that LCC was pulling back from a program that has educated more of Michigan's interpreters than any other.
"You don't have a reason to cut this. You're not deaf. You're hearing," said instructor Lenore Coscarelli from behind the podium at a Board of Trustees meeting held days after the proposal became public. Her voice was rising into a shout that she could not hear.
"How are we supposed to survive without interpreters?"
The situation has changed since then. The announcement that LCC planned to put a strong program on hold, and to do so at a time when Michigan has a serious shortage of interpreters, seems to have opened lines of communication between LCC and the state Division on Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
"We have finally been able to have meaningful conversations with the state," Provost Stephanie Shanblatt said.
The state, she said, "was responsive to our concerns" and the conversations have given her confidence that the program can be improved without taking it offline.
Shanblatt said she now is "99.9 percent sure that we're not going to hibernate the program."
The question is why it ever came to that.
In 2007, the state Legislature set out to close gaps in the state's Deaf Persons' Interpreters Act.
State and federal law required that deaf people be provided with qualified interpreters in certain situations. There were no standards for what a qualified interpreter was.
But the legislation passed that year also instructed the Division on Deaf and Hard of Hearing to create rules on testing, minimum credential requirements and a number of other areas and, in the process, set off a host of other changes.
"We had a zero pass rate, because there were zero tests," said Brenda Cartwright, director of LCC's interpreter program.
When the Board for Evaluation of Interpreters (BEI) test was put in place the following year, it quickly proved to be a stumbling block.
"Our students were coming back to our program in tears having failed this test," said Michael Nealon, dean of liberal studies at LCC.
Overall, 66 percent of those who have taken the English proficiency portion of the BEI have passed it. Of those who went on to take the first level performance test, only 62 percent have passed.
Cartwright and other sign language educators say they have no problem with the test itself, that a learning curve is to be expected.
But she added that the test's difficulty has led many to take alternate tests, a national exam that will require a bachelor's degree starting in 2012 and one that only certifies them to work in educational settings, which became a concern for LCC's administration.
At the board meeting earlier this month, Shanblatt said, "We want ... to make sure students can get certified to do all the things the deaf members of our community need them to do."
Along with the new test came a new restriction that Cartwright and others say has hampered their ability to prepare students.
Students in interpreter training programs had traditionally honed their skills in hands-on settings under the supervision of a certified interpreter. The state barred that sort of practice in situations where the law requires a deaf person to be provided with an interpreter, that is, in most of the situations where interpreters might actually work.
"It would sort of be like having a student go through med school and not have their residency," said Dan McDougall, chair of the interpreter program at Madonna University.
LCC has found workarounds, which is why Laura Bappert and Taylor Smith spent an evening last week interpreting for a linguistics class that had no deaf students enrolled. Their audience was LaVera Fish, a graduate of LCC's program who can hear.
The process of assessing her performance "isn't the same for me, because I can hear what she's saying," Fish said.
"When you get feedback from a deaf person, you know whether you're doing it right or not, because they can't hear the speaker. It's a really different kettle of fish."
Debbie Huntley, division director for Michigan Rehabilitation Services, which includes the Division on Deaf and Hard of Hearing, said the rules under preparation will address the situation.
She also said, "I can't predict a date when the rules will be promulgated or go into effect."
The fact that the rules are still unfinished and the resulting inability to give students a clear sense of what they would need to know upon graduation was part of what created concern for LCC's administrators.
Conversations with state officials have made her more confident that the program can give students what they need, Shanblatt said, but "over the course of the last three years, it's been frustrating."
The proposal put forward by college administrators three weeks ago was to put it on hold for a while, to bring the curriculum into line with a new state certification test that too few students were passing, and hope that in the meantime the state finally would release a new set of rules on interpreter education and certification that have been years in the making.
Faculty and students in the program and many in the deaf community saw it as something else, the beginning of the end, a sign that LCC was pulling back from a program that has educated more of Michigan's interpreters than any other.
"You don't have a reason to cut this. You're not deaf. You're hearing," said instructor Lenore Coscarelli from behind the podium at a Board of Trustees meeting held days after the proposal became public. Her voice was rising into a shout that she could not hear.
"How are we supposed to survive without interpreters?"
The situation has changed since then. The announcement that LCC planned to put a strong program on hold, and to do so at a time when Michigan has a serious shortage of interpreters, seems to have opened lines of communication between LCC and the state Division on Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
"We have finally been able to have meaningful conversations with the state," Provost Stephanie Shanblatt said.
The state, she said, "was responsive to our concerns" and the conversations have given her confidence that the program can be improved without taking it offline.
Shanblatt said she now is "99.9 percent sure that we're not going to hibernate the program."
The question is why it ever came to that.
In 2007, the state Legislature set out to close gaps in the state's Deaf Persons' Interpreters Act.
State and federal law required that deaf people be provided with qualified interpreters in certain situations. There were no standards for what a qualified interpreter was.
But the legislation passed that year also instructed the Division on Deaf and Hard of Hearing to create rules on testing, minimum credential requirements and a number of other areas and, in the process, set off a host of other changes.
"We had a zero pass rate, because there were zero tests," said Brenda Cartwright, director of LCC's interpreter program.
When the Board for Evaluation of Interpreters (BEI) test was put in place the following year, it quickly proved to be a stumbling block.
"Our students were coming back to our program in tears having failed this test," said Michael Nealon, dean of liberal studies at LCC.
Overall, 66 percent of those who have taken the English proficiency portion of the BEI have passed it. Of those who went on to take the first level performance test, only 62 percent have passed.
Cartwright and other sign language educators say they have no problem with the test itself, that a learning curve is to be expected.
But she added that the test's difficulty has led many to take alternate tests, a national exam that will require a bachelor's degree starting in 2012 and one that only certifies them to work in educational settings, which became a concern for LCC's administration.
At the board meeting earlier this month, Shanblatt said, "We want ... to make sure students can get certified to do all the things the deaf members of our community need them to do."
Along with the new test came a new restriction that Cartwright and others say has hampered their ability to prepare students.
Students in interpreter training programs had traditionally honed their skills in hands-on settings under the supervision of a certified interpreter. The state barred that sort of practice in situations where the law requires a deaf person to be provided with an interpreter, that is, in most of the situations where interpreters might actually work.
"It would sort of be like having a student go through med school and not have their residency," said Dan McDougall, chair of the interpreter program at Madonna University.
LCC has found workarounds, which is why Laura Bappert and Taylor Smith spent an evening last week interpreting for a linguistics class that had no deaf students enrolled. Their audience was LaVera Fish, a graduate of LCC's program who can hear.
The process of assessing her performance "isn't the same for me, because I can hear what she's saying," Fish said.
"When you get feedback from a deaf person, you know whether you're doing it right or not, because they can't hear the speaker. It's a really different kettle of fish."
Debbie Huntley, division director for Michigan Rehabilitation Services, which includes the Division on Deaf and Hard of Hearing, said the rules under preparation will address the situation.
She also said, "I can't predict a date when the rules will be promulgated or go into effect."
The fact that the rules are still unfinished and the resulting inability to give students a clear sense of what they would need to know upon graduation was part of what created concern for LCC's administrators.
Conversations with state officials have made her more confident that the program can give students what they need, Shanblatt said, but "over the course of the last three years, it's been frustrating."
