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Noble Public Schools

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English Learners

Noble Public Schools · Academics

Support for Students Learning English

Noble Public Schools serves students and families who speak languages other than English at home. Students who are still learning English get help with the language while they keep learning everything else — and their families have specific rights, including the right to hear from the school in a language they understand.

How Students Are Identified Support at Noble The Academic Plan Parent Rights Annual Testing Exiting the Program Interpreters and Translation Contact

How Students Are Identified

  1. Every enrolling student completes a Home Language Survey

    Not just students the school thinks might need help — every student, at enrollment. Oklahoma requires it. The survey asks three questions: the language your child speaks most often, the language routinely spoken at home, and the first language your child learned. A new survey is required whenever a student enrolls in a district for the first time, or returns after being away more than a year; it does not transfer between districts.

  2. An answer other than English means a screening

    If any one of the three answers is a language other than English, the school screens your child's English proficiency. That is not a judgment about your child — it is how the state makes sure no student is quietly left without support they need.

  3. The screener

    Oklahoma uses the WIDA Screener for kindergarten through 12th grade, and the Oklahoma Pre-K Screening Tool for Pre-K. There is an alternate version for students with significant cognitive disabilities. The state sets the score that identifies a student as an English learner.

  4. There is a deadline

    If your child enrolls within the first 30 calendar days of the school year, the district has 30 days from enrollment to determine English learner status. If your child enrolls after that, the district has 14 calendar days. Within that same window the district writes your child's academic plan and sends you the required notice.

Home Language Survey (PDF) Encuesta del Idioma del Hogar (PDF)

What Support Looks Like at Noble

English learners at Noble stay in their regular classes with their grade-level peers and receive additional language support alongside them.

In the classroom

Content classes with built-in language support

Your child learns math, science, reading and social studies with everyone else, in classes where the teacher uses visuals, pre-teaches vocabulary, and scaffolds instruction so the language of the lesson does not become the barrier to the lesson.

Alongside it

Direct English language development

Individual or small-group instruction focused on listening, speaking, reading and writing in English, so your child builds the language while keeping up with grade-level work.

The English Language Academic Plan

Every identified English learner in Oklahoma has an English Language Academic Plan (ELAP), written annually. It records how your child was identified, their current proficiency level, their English language development goals, the services they receive, and any accommodations they get in class and on tests. It goes to your child's teachers and to you, every year.

If you have not received your child's ELAP, ask the school for it.

Understanding the ELAP — Parent Guide Guía para Padres (Español)

What You Receive, and What You Can Decide

If your child is identified as an English learner, the district must notify you in writing — within 30 days of the start of the school year, or within the first two weeks of placement if your child is identified during the year. That notice must be in a format you can understand and, as far as is practicable, in a language you can understand.

The notice tells you:

  • Why your child was identified, and why they need language support
  • Your child's level of English proficiency, how it was measured, and how they are doing academically
  • How the program teaches, how other available programs differ, and how the program will meet your child's strengths and needs
  • How it will help your child learn English and meet grade-level standards for promotion and graduation
  • What it takes to exit the program, how long that usually takes, and — in high school — the expected graduation rate
  • For a child with an IEP, how the program fits that plan's objectives
  • Your rights, including the ones below

You may decline the services — but read this carefully

You have the right to have your child removed from the English learner program at any time, to choose a different program or method of instruction if one is available, and to get the district's help in choosing. In the state's own words: "you have the right to have your student immediately removed from our EL program, but please understand that removing your student from the program will not remove their EL status. Students identified as EL will remain so until they score English proficient on the yearly English Language Proficiency Assessment."

In practice that means three things. Your child still takes the ACCESS test each year. The decision is reviewed and signed each year rather than carrying forward. And you can change your mind and opt back in at any time.

Noble will not recommend that you decline services, and staff will go through your child's academic plan with you before you sign anything, so you know exactly which supports are being set aside.

Parent Notification Letter Carta de Notificación (Español)

The Annual English Test

Every identified English learner takes ACCESS for ELLs once a year, in a state-set winter and spring window. It measures listening, speaking, reading and writing. There is a kindergarten version and an alternate version for students with significant cognitive disabilities. This is separate from the state's reading and math tests, which your child takes as well.

ACCESS is how a student exits the program, so it matters — and it is taken every year even by students whose families have declined services.

Exiting the Program, and What Comes After

  • The exit score is a 4.8 Composite on ACCESS for ELLs or Kindergarten ACCESS for ELLs (4.0 on Alternate ACCESS). A student who reaches it is reclassified as fluent English proficient.
  • Monitoring lasts four years. Your child is actively monitored for the first two years after exiting to make sure they keep succeeding, and remains in monitored status for years three and four.
  • In limited cases a district committee may recommend exit through OSDE's ELP Band Exit process. Ask the district if you think that applies to your child.

Interpreters and Translated Documents

These rights belong to you, the parent, and they do not depend on whether your child is identified as an English learner.

  • Free language help. Interpretation and translation are provided at no cost to your family.
  • Essential documents in your language, as far as is practicable — enrollment and registration, report cards and progress reports, discipline policies and disciplinary proceedings, handbooks, special education and Section 504 notices, health and safety notices, permission and consent forms, and grievance procedures. Where written translation is not practicable, the district offers to go through the document with you orally.
  • An interpreter at meetings — parent-teacher conferences, IEP and 504 meetings, disciplinary hearings, enrollment.
  • A trained interpreter, not your child. Schools should not ask students, siblings or friends to interpret for essential conversations, and they should not use staff who happen to be bilingual but have no interpreter training. This is the rule most often broken, usually with good intentions.

To request an interpreter or a translated document, contact your child's school office or the district office at (405) 872-3452. Ask as far ahead of a meeting as you can so the arrangement can be made.

Who to Ask

Noble Public Schools District Office

English Learner Services

Questions about identification, your child's academic plan, program services, declining or resuming services, or requesting an interpreter.

(405) 872-3452 · contactus@nobleps.com

111 S. 4th St., Noble, OK 73068

The state office is the Oklahoma State Department of Education Office of English Language Proficiency: OELP@sde.ok.gov, (405) 522-5073.

More Information

Speaking another language at home is an asset

Being identified as an English learner is not a label your child carries or a lower track they are placed on. It means the school knows to build the English alongside everything else, and it means you have rights about how that happens — including the right to hear from us in a language you understand.

Noble Public Schools · (405) 872-3452 · contactus@nobleps.com