I have been a public school teacher for 25 years. I am an EL teacher with the math department in a Title I middle school. I work overtime most days to ensure that my students can access the English embedded within the math standards and hopefully pass the eighth grade SOL. This is not easy for them and it is not easy for me. Imagine being dropped in Japan and expected to pass a difficult test written entirely in Japanese characters. I wouldn’t pass, would you? Students need time to acclimate to the language, to our schools, and to our testing. It is a disservice to the entire system to expect students to acquire academic English in 18 months.