Roma Education Fund in The Daily Beast

Amana Fontanella-Khan writes for The Daily Beast and cites REF in her latest article, Roma Children Face Segregation in EU Schools.

Amana Fontanella-Khan writes for The Daily Beast and cites REF in her latest article, Roma Children Face Segregation in EU Schools.

The way that Roma children are funneled out of regular schools and into so-called “special schools” happens through controversial diagnostic tests, which are recommended when teachers think students are facing learning difficulties. Often, the reasons for being recommended for testing are arbitrary.

“I know a [Roma] child who washed his hands two times during class and the teacher didn’t like that. She suggested he was hyperactive and that he cannot sit still in class. He was then transferred to a special school,” recalls Judit Szira, a former school teacher from Hungary and the Executive Director of the Roma Education Fund, an organization that works to close the educational gap between Roma and non-Roma.

Szira also criticized the tests for being unfairly designed. “They ask questions which use words the [Roma] child has never experienced. One child was asked ‘Where does your mother buy bread’, and they replied in the corner store. Then they were told that the proper answer was the bakery. But in many Roma settlements they don’t have bakeries,” she explained. More importantly, these diagnostic tests also fail to take into consideration the language abilities of Roma children, many of whom speak Romanes better than Slovakian.”

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