A hundred years ago, immigrant workers and their families would, over the course of time, obtain proficiency in the language of their newly adopted home country. Today, immigrant demographics have changed dramatically and so have the challenges in educating new arrivals who need to be up to speed much more quickly to qualify for higher-paying jobs that are heavy on English-language skills.

Buffalo schools are failing in their requirement to provide that education, according to a harshly critical report by the Council of Great City Schools.A wide gap between planning and implementation is leaving these students in the lurch. The district needs to plug those holes and, just as important, ensure that other well-conceived programs aren’t also failing at the classroom level.

Instead of dealing with arrivals from Italy, Germany and Ireland, half the newcomers into the City of Buffalo and across the nation are coming from Spanish-speaking countries, along with parts of the world as far away as Thailand, Myanmar (previously known as Burma), Somalia and Sudan. And there are 60 other languages spoken by a handful of students.

Federal mandate requires teachers to test these students shortly after arrival.

Hence, a recent 158-page report by the Council of Great City Schools cites Buffalo Public Schools as providing inconsistent, inadequate and inequitable services to students who speak English as their second language.

The report is in some parts positive, emphasizing that the superintendent and School Board requested the evaluation. Moreover, the school district has made strong academic progress across the board, in addition to programs for English- language learners. Results for that are better in the early elementary grades, but deteriorate in the higher grades.

With 34,000 students, of whom about 8 percent are learning English for the first time, there are gaps. And that’s where the negative part comes in, on outcomes, instruction and capacity to serve these new arrivals.

There needs to be some sort of uniform approach on a national level to address the multitude of languages and cultures here in America.

Meantime, Buffalo School Superintendent James A. Williams will meet with the director of the multilingual education department, a position praised in the report, and others to develop a strategy that would better address the needs of students new to this country. He and his staff need to get the job done.