Riley Endorses Two-Way Bilingual Education
Kenneth J. Cooper
Education Secretary Richard W. Riley yesterday endorsed a novel approach to bilingual education that simultaneously teaches English to immigrants and a foreign language to their English-speaking classmates. The Clinton administration has strongly backed bilingual education in general, but Riley's comments in a major address on the education of Hispanics were the first time he has singled out a particular method of teaching students whose first language is not English. Bilingual education has grown increasingly controversial in some portions of the country because immigrant students sometimes spend years speaking mostly their native language in special classes. In the "dual language" classes that Riley endorsed, students are taught about half in their native tongue and half in another language, with the goal of making them proficient in both. The classes are typically an even mix of students who speak English as their first language and students who have another mother tongue. The method is sometimes also called "two-way bilingual" or "dual immersion." Riley said the nation's economic competitiveness would be enhanced if dual-language instruction expands and more students learn to speak both English and another language. "I think that it is high time we begin to treat language skills as the asset they are, particularly in this global economy," he said at Bell Multicultural High School in Northwest D.C. "Anything that encourages a person to know more than one language is positive--and should be treated as a positive." The dual-language method was first used in a public school in 1963 and has spread from the Miami suburb of Coral Gables to 261 schools in 23 states and the District, according to the Center for Applied Linguistics. Most are elementary schools that teach in Spanish and English, and some receive federal funding. Nine are in the Washington metropolitan area. Riley called on the nation to nearly quadruple the number of dual-language schools to 1,000 within five years. The number has already been rising rapidly, increasing by about two-thirds since 1992, according to the linguistics center. "It has become much more popular in the last 10 years," especially among English-speaking parents interested in their children learning a foreign language, said Heidi Ramirez, a bilingual education specialist at the Education Department. Nancy Rhodes, a foreign language specialist at the linguistics center, said long-term studies have shown the method to be perhaps the most effective of various bilingual techniques. "The two-way model is something we're seeing more and more of because they're getting better results" as immigrants develop English skills as well as "maintain and develop literacy in their native language," Rhodes said. Delia Pompa, executive director of the National Association for Bilingual Education, called Riley's endorsement "wonderful" and suggested that it might ease the controversy over bilingual education. "I do hope his comments go a long way toward bringing people together on this issue," she said. Tim Schultz, a spokesman for U.S. English, which has opposed other bilingual methods, said the group supports the technique that Riley favors. "We agree that dual-immersion programs are good," he said. "We just want kids to learn English." But Schultz said the method is not a complete solution because some schools in heavily Hispanic areas of Los Angeles and Albuquerque, for instance, do not enroll enough English-speaking students to form dual-language classes. According to the Education Department, about 75 percent of the 3 million students in the nation with limited proficiency in English are Hispanics, the fastest-growing ethnic group in the country. Riley said about 20 percent of teachers have training in bilingual education methods, but slightly more than half teach students whose proficiency in English is limited. President Clinton has requested an increase of $54 million, or 13 percent, in federal spending for bilingual and immigrant education programs. |