Editorial "Lessons"
Ron Unz
Dear Sirs, The gullibility of the Arizona Daily Star regarding bilingual education is simply astonishing (Editorial, 8/25/00). As the front-page of the New York Times recently reported, the mean percentile reading scores of limited-English students in Oceanside, CA, which completely abandoned bilingual education, rose an average of over 11 points from 1998 to 2000. The scores in similar neighboring Vista, in which half such students stayed in bilingual, rose just 2 points, and actually dropped this last year. Statewide, the average gain for more than a million limited-English students was over 5 points, or 35% in less than two years. Oceanside Supt. Ken Noonan, who founded the California Association of Bilingual Educators, is now a complete convert to English immersion. Instead of noting these huge facts, the Daily Star simply quotes Kenji Hakuta, a professor of bilingual education, who---unsurprisingly---claims that the evidence is ambiguous and proves nothing. Last year, the San Jose Mercury News, one of California's most respected papers (which had itself opposed the measure dismantling bilingual education) released its own statewide quantitative study showing that immigrant students at schools which followed English immersion scored 30-50% higher after just one year than such students at schools which stubbornly retained their bilingual programs. I suspect that most Arizona parents will be very happy to vote for Prop. 203 if they feel it will raise their children's test scores as much as scores rose following passage of a similar measure in California. The Arizona Daily Star will become a complete laughingstock if it persists in taking the word of professors of bilingual education regarding their own failed dogma. Sincerely Ron Unz, Chairman
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