This Week
Editorial
Newly released test scores show immigrant students in California making huge strides two years after voters passed an initiative replacing bilingual education with English immersion. For students in grades two through six, the median score in all subject areas has risen by an average of 39 percent. School districts with the strictest compliance are showing the greatest improvements. This hasn't stopped the die-hard advocates of bilingual education from nitpicking: Stanford's Kenji Hakuta, a leading theorist of bilingual education, says that some of these gains are deceptive because they came in districts where the test scores previously had been very low. It has apparently not occurred to him that perhaps bilingual education is what had kept them down. Arizona will vote on a similar ballot initiative this November, but the movement won't be going national just yet: Both Gore and Bush are for the status quo. In the case of Gore, that's no surprise. In the case of Bush, it's disappointing-if there's ever been a program that leaves children behind, it's bilingual ed. |