Program's Mixed Reviews
Maria Sanchez of Astoria emigrated from Peru when she was 8 and was immediately enrolled in an English-as-a-second-language program when she began attending public school in Queens. By the fifth grade, the school determined that she no longer needed the additional attention in English and dropped her from the ESL program. Sanchez, 24, is now a mother who will likely enroll her infant son in public school in a few years. She hopes that a similar ESL program will be available to him when the time comes. "It was a good program, Sanchez said yesterday. "It was very helpful... But when you're young, you learn quickly. Sanchez was among the few yesterday finding praise for the Board of Education's programs teaching immigrant children English. While immigrant parents and their advocates were divided on supporting bilingual education, or ESL, they were in agreement that the current programs could be enhanced. "They're very disappointed with the quality of programs their kids are in, said Margie McHugh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, a non-profit umbrella organization representing more than 200 immigrant advocacy or service groups in the metropolitan area. In recent years the coalition has surveyed immigrant parents on educating their children and has advocated reforming the current programs for "English Language Learners in public schools. Among the ideas the coalition is advocating is a fully bilingual program in which immigrant children become proficient in both English and their native language. "We want to make sure they don't create a new program and think the problem is solved when the real problem is to improve all the programs there, said McHugh as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Schools Chancellor Harold Levy unveiled their own proposals to reform English learning programs for immigrant children. McHugh said that immigrant parents are in favor of options in educating their children, as will likely be proposed by Levy, but the consensus is that they want the students to receive more English instruction than is currently available in the public schools. In addition, McHugh said, parents and immigrant advocacy groups like hers want to ensure that any reform be accompanied with resources for more ESL and bilingual teachers, more training for them and adequate funding for the programs. "Anything that gives parents choices, we're for, said Angelo Falcon, senior policy executive with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. "But we want to make sure it also has a strong educational component. Teresa Sung, 45, of Flushing, requested that her son be put in an ESL program when he started kindergarten eight years ago. He was pulled out of class for an hour a day to learn English. Halfway through the school year, the school determined that he no longer needed the additional English instruction and should instead be placed in a program for gifted children, Sung said. "For my son, he took off with everyday classes for one hour, said Sung, a Taiwanese immigrant. "That's good enough for him. But if they can do better, that's good. |