Bilingual Ed
OVER the past two months, we have seen four different plans to reform bilingual education, from Board member Irving Hamer, Board President William Thompson, Randy Mastro of the Mayor's Commission and Chancellor Harold O. Levy himself. Yet, with all of these plans, I believe that we remove ourselves further and further from what was learned in the board's thorough review of the data. In my mind, there are three things that we must do: Focus on the children who need help; offer parents the opportunity to make informed choices; invest resources to give any of these options a chance for success. The Board of Education's report was clear: If young people come to us early enough, we can help them. We do a fantastic job of educating English-language learners in the earlier grades. But if they come to us in middle or high school, we fail them. They remain in these programs for significant lengths of time, unable to mainstream fully. Why? What are we doing wrong? It seems to me that the chancellor and the board must address these children specifically. There is a lot of talk out there about the importance of parental choice. Of course parental choice is important. But can you consider it a choice if parents don't have the information they need to make it? In our present system we have no standards for participation in bilingual or ESL instruction. There exists no process that would enable us to say to parents: Our research shows that your child would do best in this environment. Why not? Why are we pretending that this is a neutral matter, one in which all things are equal and parents just have to go with their instincts? No. We are abdicating our responsibility, as educators, if we sit back and leave it to parents to form conclusions about important educational matters without even providing them with an informed opinion from educators. Significant resources are required to provide quality education to our English-language learners. It is unacceptable that so many of our children are taught by uncertified teachers. Currently, many of our districts - including all of The Bronx - have a need for ESL certified teachers. By creating self-contained accelerated English classes, we are going to need teachers who are certified both in ESL and in the subject areas they will teach. How are we going to do this? The chancellor and the board must come up with a meaningful plan for the children that our existing programs don't reach; develop a process by which educators assume their rightful obligation of offering recommendations to parents and recruit the certified teaching force that our English language learners deserve but don't yet have. None of these issues come from the clear blue sky. They come from the research, the data that the board itself collected. Any sound policy must be informed by this. I would certainly hope that it is not because we are more intent on finding political solutions than educational ones. Fernando Ferrer is Bronx Borough President. |