Best way to teach English to schoolchildren Talk of the Nation National Public Radio Monday, August 20, 2001 JUAN WILLIAMS, host: It's TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Juan Williams. This month, the US Census released data showing that immigrants now make up 11 percent of America's people. That's the highest rate since the 1930s. The data also shows that about 20 percent of Americans today are speaking some language other than English when they're speaking with their family and friends at home. This is particularly true for Spanish-speaking people. The census estimates that 70 percent of the children who speak a language other than English at home are speaking Spanish. That large population of children in the US whose native language is Spanish is the source of a major policy debate in Washington, state Capitols and school districts nationwide. The question is: How to best teach those children to speak English? It's a very important question because a third of school-age children in Spanish-speaking homes describe themselves as not speaking fluent English. Is it best to put those children in bilingual classes? Is it best to put them in total English-immersion classes? This hour on the program, we'll talk about the different methods being used in today's classrooms to teach non-native English speaking kids how to speak English. We want to hear from you. Are you a parent whose child or children are in or have been in a bilingual program? Are you a teacher getting ready to go back to school? Were you taught in a bilingual or monolingual program? What do you think of it? We'd like to hear about it. We'd like to hear about your experiences teaching and learning English as a second language. So give us a call. Our number is (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is totn@npr.org. Here to talk about the different methods schools are using to teach kids English are our guests. Stephen Krashen is a professor of education at the University of Southern California. Stephen Krashen formerly taught linguistics at Queens College in New York. He joins us from our Los Angeles bureau. Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION, Steve Krashen. Professor STEPHEN KRASHEN (University of Southern California): Thank you. WILLIAMS: Also with us is Ken Noonan. He's the superintendent of schools in Oceanside, California, and a former bilingual education teacher. He's with us from member station KPBS in San Diego. Welcome, Ken. Mr. KEN NOONAN (Superintendent of Schools, Oceanside, California): Thank you. WILLIAMS: And with us is Paquita Holland. She's the principal of Oyster Bilingual Elementary School in Washington, and she's retiring this year. Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION, Ms. Holland, and congratulations. Dr. PAQUITA HOLLAND (Principal, Oyster Bilingual Elementary School): Thank you. WILLIAMS: Join the conversation. Again, our number: (800) 989-8255. It's (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address, again, totn@npr.org. Steve Krashen, let me begin with you by saying these census numbers seem to indicate that there is a larger population of young people out there in need of some kind of help when it comes to speaking English. Would you agree? Prof. KRASHEN: No, I wouldn't. Let me comment a bit on the census and how they do it. What they do is they ask children: Do you speak English very well? Well? Not very well? Or not at all? And it's true that very few kids, about a third of the kids, said they spoke English very well. But if you combine very well and well, here's what you really get: about 86 1/2 percent say they speak English well or very well. Fewer than 3 percent said they spoke English not at all, and this figure's actually gone down since the last census. Very few of these children are in bilingual education programs. Even in the heyday of bilingual education in California, only 15 percent of Hispanic children were in bilingual education. And a lot of these kids that they ask about are brand-new to the country. So the figures I interpret is just the opposite. Children are acquiring English rather quickly, rather well. The figures from Hispanic children are comparable to those who speak other languages. WILLIAMS: Now let me go to Ken Noonan. Ken, I notice, though, that despite what Steve is saying, the fact is that in 1998, I believe it was, California had a referendum on this issue, Arizona in the year 2000. What we've seen from the referendum says that the voters are saying, `We don't want anything that would be bilingual in terms of education. We want kids to go to school in classes where English is the dominant, in fact, the only language.' Now you are someone who used to support bilingual education, but you've become convinced, as I understand it, that immersion is better. Why? Mr. NOONAN: Well, for two reasons. One is the data showed us that kids can learn English very rapidly. They learn extremely well, even an academic approach to English, without having to learn to read and write and speak in their native language first. And the second was, visiting classrooms, talking to children in second grade, for example, who had only been in this country one year, came without any English, were reading good, second-grade literature in English and were able to answer my questions about it. So two-fold: data and personal observation. WILLIAMS: And the fact that you've changed, has this caused some stir? Are people who were once previously your allies now accusing you of betrayal? Mr. NOONAN: It's been a little tough. Some of my friends will be critical of me personally. I have not had a lot of criticism in open debate. But there are folks who, of course, disagree with me and so I hear that quite often. WILLIAMS: Now we have Paquita Holland here. She's the principal of the Oyster Bilingual School in Washington, DC. Now at Oyster, as I understand it, Ms. Holland--I'm tempted to call you Ms. Holland through the whole show because you're the principal; I don't want to be called to your office--that they use dual immersion. So what is dual immersion? How does that differ from immersion or bilingual training? Ms. HOLLAND: Dual language immersion means all students in the school learn everything in English and in Spanish. They spend approximately 50 percent academic learning time over the period of a week learning in English and 50 percent learning in Spanish. It's totally different from trying to teach English to cognitive, linguistically different children. It is really teaching them all everything in both languages and giving equal weight to both languages. WILLIAMS: Now doesn't that take up a lot of time? Dr. HOLLAND: Yes and no. It takes up a lot of time. We don't translate. Children are expected to learn in the language of instruction. We have two teachers in every classroom. One teaches in English and one teaches in Spanish. And generally the students are grouped for instruction all day. So whether they're having instruction in English, they learn in English, or in Spanish, they learn in Spanish. WILLIAMS: So it's not repetitive, it's not the same material being repeated. Dr. HOLLAND: Absolutely not, no. WILLIAMS: And is it effective? Is this dual system effective? Dr. HOLLAND: Well, we have a track record of 30 years. Our children do very, very well. It is the sixth highest school in the city in terms of SAT 9 scores. We have no children whatso... WILLIAMS: What's SAT 9? Dr. HOLLAND: Stanford Achievement Tests 9. WILLIAMS: Scores. Ms. HOLLAND: The scores, right. WILLIAMS: For ninth graders. Dr. HOLLAND: In reading--no, we give it in grades one through six every year. WILLIAMS: Why is it called SAT 9 then? Dr. HOLLAND: It's just the--it's done by Harcourt Grace and it's the name of the test. It's like California Testing of Basic Skills, whatever it may be--or Comprehensive Testing. It's the name of the test itself. It is standards-based and our children do extremely well. No child in grades one through six, in reading or in math, scored below basic in the past two years. WILLIAMS: Now who are the kids who come to your school? Are they a special population? Dr. HOLLAND: About 58 percent of the children are Hispanic, Caucasian, African-American and other is the breakdown ethnically. About 62 percent are language minority children or speak a language other than English in their houses or in their homes. So the population is quite mixed, about between 43 and 46 percent of the population is considered poor. They qualify for free or reduced lunch. So it's not an elitist school by any stretch of the imagination. WILLIAMS: But overwhelmingly made up of young people who have come to you unable to speak fluent English. Dr. HOLLAND: Yes, absolutely. WILLIAMS: Now Stephen Krashen, what do you think about this approach, this kind of two-way, bilingual education? Prof. KRASHEN: Oh, I think it's very promising. I don't know if it's a panacea. We don't really have enough data. Yet it is difficult to do, as I'm sure Ms. Holland will agree, but it is a promising program. I think what's crucial is to point out why we think bilingual education works and what the data is supporting it. What's missing from all this discussion is the overwhelming scientific data that programs that are set up correctly, that are subjected to the scrutiny of researchers, good bilingual programs come out very well. Children in these programs acquire English as well and usually better than children in all-English programs. This for some mysterious reason has been missing from all the discussion. The federal government right now is proclaiming that we should have research-based methods. Well, one of the most solid results we have in the entire literature is study after study showing that bilingual programs work. That needs to be discussed. WILLIAMS: Well, Steve, stay with me for a second on this point. Because I was thinking, as I was listening to Ms. Holland, if Ms. Holland's program is having such success and proven success by testing standards, why isn't it being emulated across the nation? Prof. KRASHEN: I don't know. Maybe a step forward is to have her on a program like this one... WILLIAMS: All right. Prof. KRASHEN: ...so the public can find out about it. WILLIAMS: Well, Steve, what... Prof. KRASHEN: The public, unfortunately, has been under the impression that these programs don't work, that children are in all-Spanish for years and years and years, they never learned to speak English. None of this is true. Paper after paper, study after study, observation after observation, report after report shows that good bilingual programs work, they succeed in teaching English. WILLIAMS: Well, but what is bilingual education in its usual form as opposed to the way Ms. Holland handles it? Prof. KRASHEN: Well, let me first tell you what it should be and then let's go to the discussion that... WILLIAMS: Well, slow down. Just answer that question for me. What is it right now in most classrooms in the United States? How's it handled? Prof. KRASHEN: I wish we knew. What we have are isolated reports in the press of a few good programs. We have more and more isolated reports of, you know, children being mis-classified, bad programs. There have been no careful survey of how bilingual education has been carried out in massive number of schools. WILLIAMS: So there's no... Prof. KRASHEN: We really don't know. WILLIAMS: So there's no one way to define how bilingual education is done in this country, although voters in California, voters in Arizona, have turned against it. Prof. KRASHEN: Exactly. It's like saying, `My child was in a bad algebra class, let's get rid of algebra.' WILLIAMS: Well, you know, I have read, though, and I've read this from columnists, as well as in music camps, stories of kids being taught in, you know, bilingual classes and it's really mostly in Spanish and the kid's never able to get out of it. In fact, it's taught at a lower level and therefore not complimentary to their academic skills. Prof. KRASHEN: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. Right. I'm glad you brought that up. WILLIAMS: It seems to me to almost be insulting to the young people. Prof. KRASHEN: Well, if that were the case, I would be against bilingual education. I've actually looked at the data on whether these classes are all in Spanish, how long kids are in the program, and we do know that children in good bilingual programs by the time they're in third grade, 75 percent of their subject matter instruction is in English. By the time they're in fifth grade, it's 90 percent. Very few children in the program longer than three, four years. In fact, in New York City, 71 percent of the children who started kindergarten are out in three years and you see practically no one in the programs after five, six years. The only children in the programs, and the older kids in the program, are the ones who've just arrived. So this claim of all Spanish, the claim of languishing, when we actually look at the data, is false. WILLIAMS: Now, Ken Noonan, you're superintendent of schools in Oceanside, California. Now you're someone who supports a structured immersion program and you went away from the bilingual program. So Steve says we can't define exactly what it is, but there must be something that you reacted to in saying, `I'm now opposed to bilingual and supportive of the immersion approach.' Mr. NOONAN: Well, a traditional bilingual program was one that was structured against using--in terms of using Spanish to instruct the child in the earliest years in school or when the child first came to the school and eventually phasing the child or transitioning the child out of Spanish into English. That takes a short amount of time or long amount of time depending on the program, how it's done, the teacher's style, the teacher's background. And so what you see in California is a very uneven approach, 1,100 districts, all of them doing it somewhat differently. When 227 came along, it said, `You will teach English and you will teach in English.' I opposed that. I didn't think that was the way to do it. However, when I saw how well children did, developing not only conversational Spanish but the ability to do academic work in English--not academic but academic English, these kids actually are able to read the test, pass the test, do quality work in their classrooms and not having had to go into learning to read in Spanish first. So I see a program that works, that works well and it was the kind of thing that shook me. I was not prepared for the kind of reaction I've seen. Other superintendents that I've talked to have said the same thing. And in fact, in many districts, there are fewer and fewer parents requesting bilingual programs and more and more accepting of the immersion program because they see the results and they're very pleased with that. WILLIAMS: Now, Ken, those parents include Hispanic parents, parents who want their children to learn English but have been frustrated by bilingual instructions? Mr. NOONAN: I think that's true. Most of our parents come from Mexico, from very poor villages. Most of the children have had no education. So when they come to our schools, they are not literate in Spanish, they've had very little if any education in Spanish. And their parents are very worried that moving right into English is going to be too much of an ordeal for the children. Once the parents sees how well their children do, they stop asking for bilingual and, in fact, a district near us is now actually receiving far fewer waivers than they've ever had before. WILLIAMS: We're talking about different approaches to teaching children to speak English, and we're taking your calls at (800) 989-TALK. Send us e-mail. The address is: totn@npr.org. I'm Juan Williams. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. (Soundbite of music) WILLIAMS: It's TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Juan Williams. We're talking about the different programs that schools are using to teach children how to speak English. Our guests are Steve Krashen, professor of education at the University of Southern California. Also with us, Ken Noonan, superintendent of schools in Oceanside, California. And Paquita Holland, outgoing principal at the Oyster Bilingual Elementary School in Washington, DC. You're invited to join the conversation at (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address: totn@npr.org. Ms. Holland, you were listening as Ken Noonan was describing the success that young people are able to have very quickly in programs that really are built on the notion of total immersion--just putting the kid in a classroom where the teacher is speaking English, the classmates are speaking English, the books are in English and that child adjusts quickly in a year or two. Your experience is not that. What's your experience? Dr. HOLLAND: My experience is, and I think national research backs this, is that the longitudinal studies that have been done of the children who have been in bilingual programs does show that it takes five to seven years to be bilingual and biliterate. And the more cognitively demanding the schoolwork gets, as the children progress in grades, the more biliterate or the more literate they have to be in the language. Initially, in the first three years, they will pick up classroom English, conversationally, read and be able to pass the tests well. Once they start going into third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, that changes. We have children that may be literate in English throughout the second grade and then they drop again to being limited in their proficiency because their background or the solidness that they need in English is not there. Then we have to ramp up; we have to use both languages to figure out how the child is learning it in one language and make sure it's transferring to the other. It's a very complicated process to learn a language. I think anyone who is learning a second language would never call themselves totally proficient in two years or three years. WILLIAMS: So you're saying that it's possible for a young person to demonstrate some proficiency, maybe at the second grade level, but once you start to deal with more difficult material, more difficult books, suddenly their lack of proficiency becomes evident and maybe then teachers start to think this kid isn't as smart as he or she really is because of the language problem. Dr. HOLLAND: Exactly. Exactly. WILLIAMS: Now, Ken Noonan, superintendent of schools in Oceanside, California, you've just heard what Ms. Holland had to say and I wonder how you react to that. Mr. NOONAN: Well, our experience has been a little different. Of course, we're new at it. We've only had immersion for about three years in our classrooms, based on the law. What we have seen, though, is at the end of two or three years of English immersion, just this last September, we transferred over 1,000 of our students into mainstream English. In other words, they had been in immersion for about two or three years, depending on their ability levels, and then last year about 1,000 or more of those kids moved into mainstream English where there is no support other than English instruction in academic subjects. The good news is, that the test scores for all students, including those who were redesignated and moved to English only, actually did extremely well. The test scores continued to go up for all students and the good news for us is that immersion is working. These kids are able to fair well in academic subjects and have picked up enough English to do as well as they have. It's very surprising. All of us believe the five-to seven-year of kind projection, and what this is showing us is that that's not necessarily true. WILLIAMS: And you don't buy the argument that as the kids move along, as they get into the higher grades, then their lack of proficiency in English begins to hamper their success. Mr. NOONAN: Well, like I said, we don't have that experience yet. California does not have a lot of experience with immersion. We're learning as we go. My suspicion is based on what I have seen and observed personally and feedback from teachers is that these children will continue to progress because they do have the skills and can move ahead. WILLIAMS: Now, Steve, I wanted to come to you and ask about the experience in California--you're at the University of Southern California. As I understand it, California, having done away with this bilingual program, has had some success because last year standardized tests showed that second graders with limited English skills are improving their scores in both reading and math. Prof. KRASHEN: Yeah. Test scores are going up, but there are very good reasons why. We've been giving the exact same test for the last four years. The pressure on test score improvement, in fact, is intense. There are rich rewards for improving your test scores; punishment for not improving your test scores. And we're experiencing what is called test inflation. This has been shown in educational research over and over that when you bring in a new test, scores go up. They go up one and a half, two points every year and then the tests need to be recalibrated. This is exactly what's happening in California. It's due to a number of reasons, not all of which have to do with students improving. It's kind of like claiming you've raised the temperature in the room when you've put a match under the thermometer. Now I'm not accusing Oceanside of doctoring their scores, but this is--certainly, the fact that it's the same test, people do intensive test preparation has a lot to do with it. Not only that, Kenji Hakuta from Stanford has looked at the test score increases throughout the state over the last few years and he has found that districts that kept bilingual education, the scores for their English learners went up; districts that have never done bilingual education, their scores went up. Everybody's scores went up. As for Oceanside, I'm sure Mr. Noonan will agree that when he came in, their bilingual program was not a very good one. In fact, in an article in September 2000 in The Washington Post, Mr. Noonan pointed out that in the previous bilingual program, many of the children were delayed from English for up to four years. Now we don't do this in good bilingual programs. We introduce English right from the beginning. And we introduce subject matter in English as soon as it can be made comprehensible. If you have a program where children are not getting any English at all in the early years and you test them in English, you're going to get lousy scores. Mr. Hakuta--Kenji Hakuta has looked at the Oceanside increases and found they are there but they're, quote, "not remarkable. It's what you find typically in other districts." The limited English proficient scores in Oceanside right now are about slightly below the average for California. WILLIAMS: Let me... Prof. KRASHEN: So basically what has happened is they got rid of a bad bilingual education program, gave the kids some English, so of course you see some improvement and give the same test every year. WILLIAMS: So let me give Ken Noonan, superintendent of schools in Oceanside, a chance to respond, especially to the point that, in fact--I think that Steve said it's as if a match had been struck, you know, and put under the test to heat up the scores a little bit. Ken, is that fair? Mr. NOONAN: Well, it's happening throughout California for every child, every school, every district. It's not something isolated just to those kids who are now in an immersion program. The second thing that's important to know here is that a recent study from Boston University shows that there was a lot of undertesting and underreporting of students in bilingual programs because in California, the parents are allowed to exempt their children from the exam. And the evidence is growing that a lot of teachers in schools were recruiting parents to do that in order to maintain high test scores and have only those kids who were proficient in English take the test. In our district, 98 percent of the kids throughout the district were tested, only a handful of Spanish-speaking children were not tested, and those primarily were because they were in special education or some other program. So in many cases, you may be comparing apples and oranges. We believe that the immersion program is working exceedingly well, but we need a few more years and I think we will see that the growth is real, it will be maintained and sustained over time. WILLIAMS: All right. Let me take call from Andre who's in Boston. Andre, welcome to TALK OF THE NATION. ANDRE (Caller): Hi. Thanks for taking my call. WILLIAMS: Sure. ANDRE: I just don't have a question, per se, but I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience. WILLIAMS: Where are you from, Andre? ANDRE: I'm originally from Venezuela. WILLIAMS: And when did you come to the United States? ANDRE: Twenty years ago--a little over 20 years ago, the late '70s, with my mother and three of my siblings. WILLIAMS: And what grade did you come into? ANDRE: Tenth grade. WILLIAMS: And could you speak English at that time? ANDRE: Nothing beyond `My name is Andre.' WILLIAMS: And so what kind of program did you--were you put in? Was it bilingual, immersion? ANDRE: Juan, to tell you the truth exactly, we came in on a Sunday and my younger sister and I went immediately the following Monday into a high school not knowing a word of English. And my two other brothers had already graduated from high school, so they couldn't go into high school and they went into an English program at a local college. Six months from that time, my sister and I were totally more proficient than my two brothers were. And partly the reason I think it was is because they related to a lot of other immigrants at that college, and they spent a lot more time with people that spoke their language and they felt more comfortably. After the classes were over, spending more time with them and speaking all their own languages. My sister and I were forced, day to day, to get by, not only in dealing with our homeworks and our class work, but in just basically getting around campus and getting to the bathroom and talking to our student friends and things like that. So I happen to be one that I think that the intention of bilingual education was one that was thought out with a nice purpose, but unfortunately I think it has failed a lot of students and a lot of young immigrants. WILLIAMS: So, Andre, do you think your brothers would agree? ANDRE: Definitely. WILLIAMS: Oh, even after their experience, they think they would have been better off if they were totally immersed in English. ANDRE: Yes. WILLIAMS: Eh, well, thank you for you for your call, Andre. ANDRE: You're welcome. WILLIAMS: Let me go to Joanne, who's in Portland, Oregon. Joanne, you're on TALK OF THE NATION. Welcome. JOANNE (Caller): Hello. WILLIAMS: Hi. JOANNE: I have a different perspective. We were in Canada for 10 years when our kids started school, and we had an option of putting them in French immersion. We did that when they were in kindergarten and first grade. They were there until they were in fifth and sixth grade. And it's the best thing we ever did for them. WILLIAMS: Now you're an American, right, Joanne? So you're an... JOANNE: Right. We were expat Americans. WILLIAMS: So the children were native speakers of English? JOANNE: Right. WILLIAMS: So you go into Canada and now you're in a French school district and you put the kids in total immersion French? JOANNE: No. We were in Edmonton, which was--you could choose immersion, and we chose immersion for the kids. It started out as immersion, and by third or fourth grade they were pretty much in a bilingual program. They were doing French in French and literature in French, and science and math in English. WILLIAMS: So how'd it work out, Joanne? JOANNE: Wonderfully. When we moved back to the States, they were--they both graduated from high school with honors. They both went on to college. One of them is, I think, truly biliterate. The other one had a head injury when she was 17 and has trouble with English as well as French now, but she can still speak French. WILLIAMS: So the bottom line for you is, you are a fan of total immersion. JOANNE: Well, I guess I'm a fan of kids learning two languages and keeping both languages no matter what it takes. WILLIAMS: But given your experience, what would be the best way to go about it? JOANNE: Probably with immersion early, switching into bilingual later. WILLIAMS: All right. Let me ask Steve Krashen to respond to you, Joanne. Now here, Steve, you see someone who had a different model, you know, the French-English model, but she comes down... Prof. KRASHEN: Not really. WILLIAMS: Well, OK. But she comes down on the side of immersion, something that you would not be supportive of. What do you say to her? Prof. KRASHEN: Well, let me thank Ken, Andre and Joanne for also supplying points that support my arguments. First of all, as far as Ken's report about the cheating on testing, that's another reason why we need controlled studies, why SAT 9 standardized test data is not clean data, and the controlled studies show that bilingual works very well. What happened to Andre and what happened to Joanne's children is similar. When kids come into school with a reasonable background, when they're at grade level in their primary language or come from a print-rich environment, they have had what we call de facto bilingual education. They've had subject matter knowledge in the first language, they've had literacy in the first language, and that makes the world more comprehensible. That's why Andre did well in school. That's why Joanne's children did well in a French immersion program. I'm a big supporter of the French immersion program. I was a French immersion parent. My daughter was in an immersion program when we lived in Ottawa. And these programs describe themselves as bilingual education. They're based on exactly the same principles as successful bilingual education programs in the United States. In other words, these programs work because the kids have a solid foundation in the first language. It supports bilingual education. WILLIAMS: But wait a second. I think Joanne said the kids were starting school, they were very young, weren't they, Joanne? JOANNE: They were five and six. WILLIAMS: So... Prof. KRASHEN: Yeah, they come from a middle-class home with print at home. Studies have been done of Canadian immersion, they found that the children at home still do a lot of reading in English, they read Judy Blume, they read Archie comic books, they have all the advantages that middle-class children have in terms of access to print, and that makes school much more comprehensible. WILLIAMS: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. So the issue then, Steve, is not really one about language. You're suggesting that it has to do with class and what's available in the home. Prof. KRASHEN: Oh, absolutely. We do see that children in bilingual programs do as well or better than children in all-English programs, but the children in both these programs quite often tend to be from a higher poverty area, and that... WILLIAMS: Joanne, what do you--I'm sorry. Prof. KRASHEN: ...overwhelms everything else. WILLIAMS: Joanne, is that--do you think that was a factor? JOANNE: Well, certainly we're a middle-class family who reads a lot, and we didn't read strictly in English at home. I have a little bit of French. And so when they were very young, we did kind of get them to read in French at home as well. But I agree that the kids did have the advantages of their own language acquisition. What I want to see for Spanish-speaking kids is that they become biliterate and not lose their Spanish. WILLIAMS: Well, I think everybody would share that feeling. Ms. Holland? Dr. HOLLAND: Yes. Mr. NOONAN: Juan? Dr. HOLLAND: I'd also like to interject here a minute because that--your statements, Steve, would, in fact, go against what we do with our poor population of Hispanics in the school. They learn both languages equally as well as the upper middle-class students do. I think the idea or the important thing here is, what is our premise? Do we believe in this country that children must be and should be only monolingual or do we support a bilingual policy for all children? WILLIAMS: Well, wait a second. I don't mean to be rude with the principal, and you're the principal, but I would say that's not my goal. My goal is to make sure, if I'm a parent of a child who is totally speaking Spanish and comes to this country, that the child is able to study, to be successful in school and go on to lead a successful life in this country. Mr. NOONAN: Juan? Dr. HOLLAND: Correct. Correct. Let... WILLIAMS: So if that's my goal, if that's the goal, shouldn't we be looking at the system or structure that allows that child the greatest chance of success? Dr. HOLLAND: I think what I'm trying to say is that bilingualism does not take away from intelligence, and I think that's what we're talking about here, that just because a child brings a language other than English into school, whether they are rich or poor, does not mean that they have to give up that language to become a worthy US citizen. WILLIAMS: But nobody's making that--at least... Dr. HOLLAND: You can build on it and you can use it to allow that child to become bilingual. WILLIAMS: I'm not making that argument, though. I'm not--in fact, I would think it would be a terrific asset to have a second language. But what I am saying is, you want that child to, as quickly as possible, get up to speed in English. Dr. HOLLAND: Correct. And why do you have to do it by just not addressing the language? The language that the child brings to school is a tool upon which to build, not something that you just eliminate or not address. WILLIAMS: Let me go to Andrea, who's in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Andrea, welcome. ANDREA (Caller): Hi. I'm calling in because this is kind of a sensitive subject for me, because I was born in Budapest, Hungary, and I came here when I was eight years old. And I got zero help learning English. And I've been listening to the show on and off because it's through my computer, so I haven't heard everything. However, I got zero help. And there seems to be such a big issue with helping Spanish people, but every other race seems to have migrated over here--you know, Irish, German, things like that--and it seems no one has helped them and they've been fine. And I know a lot of Spanish people that I went to high school with and things like that who just downright refused to learn English. And, you know, if you go to France, you speak French. And so it's kind of a sensitive subject because I speak English better than most Americans, to be honest with you, and I came here not uttering one word. WILLIAMS: Well, Andrea, I don't think that anyone is saying that somehow there was no help given to Germans, no help given to Italians when they came here. I think there were efforts made not as structured as the one being made now, but let me ask Steve Krashen to respond to you. ANDREA: OK. Prof. KRASHEN: Well, first of all, Andrea, (foreign language spoken). Second of all... ANDREA: Very good. Prof. KRASHEN: Yeah. I agree with our host on this show and I agree with you. I think I agree with Ken Noonan on this one. How do you like that? Mr. NOONAN: Amazing. Prof. KRASHEN: Yeah. I think English language acquisition is the number one priority, absolutely. We can talk about two goals of bilingual education: English, and that's academic English, and the second is the wonders and glories and advantages of being bilingual. And I support both of those goals, but there's no question that English comes first. If bilingual education weren't good for English, I certainly would not support it, and I'll come back and do the rest of your question in a moment. WILLIAMS: All right. Thanks, Steve. Andrea, thanks for your call. We're talking about teaching non-English-speaking students how to speak English. I'm Juan Williams. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. (Announcements) WILLIAMS: It's TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Juan Williams. Tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION, a look at doctors who are concerned about the effect a woman's age can have on her fertility. A new ad campaign is warning women against delaying pregnancy for too long. When is it too late for a woman to get pregnant? That's tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION. Today we're talking about different approaches to teaching English to non-English-speaking kids in American schools. What's the best approach? Our guests today are Steve Krashen, professor of education at the University of Southern California; Ken Noonan, superintendent of schools in Oceanside, California; Paquita Holland, outgoing principal of the Oyster Bilingual Elementary School in Washington, DC. And we're joined now by NPR's Claudio Sanchez. He covers education for NPR News. Of course, we want you to join the conversation. Call us. The number is (800) 989-TALK. The e-mail address, if you want to use your computer, is totn@npr.org. Claudio, welcome. Tell us a little bit about what's going on politically on this issue, both in terms of the states and here in Washington. CLAUDIO SANCHEZ (NPR News): Well, first, thank you for having me. I think there's been a sea change politically in this whole issue of bilingual education. Keep in mind that the flash point of this whole issue, at least in recent history, was in the mid-1990s, namely because of the extraordinary coverage of some really rather terrible instances in which parents and kids were dragged kicking and screaming to bilingual programs that they just didn't want. '96 was a flash point in Los Angeles, where we saw and heard for the first time of a boycott of a public school in central Los Angeles where kids were not learning, where parents were disappointed that their English was so poor that they literally boycotted the school and wanted the school shut down unless their kids were able to take English, or at least more extensively. WILLIAMS: So these are Hispanic parents. SANCHEZ: These were Hispanic parents, mostly in the garment district. After that we heard and saw Congress act very vigorously to try and limit bilingual education, as Ms. Paquita Holland and your guests know. Congress essentially banned what was then the $300 million amount of money that was being sent to states and localities. Much of that money was banned unless or if that money was spent on programs that lasted over six years. The attempt was to limit bilingual or Spanish language instruction as much as possible. Now since then, of course, we've seen political efforts at the state level, and one name that keeps coming up, of course, is the entrepreneur from Silicon Valley Ron Unz, who has orchestrated the California boycott, the California effort to repeal bilingual education. There was Arizona. There's now Colorado. There's activity in New York and Massachusetts. But what has changed now is the climate in which this discussion is taking place, and that climate, largely due to the man in the White House right now, has been defused. George Bush came into office having run schools, or at least having had some influence on the way that bilingual education debate in Texas had evolved, and there was no hostility, at least it was not perceived as a hostile effort in Texas, to try and dismantle bilingual education. It was really an effort to try and get a handle on the standards and the kind of expectations that educationally we should see in bilingual programs. And that effort, again not so much largely due to governors but also largely due to the standards movement, has helped kind of bring this conversation back to the issue that is most important, beyond the politics of it. The issue is educational quality, and as Ms. Holland has pointed out here, the question is: At what point do we really begin to demand of these programs not just proficiency in English, but at what point do we begin to build on those native language-speaking skills if the family and if the child are predisposed to this? Quality and standards for these programs is maybe one of the things that has been missing, and the reason we're now seeing less of an attack on bilingual education is because largely we've seen some improvement in some of these programs. WILLIAMS: Now there's lots of money at stake because the federal government does dedicate money to allow for bilingual training. So there are people--and part of the argument goes that there's an entire industry of people who make money because of federal grants to help with bilingual ed, and they are resisting changing then to the immersion programs. Is that fair or is that just more political spin, Claudio? SANCHEZ: I think it's a little bit of both. Now the money--and let me bring you back to that. I mean, we're not talking about a lot of money here that the federal government is spending. As I said, it was $300 million more or less three years ago. The Bush administration is actually raising or increasing the amount of money, closer now to $460 million. That is really a drop in the bucket given the expense of bilingual education. I mean, any bilingual program or any immersion program or any effort to, again, help children learn English can be and should be very expensive because it's very labor-intensive. In the case of--or instances, and very few instances, in which the program tries to get two staff people, for example, like in Oyster Elementary--there's another school, by the way, in Miami, one of the better-known and one of the first programs that was adopted in this country with a bilingual immersion model. I mean, the expense is really, really high. The question is: Are local school boards and states making that effort, or at least making that investment? The absolute answer to that is no. I mean, we've tried to teach kids who don't speak English in this country, to teach them English on the cheap. We've really assumed, you know, that it's essentially up to the locals to raise the money to teach these kids when we know that it's so labor-intensive. And again, we cannot do any of these programs on the cheap. WILLIAMS: Now, Claudio, you have children. In fact, I think in the spirit of full disclosure, we should say that 1.1 of your children was going to Ms. Holland's school. SANCHEZ: That's right, and I should have opened by sharing that with you. I mean, in my instance, we have a child in Dr. Holland's school, at Oyster, that we feel is doing precisely what we expected that school to do, which was to build on our daughter's bilingual ability, something that we as a family foster. On the other hand, our older son, who's now 14, we pulled out of a bilingual education program because it was simply not serving him well. It was not teaching him English or Spanish, for that matter. And so in many instances father--I mean, parents really come to the conclusion that, you know, depending on the quality of that program locally, you will either become an adversary or you will become a proponent of bilingual education. And that really strictly depends on the quality of the teachers and the quality of the school that is running it. WILLIAMS: And one last point on this political story, the House version of any effort now to support the notion of bilingual education calls for any bilingual program to end after three years. Is that something that the Bush administration's going to support? Is it something that might bring more money to the table for this effort? SANCHEZ: There is more money for this program with one condition, and again, the Bush administration, more so than Congress, is pushing this. The language in the president's blueprint on education is this: that it will turn all that money into a large block grant for states to spend as they see fit. That is very different than what has existed before, where a bilingual education guru at the Department of Education would essentially help earmark moneys that many perceive to be very biased. I mean, often the Department of Education was accused of being so crazy about bilingual education that that's really all they funded. Some of that was true. Much of it now, though, is quite balanced. What the Bush administration wants to do, though, and this is the key, it wants to limit--like the House of Representatives did a few years ago--it wants to limit the amount of time the children spend learning Spanish or something other than English. It wants to build on English proficiency, and it's doing that largely with the support of state governors and a lot of advocates who say, `Look, these kids are now having to meet standards in English and math and history and science, and we can no longer afford to keep these kids from learning English if the demands on them academically are going to increase.' And so that is really, you know, the hallmark of the Bush administration's policy on this issue. WILLIAMS: Let me take a call from Manny, who's in Albany, California. Manny, you're on TALK OF THE NATION. Welcome. MANNY (Caller): Yeah. Thanks for having me. WILLIAMS: Sure. MANNY: Great topic, very timely. I'm a teacher in Oakland, California. I've had the good fortune of being able to live with my kids--that is, move from the first grade to the second grade, with the same class--and I've had great success working in the first grade doing Spanish primarily with very heavy English language development. I've done this, and this is what we've done in our school because in the first grade, our kids are coming from homes where Spanish is the language and the parents don't speak English. So this is a way of getting the parents involved. If we were to give the kids English instruction exclusively, the parents would have, you know, a hard time helping their children out with their homework. And so... WILLIAMS: Now, Manny, I thought that the voters in California had said no to bilingual and that you were compelled to teach in English only. MANNY: Yeah, well, there is a waiver and a process, and our school--we have, you know, many parents have stepped up to the plate and applied for those waivers and they've gotten them. And what I see, Juan, is that by the time that they're in the second grade--like I say, I carry them over to the second grade--my kids are so ready for English, and I'll tell you, by the end of the second grade, these kids are reading the Judy Blumes and the Roald Dahls and what have you. These kids are doing so extremely well. The thing is with the testing, and this is where it just bugs the heck out of me, is that at my school, we have a high teacher turnover. You can't expect these kids to carry on, you know, under this kind of pressure when you subject them to teachers that are trying their hardest, but, you know, are still learning how to do it. WILLIAMS: Learning their skill. Thanks for the call, Manny. MANNY: Yeah. WILLIAMS: In fact, that supports the point that Claudio was making about quality being the key issue. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Let's go to John, who's in his truck on I-35 in Minnesota. John, you're on TALK OF THE NATION. Welcome. JOHN (Caller): Good evening, sir. WILLIAMS: Good evening. JOHN: Or afternoon. Excuse me. WILLIAMS: It's all right. JOHN: Interesting conversation you-all are having today. I wanted to mention a problem that we had in the state of Texas. I heard you-all talking about Bush and his things in Texas. In Texas, one of the problems that they have down there is they won't allow most of the school districts to segregate the non-English-speaking students at all, so... WILLIAMS: Oh, you mean it's against the law to have the students who speak only Spanish taught separately. JOHN: Correct, because they consider that segregation because you have too many Spanish people in one classroom. So therefore, they split all the non-English-speaking students up among the regular classrooms and... WILLIAMS: And your fear is that may slow down their learning. JOHN: It definitely does in my opinion. They evidently put one into my son's classroom, and rather than--because the teacher had no Spanish ability and had no way of conversing with this child, they told this child simply, `Copy off of this A student's paperwork until you get the hang of things.' WILLIAMS: You have the principal nodding here. Ms. Holland. Dr. HOLLAND: Actually, the best way to teach children language is to have children from different languages sharing languages with each other. Create that interdependence, which is what we do at Oyster. We don't segregate by language. We keep them all together. And, of course, we have teachers who are experts in teaching language and teaching second language acquisition. But it's an enriching situation where no child is put down because of the language that he or she speaks vs. another. But both are used to build on the child's success. Mr. NOONAN: Juan... WILLIAMS: I don't have time to take this call, but there's a caller in Oakland, California, Gene, who had a question for you, Ms. Holland. He wants to know how you're able to fund two teachers--one English, one Spanish--in the same classroom. Dr. HOLLAND: The school system from day one--and we are ready to celebrate our 30 years of success at Oyster--the school system funded the two teachers from the very beginning. WILLIAMS: The public school system. Dr. HOLLAND: The public school system, Washington, DC, public schools, and they have continued to do so based on its success. WILLIAMS: All right, Steve, I wanted to give you and Ken a chance to wrap up here, also Claudio. Where is this going? Where is this conversation going? What can we expect to see in the next few months? Prof. KRASHEN: Oh, I wish I knew. Mr. NOONAN: Well, let... Prof. KRASHEN: Oh, go ahead, Ken. Mr. NOONAN: Well, let me say a couple of things. First of all, I agree with the business of the immersion classes and in mixing the kids. Our children, Spanish-speaking, who have done the best are those who have been mixed with speakers of English, and that mixing has really helped a lot, whereas bilingual ed, most of the kids are segregated into bilanguage groups. Also, the Mexican children that we're getting in our schools are coming from rural Mexico, where they've had no education, no rich ...(unintelligible) in the home. WILLIAMS: There it becomes a class issue. Mr. NOONAN: Yeah. The... WILLIAMS: So, Claudio, what about from the federal point of view, the Bush administration? Can we expect anything? SANCHEZ: Well, we're going to see a friendlier environment for this conversation, and that's a good thing. What we don't know, of course, is how the states are going to respond essentially to the order from the federal government, which is, `You guys figure it out.' WILLIAMS: Steve Krashen, Ken Noonan, Paquita Holland, Claudio Sanchez, thank you all very much for joining us this afternoon. In Washington, Juan Williams, NPR News.