Lawmaker slams immersion-type English classes Howard Fischer PHOENIX - Arizona should scrap part-time English immersion courses for Spanish-speaking students, a lawmaker said yesterday. Sen. Joe Eddie Lopez, D-Phoenix, said he wants to replace the programs with long-term, two-way bilingual education, in which bilingual teachers would instruct English- and Spanish-speaking students. Lopez made his comments after two George Mason University professors said their research shows that students in short-term programs end up as far behind their peers when they finish school as when they started. Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier looked at about 700,000 language-minority students in five large school districts across the country from 1982 to 1996. Thomas said yearlong English-immersion programs such as the type being considered for a 2000 ballot initiative here are the least effective because a single year of instruction provides only "playground English." "Academic English is not taught in one year," he said. Students in English-immersion programs also fall back in other subjects during the year they are taught only English, he said. The best results come from "quality, long-term, enrichment bilingual programs," he said. Test results of non-native English speakers start out in the lowest quarter of overall student performance, the study showed. Those scores don't improve after years of "pullout" programs, in which students are taken out of regular classes for an hour or so at a time to learn English. Students in programs such as the one Lopez proposes eventually get above-average test scores, the study said. Virginia Collier, the other researcher, said these kinds of programs eventually should be less expensive than the kinds of programs many Arizona schools now offer. She said schools that remove youngsters with limited English skills from their regular classrooms for part of the day have to hire special teachers. Having all students taught together removes that need, Collier said. She conceded there are not enough teachers now who are fluent in Spanish and English. Collier said it would be necessary to require that at least half of all new teachers produced by the state's universities and hired by schools have a working knowledge of Spanish. Lopez said he is working on legislation to add this method of teaching English to the list of those considered eligible for supplemental state funding. At the same time, he wants to cut off additional aid to schools that offer "pullout" programs in which students are taken from regular classes. "We don't think that programs that provide 45 minutes to an hour are doing any good," he said. Lopez's legislation, to be introduced when lawmakers reconvene in January, comes a step ahead of a plan by a group called English for the Children of Arizona to wage a ballot fight in 2000 to enact a plan similar to Proposition 227, approved by California voters in June. That would provide a single year of English immersion. Earlier this year, the state House of Representatives approved a measure to limit bilingual education to four years. The measure died in the Senate. |