The end of bilingual education? BY: Jill Tucker After 25 years of bilingual education in California classrooms, educators, policy makers and parents can't agree on how to most effectively teach children the English language while ensuring they don't fall behind academically. Critics of English immersion instruction -- most notably Hispanic community groups -- portray efforts to dismantle bilingual education as an attack against immigrant communities. Not so, says Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley millionaire and founder of the controversial bilingual education state ballot initiative. The measure, English for the Children, proposes to dismantle bilingual education in California. The initiative, in fact, would have little financial impact on the state's educational system. Bilingual instruction accounts for about 0.4 percent of the state's $27billion education budget each year. In addition, California received about $55million in federal funds last year under the Bilingual Education Act. But the initiative would not allow a cut in the special funding allocated for children learning English. Unz and his supporters, however, say the bilingual education community is a self-serving group trying to sustain a program that fails to teach children English. Last year, 24,163 teachers out of about 150,000 in California taught in bilingual classrooms, receiving up to $5,000 more each in some districts for the bilingual certification. |