Arizona's bilingual ed system thrown out by voters

PHOENIX—As of next fall, Arizona’s public schools will no longer be able to offer students optional bilingual education.

The state’s voters saw to that in Tuesday’s election, approving a measure abolishing traditional bilingual education and replacing it with intensive one-year English immersion programs.

Voters supported Proposition 203 by a wide margin.

Hector Ayala, a co-founder of English for the Children-Arizona, which sponsored the initiative, praised the outcome. “The voting public showed intelligence and great compassion,” he said, “because it’s about time that we do something right for the Hispanic community.”

Ayala said the vote demonstrated the public was fed up with bilingual education.” He said the immersion program probably will begin next school year – giving schools sufficient time to make preparations for the change.

The ballot measure was modeled after an initiative approved by California voters in 1998 with 61 percent of the vote. Millionaire Ron Unz, who backed California’s Proposition 227, supported the Arizona movement with $130,000.

Interpretation of the California law varied; some California school districts went all-English while others kept as much as 40 percent of the day in Spanish. Thousands of parents exercised a loophole letting them request reinstatement of bilingual education. Many schools did drop or revise bilingual programs, however.

Arizona’s law will have no such wiggle room.

Under it, parents of some children with special needs will have the ability to request a waiver from the immersion program, but teachers or school administrators will be able to turn them down without explanation.

Any teacher or administrator who fails to carry out the new statute’s requirements will face being held personally liable for fees and damages and face banishment from a public school position for five years.

A leading foe of the proposition in the Arizona Legislature, state Sen. Joe Eddie Lopez, D-Phoenix, vowed the fight is not over.

“We intend to pursue every legal means in order to see that the best educational program is put before limited English-speaking students, and we think that part of that mixture is going to involve bilingual education,” Lopez said.

Josue Gonzalez, director of Arizona State University’s Center for Bilingual Education and Research, said the outcome was “an unfortunate thing” for Arizona’s children.

Proponents argued the bilingual education program needed to be scrapped because not enough students were learning enough English to do well in school or get decent jobs.

Opponents said the initiative was racist, affecting mostly Hispanic and American Indian children. Indian educators in particular said they considered it another way of eradicating Indians and their languages.

Backers of the proposition denied any racism.



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