Bilingual Program Takes A New Tack

Eastside school teaching students basic skills in native tongue

Bilingual education is the kind of political hot potato that no one wants to touch. There hasn’t been a major revision in the Los Angeles school district’s program for almost a decade.

But Larry Gonzalez, the board member who represents the heavily Latino Eastside, has decided to change the direction of the district’s bilingual policies. He has introduced a motion, which is scheduled for a vote Monday, that would expand a program that emphasizes teaching children basic skills in their native language instead of stressing that they learn English.

There are currently 134,000 limited-English-speaking students in the Los Angeles school district. About 100,000 of these students are in elementary school and most are in classrooms in which lessons are taught concurrently in English and another language.

By September, Gonzalez would like to see 10 to 15 district schools begin working on a bilingual program that has been in use at Eastman Elementary School for the last four years.

At Eastman, an East Los Angeles school with 1,721 students, Spanish-speaking students are taught demanding subjects, such as math, reading and social studies, in Spanish. Less demanding subjects, such as art, physical education and music, are taught entirely in English. Students who are fluent in English receive all their lessons in English in separate classrooms.

Spanish-speaking students do take English-as-a-second language classes and once a student becomes fluent, which takes about four years, they are transferred to all-English classes, according to Principal Bonnie Rubio.

Since implementation of the program, Eastman students have scored higher on standardized tests than pupils in neighboring Eastside and downtown schools. Additionally, Rubio said, they are able to make the transition from all-Spanish classes to all-English classes easier than their counterparts who have been in traditional bilingual classrooms.

Eastman along with six other California schools instituted the bilingual program as an experiment sponsored by the California Department of Education.

“Most of the other schools in this experiment have had similar results as the ones at Eastman, but at Eastman the results are more dramatic, more clear-cut,” said David Dolson, a consultant with the bilingual education office of the state’s Education Department.

“This method of teaching seems to be especially effective for children who start in kindergarten and stay with the program for several years,” he said.

Rubio added that since Eastman began separating Spanish speakers from English speakers the school needs fewer bilingual teachers. Because most California school districts, including Los Angeles, do not have enough qualified bilingual teachers, educators have long sought ways to reduce the need for large numbers of bilingual teachers.

“Something is working at Eastman that, perhaps, is not working in neighboring schools,” Gonzalez said. “I believe that if it’s well planned out, the Eastman model can be implemented in other schools where there is a high percentage of limited English speakers.”

Area of Controversy

One of the controversial parts of the Eastman plan is the assignment of students to classes based on their competence in English. California law states that, whenever possible, English-speaking students should make up at least one-third of a bilingual class to avoid segregating non-English-speaking students from English-speaking students.

In the Eastman plan, the only class time the two groups mix are during art, music and physical education sessions. All of these classes, which make up about a third of the school day, are taught in English, even for the Spanish-speaking students.

Based on comments of board members during discussions last week, there appears to be a sentiment to expand the program on a limited basis. However, David Armor, who was recently elected and will be officially joining the board Monday, has stated his opposition to bilingual education and could ask for the vote to be delayed.

Approval of the Gonzalez proposal may also be hampered by the experimental nature of the Eastman program and the worry by some board members that passage of the motion could be interpreted as a signal that Eastman is the model for all future district bilingual programs.

Won’t Be ‘Bamboozled’

“I’m not going to be bamboozled into saying that some kind of program is a panacea,” said board member Roberta Weintraub. “If this was just a vote to say that the principal and staff at Eastman have done a terrific job, I would have no problems. But I do not leap onto a bandwagon quickly.

“I’m not crazy about bilingual education,” Weintraub continued. “But I think before the board endorses one program over another it should at least have an outside evaluation of the district’s current bilingual program.”

But Gonzalez believes that the Eastman method, which concentrates on gradually transfering a student’s academic training into English, makes more sense.

“Study after study shows that if youngsters are proficient in the basic skills in their dominant language, those skills can be easily transferred to another language,” Gonzalez said. “When you have a Hispanic attrition rate of over 47%, without a doubt one of the key problems is language.”

Gonzalez would like to see the Eastman model used at schools in which Asian languages are dominant. Jessie Franco, the assistant superintendent in charge of the district’s bilingual division, agrees that the Eastman model could be easily copied. But she warned that textbooks and bilingual teachers for Asian-language students are scarce. Developing an Eastman model for Asian-language-dominated schools could put a strain on already limited resources.

“The fundamental principle of bilingual education, contrary to the belief of many, is that we want our children to be proficient in reading and writing of English,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t think that 100% of the educational community in Los Angeles supports bilingual education, but it is my belief that programs that meet our goal of providing a quality education to every youngster despite the language they speak should be implemented throughout the school district.”



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