Initiative doesn't answer real needs

Proposition 227: Evidence supporting bilingual education is still weak.

In the three months since the Star published its first editorial recommending that voters reject Proposition 227, the case against the bilingual-education initiative on the June 2 ballot has grown even stronger.

Supporters of the initiative have mustered no new evidence to support their claim that non-English-speaking students need only a yearlong transition period before they’re sufficiently fluent to receive all their academic instruction in English. This presumption would be enshrined as law under Proposition 227, even though it remains woefully contrary to current knowledge about cognitive development and language acquisition.

Proponents have offered no compelling rebuttal, either, to the argument that local school districts are in a better position than the statewide electorate to design bilingual education programs suited to their children’s needs and to the community’s wishes.

Indeed, the main argument in favor of Proposition 227 — that California’s state-approved method of teaching non-English speakers is deeply flawed, taking far too long to produce English fluency — has been substantially undercut by the Legislature’s recent approval of a bill freeing local communities from rigid adherence to the statewide standard. That bill now awaits Gov. Pete Wilson’s signature.

Even if that reform fails to make it past the governor, the Department of Education has agreed to give local districts the freedom to experiment, approving waivers for those wishing to abandon their traditional bilingual programs.

The Star reiterates its opposition to the initiative.

Proposition 227 would sweep away all the bilingual education programs in California, the successes along with the failures, and replace them with a developmentally unsound approach that treats all students and all districts alike.

It would provide no testing mechanism to gauge the effects of this revolution, and would guarantee only that vast numbers of students would be unable to fully comprehend their lessons in such critical subjects as math, history, science and literature.

Nearly a quarter of the state’s 5.5 million schoolchildren have limited English proficiency, and an unacceptably tiny fraction of them achieve fluency each year. That’s a problem California must address, but dooming those children to a substandard education isn’t the answer.



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