LOS ANGELES—An unlikely partnership between a Mexican-American grandmother and a Silicon Valley tycoon appears to have put an end to bilingual education in Arizona.

With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Arizona’s Proposition 203 led 63 percent to 37 percent. The initiative requires public schools to junk bilingual education for immigrant students in favor of one year of intensive “immersion” in English.

In 1998, Maria Mendoza of Tucson, a former teacher’s aide and longtime crusader against teaching students in Spanish rather than in English, borrowed her brother’s computer to send an e-mail to Ron Unz. She eventually got through to the software entrepreneur, who was sponsoring Proposition 227 in California to ban bilingual education.

Mendoza wrote: “I am very glad that this racist program is finally going to be axed from California schools. With the immersion in English and the intensive phonics instruction that the State of CA has adopted, minority children will at last taste the equal opportunity to achieve equal education in the public schools.” She concluded, “We need your help!”

She got it. After Unz won in California with 61 percent of the vote, he turned his attention toward Arizona. The slightly built and intense physicist-turned-businessman donated a reported $200,000 to start “English for the Children” in the Grand Canyon state. Mendoza became the co-chairwoman. Its other leaders included Norma Alvarez, a former bilingual education backer, and Margaret Garcia-Dugan, principal of Arizona’s Glendale High School. The enthusiastic support that many Hispanic parents gave the initiative damaged the credibility of bilingual supporters’ charges of racism.

Although Arizona Congressman Matt Salmon sided with Mendoza and Unz, almost the entire establishment of the state disapproved. The disdain with which the leading newspapers treated the anti-bilingual movement was still evident in the Arizona Republic’s post-election reporting. A wrap-up of election results referred to Proposition 203 as “the highly contentious and divisive ballot initiative.”

Despite charges that Unz was a California carpetbagger, Arizona voters gave the initiative a 50-point lead in most polls. Latino interest groups cut that margin in half by Election Day. They did it in part by pointing to an important aspect of Arizona life that Unz, a native Californian, admits he never thought about: Native American languages.

Most voters appeared to feel that immigrants who choose to come to the United States should expect to have their children educated in English. Some, though, seemed to develop qualms about requiring English immersion for American Indians who preferred to have their children educated in both English and their tribal language. After all, Native Americans didn’t decide to come to the United States. Instead, the United States decided to come to the American Indians.

Nonetheless, the initiative easily carried most Arizona counties, except for Indian-dominated ones like those of the Apache and Navajo. Mendoza predicted, “It’s going to be a different future. Immigrant students are going to finally learn to speak English, read English and write English.”



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