One year later: Classrooms not for English only

Prop. 227 was meant to kill bilingual education. It hasn't happened yet.

Claudia Quintero reads a page of her second-grade textbook aloud in English. She pronounces the words correctly as she speeds through the text. But Claudia, whose native language is Spanish, does not pause at the periods or laugh at the jokes.

And when asked about the plot of the story, the Lake Elsinore youngster sits silent and shrugs her shoulders.

About 40 miles away in Riverside, second-grader Victor Ramirez holds a book in the crook of his arm and reads aloud in Spanish during an impromptu class play. He giggles as a classmate hugs him on cue, then glances back to the story for the next line.

Both Inland-area students are attending schools one year after voters approved an initiative designed to end bilingual education in California. Many expected the state’s schools to swap out Spanish for English like the flip of a flashcard, but interpretations of the mandate to teach “overwhelmingly in English” vary from district to district, school to school and even classroom to classroom.

“There is every possible variation of the theme you could imagine,” said Tom Destino, an assistant professor at UC Riverside who has studied the effects of Prop. 227 on the Banning, Jurupa and Redlands school districts.

State officials say Prop. 227 has brought dramatic change in some places and nary a ripple in others. Those who were anticipating a statewide revolution would be disappointed. Only about one-third of the state’s 1.4 million, limited-English speakers were getting bilingual instruction before the initiative passed because of a shortage of bilingual teachers.

“This was the first year and there have been some shifts, but there has not been a radical shift around the state,” said Norm Gold, manager of the language proficiency and academic accountability unit at the state Department of Education. “It’s been talked of like a tornado effect rather than a hurricane.”

A breakdown of services provided to those learning English in local school districts shows an overall move away from native-language instruction in academic subjects such as reading, math and history to a greater focus on teaching children how to speak, read and write in English. Statewide numbers on services for limited-English speakers have not yet been compiled. Teachers and educational experts say it appears that Spanish-speaking students — who make up the vast majority of those learning English in the Inland area — are picking up English faster, but there is concern that they are slipping in basic math and reading skills.

Rialto kindergarten teacher Myriam Capella was told to put away her Spanish materials 10 months ago and now uses Spanish only when she needs to clarify complicated concepts or directions for her English-learning students. She said children in this group are more likely than those in previous classes to run up to the principal and say “Hello,” in English.

“I’m pleased that they are speaking English and will approach another child on the playground. Orally they are coming along. Academically, it’s still too early for me to say,” Capella said.Is it working?

It could be several years before the impact of Prop. 227 can be accurately measured on a statewide scale, experts say. No official study was commissioned to gauge the proposition’s effects, but Rep. Kerry Mazzoni, D-Novato, has authored a bill that calls for one.

Proponents of Prop. 227 hope to use results of the statewide Stanford 9 achievement test, which should be released in mid-July, to prove their claims that more English in the classroom helps students. But many educators say that testing English-learning students in a language they have not mastered yields worthless data.

Additionally, educators caution against reading too much into statistics that show how many limited-English speaking students are reclassified as fluent in English each year. School districts have varying criteria to measure when a child has mastered the language.

In the meantime, a few research groups are looking for answers in the classroom. Their findings range from predictions of educational disaster to the conclusion that Prop. 227 has been a pleasant surprise for some teachers who expected the worst.

“The sense we have is educators are consistently saying it’s not as bad as they thought it would be,” said Tim Schultz, director of communications for U. S. English in Washington, D. C., which seeks to preserve English as America’s first language. “Parents are choosing English when they have achoice.” But Destino at UCR and researchers at UCLA say they have observed that the emphasis on learning English is taking priority over reading skills, and they fear the youngsters could fall behind.

Laura Bent, a second-grade teacher in Lake Elsinore, said success in her class of all native Spanish-speaking students depends on the child. “The kids who were doing well in Spanish are still doing well,” she said. “Those who were struggling in Spanish are struggling still in English.” Erica Barajas, one of Bent’s pupils, prints definitions for her vocabulary words from a dictionary. She makes sure the letters are straight, quickly erasing if she makes mistakes. She says math is by far her favorite subject. “Sometimes I get A,” she says.

Across the room, her twin brother, Manuel, is giggling and whispering in Spanish to his friends. Most in the group have not written more than a line during the past 15 minutes.

Bent says Erica is thriving in the new English environment, while Manuel is falling behind.

Francisco Barajas, the children’s father, has noticed such a difference as well. Barajas speaks limited English. He says in Spanish that the sudden switch from Spanish to English has been difficult for his youngest son. “My boy is falling behind since they changed to English and I can’t help him because the work is in English,” he said. “I feel like my hands are tied.” In the Riverside Unified School District, in which students still learn to read in Spanish but receive math lessons in English, teachers are split.

A November survey of teachers described more children using English around campus. At the same time, the majority of teachers expressed concern that they were not covering enough material and that classroom participation had nose-dived.But Taft Elementary School teacher Maria Dominguez said although her students may have worked at a slower pace, they still grasped math concepts taught in English.

Many of Dominguez’s second-graders started writing in both English and Spanish near the end of the year. Student math worksheets stapled on one classroom wall are covered in both languages. Some students scrawled answers in English to a word problem. Others first answered the question using Spanish, then translated their answers into English.

“A lot of them are doing very well in English writing without lessons,” she said. “They’re making those connections themselves.”

But Gold, with the state Department of Education, cautioned that impressions or anecdotal studies will not provide a verdict on Prop. 227. “It’s not scientifically acceptable to go on what’s happening in 10 classrooms,” he said.An Inland-area vision

Many school districts never expected Prop. 227 to make it to the classroom. The voter initiative, approved in April 1998, was spearheaded by computer software millionaire Ron Unz. The measure called for change within months and many districts expected court challenges to either shut down or delay the initiative.

By midsummer last year it was clear, Prop. 227 was going forward. Some districts had only weeks to overhaul their programs. Others on schedules that started in July switched gears midterm. The results, some say, were many knee-jerk reactions based on a hazily written law.

“The time within which they had to respond and the lack of clarity in some of the areas really caused tremendous confusion,” said Rocio Moss, Riverside County Office of Education coordinator.

Some districts are still re-evaluating their programs and fine-tuning offerings. Dozens of school administrators and teachers attended a one-day summit in late June at the Riverside County Office of Education, where lawyers and educators discussed a county vision for teaching English-learning students.

Eliseo Davalos, bilingual coordinator for Corona-Norco Unified School District, said educators have moved past the initial fear of violating the law and are now focusing on what will work for students.

“We’re living this thing still every day,” he said. “At first, we had no place to go and we kind of propped each other up so nobody would fall. But just like anything else, it’s going to be eternal revision, revision,revision.” In Corona-Norco, kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers kept Spanish instruction during language arts and history lessons this school year. But because some schools did not have enough bilingual teachers and the district wants a consistent program, they decided to further scale back Spanish instruction. Next school year, English-learning kindergartners through second-graders will receive only their reading lessons in Spanish. Defending student rights

As school districts continue adjusting their bilingual programs to comply with state law, they also answer to a higher authority — federal law, which guarantees students access to academic lessons regardless of their native languages.

While Prop. 227 says nothing about academics, school districts cannot simply put English-learning students in English-only classrooms without any further assistance, state officials said.

“There are lots of interpretations to this law and it is not precisely written,” Lauri Burnham, state bilingual consultant, said. “We want to make sure districts don’t implement in a way that violates children’s rights.” As some districts dissolve bilingual classrooms and move English-learning students into the general student population, the responsibility for teaching them has shifted from small groups of bilingual teachers to almost all teachers.

Some districts, including Redlands and Lake Elsinore, now require all teachers to receive special training on using pictures and gestures to help English-learning students understand concepts.

That shift means that more students who are learning English will have teachers who have received special training to meet their needs. Most Inland-area school districts showed surges in total numbers of students served. For example, 1,031 Redlands students received no native-language instruction at all last year. That number shrunk to 132 this year. Looking to the future

As the public continues to demand proof of classroom quality, the same will be true of programs given to children who do not speak fluent English, experts say.

The state Department of Education is creating a new group of tests for all English-learning students. The new program would track not only progress in acquiring the language, but also academics.

Standards of performance for these students were recently passed by the state board of education, but some further changes will be made. As this new system evolves, school districts must decide how new English-learning students will be handled under new state laws requiring an end to social promotion.

“If students do not have primary language support and don’t speak sufficient language to read the books and take the tests, are you going to fail all those students?” asked Moss of the Riverside County office of Education.

While most educators agree that Prop. 227 has created confusion, some believe it has prompted long overdue scrutiny of the way schools teach English and that it has focused public attention on students’ success inschool. That alone could be the measure’s most positive lasting impression, Destinosaid. “It’s good attention is being focused on the situation of second-language kids in schools. It should have happened 30 years ago,” Destino said. “On the other hand, the problem with fixation on an issue like this is that you end up with panaceas being created and the quick fix.”

Staff writer Sharon McNary contributed to this report.

Kamrhan Farwell can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at (909)-245-2934.

Jennifer Leuer can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at (909) 782-7567.



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