Flaws in Bilingual Education Law Need Attention

NEW JERSEY’S bilingual education law didn’t make sense when it was enacted 20 years ago. It still doesn’t.

The law requires that many public-school pupils whose primary language is not English must receive full-time instruction in that language. The laudable goal was effective education for Spanish-speaking urban kids.

The law was adopted in the first year of the governorship of Brendan Byrne, when the Legislature was also in Democratic hands. An eligibility cutoff was set. If 20 or more pupils in a school district spoke the same foreign language, the law took effect for those children.

It didn’t matter what grades they were in, or which schools. If there were 21 Japanese in a district, for instance, and seven of them were kindergartners, seven were eighth-graders, and seven were high school juniors, the law applied. In such a case, at least three Japanese-speaking teachers would have to be hired, to teach very small classes. That’s what the law said, although classes in the rest of the district might average 30 children each.

Even if the district could afford it, qualified teachers were often hard to find. In Hispanic neighborhoods, Spanish-speaking elementary-grade teachers might be available, but throughout the state, teachers fluent in Asian languages were scarce. Even rarer were foreign-language-speaking teachers qualified in math or science.

Englewood Cliffs, for example, has a large number of Asian students. The district has advertised over the years for a Japanese-speaking teacher. It got just one response, from someone who wasn’t certified.

With new waves of immigration, communities that used to be almost entirely English-speaking now accommodate sizable numbers of families that speak Gujarati, Turkish, Polish, Macedonian, Bengali.

For many districts, compliance with the law is simply impossible.

The response of the school establishment has been “English as a Second Language.” This teaching specialty, involving intensive instruction in English for foreign-language students, didn’t exist a generation ago.

Now it is common.

It is common and by and large it works, preparing pupils for mainstream, English-language instruction. Young children absorb American English easily. Fluency is harder for older pupils, but lists of suburban valedictorians regularly show high achievement by foreign-born students.

Last week, however, the state education commissioner released a formal opinion by the attorney-general’s office on bilingual education.

The lawyers said that courses in English as a second language did not fulfill districts bilingual responsibility. The lawyers analysis is persuasive. The bilingual education law is clear and specific. It doesn’t say that districts will provide such instruction if it can reasonably be done, or if suitably trained teachers are available. The law says flatly that it will be provided.

So what should be done? Amend the law. Make it flexible. Ah, but that has been proposed before, leading to emotional debates about race and ethnic bias. Opposition to change has been particularly sharp in the Hispanic community. There a sizable bilingual education system has developed, with well-paid teachers backed by politicians who see mainstreaming as a threat to group cohesion.

Complicating the picture is that not every parent of a child with limited English wants bilingual education. To the contrary. Many parents recognize that to succeed in America, you must speak fluent English. The sooner the language is mastered, the better.

In Palisades Park, where there is no bilingual program although 35 percent of the students are Korean, most of the Korean parents oppose bilingual instruction, according to the schools superintendent. I can believe it.

In school districts that do have bilingual education, some parents have tried to extricate children from the program. They have had to fight to do it.

Three years ago the bilingual education law was amended to provide an exit route. It isn’t simple. The child must pass an English proficiency test and obtain the approval of the school staff.

If the staff says the child isn’t ready, the parent can appeal to the education commissioner. But how many striving immigrants have the knowledge, gumption, and time to do that?

Parents wanting mainstream education for their children would like to put the burden of proof on the school instead of the family. They have the support of the education commissioner, Leo Klagholz, but the change will require action by the Legislature.

Assemblyman Rudy Garcia, a Hudson Democrat who presents himself as a representative of the Latino community, said educators, not parents, are best able to determine whether a child can transfer to an English-only curriculum. That is a remarkable and, I think, politically unsustainable position.

The time has come for thorough revision of the bilingual education law. The attorney-general’s opinion provides a year for the task. That’s long enough.

James Ahearn is a contributing editor.



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