Parents of English-speaking students charged Thursday night that bilingual lessons are robbing their children of a good education, and they demanded the choice of removing them from the classes. More than 100 parents, teachers and administrators attended the forum at Dysinger Elementary School. Parents had to submit their questions in writing on cards _ they submitted 150. Because of time constraints, only eight were answered.

Parents of Dysinger students have been upset since August about the effectiveness of bilingual classrooms, where English-speaking students and those with limited English skills are taught simultaneously by a bilingual teacher.

The parents say their English-speaking children often are bored in class and are learning slower than children in regular classrooms. One woman said her son says the Pledge of Allegiance better in Spanish than English.

Their demand was simple: the right to move their children to English-only classrooms.

“The whole thing to me is to give parents a choice,” Bob Nix, whose daughter is a fifth-grader, told the five-member panel. “If my daughter was in a bilingual classroom, I’d want a choice to have her removed.”

Schools were mandated by federal courts in 1974 to provide bilingual education. The ruling said if non- or limited-English speaking students were required to attend school, then schools were required to provide lessons in the students’ native language.

About one-fourth of Orange County’s nearly 400,000 students have limited English skills.

The mandate means bilingual education is here to stay, said panelist Estella Acosta, a bilingual-education specialist for the Orange County Department of Education, who spoke before the meeting.

Opponents wrongly believe the classes emphasize Spanish, she said, but “teachers don’t stop teaching English.”



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