The Pitched Battle Over Bilingual Education

It Does More Harm Than Good

A young boy, Tony Velasquez enters his first-grade classroom each day to do what little boys do at school: read, write, spell and do math, and –hopefully — learn.

His mother and father are eager to watch their son progress in his reading and writing skills. During the school year, his parents notice that Tony is not improving his English skills and inquire as to the reason.

Tony has been placed in a bilingual classroom. Instruction in English is not a part of his daily lessons.

No matter that Tony and his parents speak primarily English in their household. No matter that Tony’s parents have asked the school to move their son out of the bilingual education class so that he may instructed English. They were told no!

Tony is now in second grade and his mother tutors him each night in reading, spelling and writing English to make sure her son develops the skills she feels are important to his future.

Why would a school reject a parent’s wish to have her child learn English?

Money, to the tune of $400 million each year, is a fitting reason. For the past 20 or 30 years, California schools have been locked into a bizarre policy of bilingual education, which actually means that many of these young schoolchildren are taught little or no English, but instead receive nearly all their instruction in their native language (usually Spanish), often from uncredentialed teachers.

While the bilingual education budget has doubled in the past decade, test scores and English literacy for English learners has fallen.

With 33 years of specializing in teaching English learners, I can tell you that bilingual education has been a disaster. Since 1968, when the federal bilingual education act took effect, many people and special interest groups have been trying to justify the existence and success of the bilingual education program.

The National Research Council released a report in May stating that the U.S. Department of Education’s management of bilingual education research has been a total failure — wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, using the research agenda for political purposes to justify a program that has not proven its worth, and not making its research available to the educators who could use it to improve their school programs.

English learners are not becoming English literate. English literacy should be the goal for the existence of bilingual education. That was the original intent and primary goal of the program.

The English for the Children initiative, a ballot measure proposed for June 1998, would require that children be taught English as soon as they begin school unless their parents object.

Under the initiative’s guidelines, English learners would be placed in a sheltered English immersion classroom with the stated goal of English literacy and transition into a mainstream English classroom, usually in one school year.

The initiative’s author, Ron Unz, works under the following common sense guidelines:

First, the earlier a child learns a new language, the better. Children have an amazing capacity for learning. Bilingual education delays the learning of English. Children who leave school without English literacy skills are being cheated.

California’s bilingual education program is not only failing our children, it’s failing California’s future as a global economic power. It’s bankrupting California education, intellectually, politically and fiscally.

This initiative creates parental choice by allowing parents to keep their children in bilingual choice by allowing parents to keep their children in bilingual education programs if it seems best for the child. If parents can provide some indication that a current bilingual program will actually help their child learn English more quickly and benefit their child’s overall education, then a waiver is available to that parent.

Federal law requires that students who are not native language speakers have the right to extra instructional help. The initiative provides this help through its sheltered English immersion program and through provisions ensuring that students with special needs, such as learning disabilities, do not fall through the cracks. Such students are offered waivers so that parents can choose the educational method that works best for their child.

Nearly a quarter of our state’s entire public school enrollment –l.3 million California children –are classified in the bilingual education system.

In 10 months, if the English for the Children initiative qualifies for the ballot, it will improve California’s educational system, eliminate mandated bilingual education, empower parents, teach English, save taxpayer dollars and will not short-change children such as Tony.



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