Advocates say state must embrace bilingual education to solve learning dilemma

BOISE, Idaho—Spanish can be heard in the halls of Idaho’s public schools where the echoes of past students were only in English.

As the number of Hispanic pupils in Idaho swells to 25,000, 17,000 are in limited-English proficient programs so they can understand their classes and turn around a dropout rate three times the state average.

But advocates for Hispanics charge that while Idaho spends millions of dollars to teach those children, the state lacks the will to truly address the problem. They call for a bilingual education in which Spanish-speaking children do not lose ground while they learn their second language.

“If it was any other student population group who was scoring at the lowest percentile on standardized scores, 50 percent not reading at grade level, 50 percent dropping out of school, what would we do?” said Sam Byrd of the Council on Hispanic Education, which is working to turn around the dropout rate. “What kind of concern would be expressed by legislators and the governor?”

Idaho’s Hispanic population has grown to 100,000 and not just down on the farm. Byrd said they are following the jobs so it is the fastest growing ethnic group in Boise. But their statewide dropout rate of up to 60 percent compares with a 20 percent rate for all students.

An Idaho House-passed measure notes Hispanic and other English-limited children score at least 25 percentage points behind their peers on standardized tests such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. More than half scored below their grade on the new Idaho Reading Indicator Test for gauging English reading skills in kindergarten through third grade.

The lawmakers call on state educators to gather information on every district’s effort to provide a thorough education for those students and report back before the next session.

Idaho already has an arsenal of weapons to help teach them English.

Eighty-five school districts have access to programs for limited-proficiency students. There is migrant preschool for children 3 to 5 years. And some elementary schools around the state with significant limited-English populations receive federal aid to improve reading.

In the new indicator test, youngsters offer important information on their reading skills. Kindergartners, for example, are asked to write their name or count the number of syllables in a word.

The first indicator test in Spanish will be conducted this fall, said Molly Jo de Fuentealba, specialist in the Department of Education’s Limited English Proficiency Program.

If the Nampa School District is any sign, Hispanics will perform better in Spanish. Nampa now has a bilingual elementary curriculum in which children continue learning in their native language while emphasizing mastery in English.

In a 1998 test using the Spanish format, Nampa educators found 61 percent of 100 Spanish-speaking elementary and high school students tested were at or above the national average for their groups.

“They moved to depoliticize bilingual education,” Byrd said. “They’ve been willing to take pressure from patrons who misinterpret the reason. Here’s a district that’s trying to do something. Yet it’s as if they were on an island, and no one knows what they’re doing may, in fact, work.”

Fuentealba said it was up to each district to set its approach to limited-English students. She noted that a study by Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier of George Mason University showed developmental bilingual education produced the best results for youths who began school with no proficiency in English.

Many Idaho residents contend those children should plunge into English to master it before studying other subjects.

Robert Bahruth, a Boise State University education professor, has written a book called “Literacy Con Carino,” or “Literacy with Love.” In 1982, he took on a group of Hispanic students who had flunked year after year.

“Everybody thought the problem was in the children. As soon as I included their language and culture, they made phenomenal gains.”

Bahruth brings up Education Secretary Richard Riley’s call for public school districts to establish in the next five years 1,000 new dual-language schools that instruct children in English and in a native language such as Spanish.

“One of the strongest predictors of success is the children’s self-concept. The schools can’t raise their self-concept when they’re trashing their first language,” Bahruth said.

“All standardized tests are actually language proficiency tests and the native speaker is going to have an advantage,” he said. “You can’t have anyone at the 99th percentile without someone at the first percentile.”

Byrd said some sea change must come soon to resolve the dilemma and help prevent the subsequent failures Hispanics suffer. The state is dangerously close to being out of compliance with federal law regarding the children’s civil rights, he contends.

“I think the Council on Hispanic Education is quickly coming to the conclusion that these are at best Band-Aid attempts to avoid a legal battle. We’re not threatening, but it appears the only thing that gets attention is when it gets to level where we have to fight these things in court.”

In the face of Idaho’s language shortcomings, Byrd said the only attitude he can take is optimism.

“I look at it with the point of view of hope. A lot of us came here as migrant farmworkers, which was a hopeless situation,” he said. “We survive on hope and magic: the hope that things will be better and a little magic to change things.”



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