WASHINGTON—U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett said the government’s bilingual education program has failed and should be changed to put more emphasis on teaching foreign students English.
Schools have been spending too much time and too many resources to teach in Spanish and other foreign languages, he said in a speech prepared for delivery Thursday in New York City before the Association for a Better New York. The text was made available in advance.
Bennett charged that “after sound beginnings” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the federal policies governing bilingual education “went astray …. Too many children have failed to become fluent in English.”
The government has funneled $1.7 billion in bilingual education aid to school districts since 1968.
Federal civil rights officials in the 1970s began pressuring school districts to teach students with limited English in their native tongue and until 1984 forbade schools from using the funds for classes that relied soley on intensive English instruction.
“After 17 years of federal involvement, and after $1.7 billion of federal funding, we have no evidence that the children whom we sought to help _ that the children who deserve our help _ have benefited,” Bennett said.
He said the administration would not “give up on the promise of equal educational opportunity” for these children, but it also will not “continue down the same failed path … (and) throw good money after bad.”
He said he would make regulatory and administrative changes “to allow greater flexibility for local school districts,” and make sure that his civil rights agency does “not impose a particular method of instruction.” He also said he will “explore with Congress the possibility of removing the four percent cap on alternative instructional methods.”
Congress, in reauthorizing the Bilingual Education Act last year, specified that no more than 4 percent of the $139 million a year in aid could be used for alternative methods such as intensive English instruction. The rest must go to districts that teach children in their native language as well as English.
The Education Department says that half the 2.4 million school-age children who are classified as eligible speak English as well as their native language.
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