TUCSON, Ariz.—Gloria Martinez says Tucson’s Mission View Elementary School has orders to pull her 9-year-old granddaughter from class during its daily Spanish-only session.
“I would rather they sit her outside and have her do her reading than to have her take part in 45 minutes of Spanish time,” said Mrs. Martinez.
“We want them to be proficient in English, with no accent,” says Martinez, who believes bilingual education is a waste of time.
On the other hand, Kathy Franco’s second- and sixth-grade daughters have thrived in Roskruge Elementary School’s bilingual education program. She says her girls read, write and speak English and Spanish fluently and adds, “I truly believe that it’s our duty to see that we continue with bilingual education.”
Their ardent views typify the love-it or hate-it attitudes that pervade the bilingual education debate. As scrutiny intensifies, lawmakers and advocates are eying big changes for the programs and even total elimination of them.
State Sen. Joe Eddie Lopez, D-Phoenix, wants to pump in more state money for teachers with special training and to require on-site evaluation of bilingual education programs.
He is proposing a bill that would let parents pull their children out of such programs and would eliminate standardized testing required for high school graduation because it is given only in English – but would prefer allowing the test in English or Spanish while awarding proficiency in both.
But Rep. Laura Knaperek, R-Tempe, plans a bill in January to limit state-funded bilingual programs, giving students three years to achieve English proficiency – less than the four to seven years bilingual ed advocates contend it takes.
Members and supporters of Tucson-based English for the Children Arizona plan to gather petition signatures to ask voters to abolish bilingual education and substitute a one-year English immersion program – similar to how language was taught until the 1960s.
They’re hoping to duplicate the success of California’s Proposition 227 which dismantled bilingual education. They have already been pledged help from Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley millionaire who headed California’s effort.
“We’re very confident that all children can learn to speak English within months,” said Hector Ayala, cofounder of the Arizona group. Twelve years teaching English at Tucson’s Cholla High School convinced him bilingual education has had little success in educating children.
“Test scores have not gone up. The discrepancy in achievement between Anglos and Hispanics has remained pretty static over the last 40 years. The dropout rate for (Tucson Unified School District) Hispanics is twice the rate. So bilingual education in the end just doesn’t work,” Ayala said.
Maria Mendoza, president of English for the Children Arizona, said no model school exists that proves bilingual education is superior to any other methodology.
“In the past, when bilingual education did not exist, we were immediately immersed in English, and if we did not learn English then we were retained. And we had no problems,” she said.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit before U.S. District Judge Alfredo C. Marquez seeks to force Arizona to increase its funding and oversight of bilingual education and English as a second language programs to comply with federal guidelines.
Sound like a mess? It is – although bilingual ed critics contend that it’s basically a bureaucratic one with only an inadequate success rate to show after some 30 years of experience.
Not so, say defenders such as Leonard Basurto, director of bilingual education for the Tucson Unified School District.
“Students are learning English in bilingual ed classes,” he said. “And all research indicates that it’s the best and fastest way for a student who is learning a second language.”
The end result, he said, is that bilingual ed students outperform the average student across the country. On the other hand, students pulled out of mainstream elementary, middle or high school classes for an intensive English lesson lasting from 30 minutes to two hours don’t fare as well, he said.
Arizona law requires limited-English students to stay in bilingual education or English as a second language classes until achieving proficiency. It also requires the Department of Education to monitor school districts’ implementation of current bilingual education rules.
“Yet in the past 10 years, we’ve been monitored only once,” Basurto said.
The state agency reported in April that 30 percent of Arizona’s school districts did not report for 1996-97, and as of Dec. 17, 40 percent of them had not turned in bilingual ed reports normally due June 15, he said.
The Department of Education, however, has said just 2.8 percent of all limited-English students are reclassified as English-proficient each year – and bilingual education opponents wield that figure as ammunition.
But most such students are in English immersion classes – “the same exact program that Ron Unz wants and that has failed for the 48 years prior to bilingual education,” contends Alejandra Sotomayor, who with her husband Basurto, is president of the Tucson Association of Bilingual Education.
“If English immersion works, wouldn’t we have at least a 73 percent rate of reclassification? y it doesn’t work,” she said.
Basurto Sotomayor and other bilingual ed advocates say the old English-immersion program graduated only 60 percent of Hispanic students at most.
The latest proposal would place all second-language learners into special classes providing intensive English – and only English – for a year, without instruction in math, science and social studies, then put them into mainstream classrooms, he said.
Tucson’s schools abandoned the similar immersion programs after 1967.
“Bilingual education was a response to the failure of a total English immersion program,” Basurto said.
Basurto said between 85 and 90 percent of Hispanic bilingual education students are graduating from Tucson high schools today, fewer than the overall population but the highest percentage ever among Hispanics in Tucson schools.
Still, Mrs. Mendoza says bilingual programs fail in their most basic mission.
“The problem with bilingual education is it’s supposed to be an English language acquisition process to give students proficiency in English,” she said. “This has not happened in the 33 years I’ve been involved in bilingual education.”
Comments are closed.