SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The California Legislature, unable to agree for more than a decade on how best to teach English to children who arrive at school speaking another language, wants to take another stab this month at a compromise.
But with voters in June considering an initiative that takes the English-only side of the polarized education battle, lawmakers’ actions may be too little too late.
"Yes, and I felt that and told that to everybody last summer," state Sen. Dede Alpert says. Her bill to allow school districts more flexibility in picking programs to teach students English stalled in the Assembly last summer under vehement opposition from both the bilingual and the English-only advocates.
Her bill, which would allow districts to choose any valid educational program that they can show works, attempts to provide local options somewhere between the two extremes. On one side, bilingual education groups want children taught all subjects in their native tongue while they are learning English and on the other, English-only groups believe students should be immersed in all-English classrooms.
Her bill was approved 25-11 by the Senate last June and 13-4 by the Assembly Education Committee in July. It had the strong approval of most education groups and state school Supt. Delaine Eastin. But it never got out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee due to the strong opposition from both Hispanic and English-only groups.
Supporters tried on one of the final days of the 1997 session last September to yank it from the committee and onto the Assembly floor for a vote, but that fell four votes short of the majority needed.
Ms. Alpert, D-Coronado, said she has been working during the fall recess with Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante, D-Fresno, and other Assembly members particularly concerned about the bill’s impact on Hispanic children. Hispanic children make up about 80 percent of the 1.4 million students classified as "limited-English proficient" or "English learners" in California public schools.
"My hope is we will be able to have the bill voted on, that it will come out of Appropriations" sometime during January, she said.
The committee’s chair, Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, said Ms. Alpert had added flexibility and accountability to the bill and it could be sent to the Assembly floor this month.
"I think on this bill, in particular, there was an agreement made and heightened interest and floor discussion (last September) about flexibility with regard to bilingual education and I expect the bill to emerge in some form," Ms. Migden said.
The Senate’s leader, President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, D-Hayward, likewise says it is likely the Alpert bill or one like it will be passed early this year.
But would such belated passage affect the June vote on the English-emphasis initiative backed by Palo Alto software millionaire Ron Unz? Probably not, but lawmakers said they should try anyway.
"I think only to demonstrate that we are addressing the problem legislatively," Ms. Migden said.
"I think it’s important we do our best to help solve the problem," Lockyer said.
But, he added, "I think it would have been on the ballot whatever we had done … You know, it’s always disappointing when we don’t come to grips with a problem and bring it to a fruitful conclusion, but I don’t think it would have changed the ballot."
Ms. Alpert points out that even if voters approve the Unz initiative in June, it could be challenged and overturned in court and a backup state law would be needed.
"We have had a failed policy in this state. We need to change the policy and have the right law on the books because we need it," she said.
California educators and politicians have been arguing for more than a decade about the best way to teach English to the 25 percent of all students and 33 percent of kindergartners and first-graders who lack the language skills.
California has more English learners than many states have students and, because of booming immigration into the state, has a large percentage of the estimated 3.5 million LEP students nationwide.
A 1976 law required school districts to offer bilingual education learning opportunities — classes taught at least in part in their native languages — to English learners.
But that law ended in 1987 and the Legislature, caught between the two extremes, has been unable to pass a new law. The state Department of Education has continued to advise and fund, at $300 million a year, school districts under the general guidelines of the old law.
The Unz initiative states that "all children in California public schools shall be taught English by being taught in English" and would require most English learners to be put on classrooms together and be taught "overwhelmingly" in English.
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