Let Schools Choose How to Teach Bilingual Education, Bennett Says

WASHINGTON—Education Secretary William Bennett on Thursday resubmitted to Congress a controversial proposal to let local school districts decide how they will teach students whose first language is not English.

Under federal law, 96 percent of the $143 million earmarked for bilingual education is available only to districts that teach subjects to students in their native languages as they learn English _ usually for about three years.

That method is called Transitional Bilingual Education, or TBE.

Bennett, in remarks prepared for delivery Friday in San Antonio, Texas, said he had asked Congress to lift the restriction.

“Our reform will allow those school districts that find TBE to be effective to continue using it; it will allow other districts to use whatever method they judge most appropriate and effective,”Bennett said in the speech, prepared for delivery at the 1987 Texas Education Conference.

Bennett’s proposal made no headway in the 99th Congress against opponents who said they feared school districts, left on their own, would settle for the least expensive rather than most effective bilingual education programs.

Rep. Augustus Hawkins, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said recent improvements in test scores, particularly by Hispanic students, were the result of federal programs such as bilingual education.

“Now is not the time for the administration to try to dismantle a successful program,” Hawkins said through a spokesman.

Bennett said in his speech that his proposal has been wrongly portrayed as an attack on bilingual education. He said it would help restore the original intent of the 1968 Bilingual Education Act _ to pay for “new and imaginative” programs.

Defenders of TBE cite research findings that say it is the best method.

But Bennett said two other systems also have been found to help students _ structured immersion, in which students are taught to some extent in English by teachers who know their native language, and English as a Second Language, in which students are taught almost entirely in English.

“Which of these methods is most effective? There is no single or simple answer,” Bennett said.

Quoting the conclusion of a National Science Foundation study that TBE programs are “neither better nor worse than other methods,” he added: “We believe that where research does not dictate one method, the federal government should not dictate either.”Bennett also said federal policy should be flexible in order to accommodate the varying needs of school districts.

In Montgomery County, Md., outside Washington, he said, students speak more than 50 languages including Bulgarian, Vietnamese and Punjabi. Some 50 languages represented in Providence, R.I., include Thai and Armenian, he said.

“These school districts may well require a different instructional method than districts where nearly all students of limited English proficiency are of the same background,” Bennett said.

There is nothing in the new policy that would impede school districts from continuing to use native language instruction, Bennett said.

“And let me be clear: We are not advocating sink or swim. Indeed, we will not permit it,” he added. “I do believe, however, that we must be clear as to the goal of the federal bilingual education program: the rapid acquisition of fluency in English.”



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