Bilingual blunder

California ended bilingual education, and learning improved. - Now, it's New Jersey's turn.

It is hard to imagine that only two years ago, Hispanic students in California were wallowing near the bottom in national tests with no chance of improvement.

But then something amazing happened. Hispanic parents in Los Angeles boycotted a local school that refused to teach their kids English. They became the impetus behind an initiative, known as Proposition 227, to replace bilingual education with a specially designed English immersion program.

The reform mandated that all English learners be educated through English immersion conducted “overwhelmingly” in English for a period “not normally intended to exceed one year.” That would be a radical change from the bilingual programs, where students are taught all courses in their native tongues, often for several years. Those programs, after 30 years, had failed to improve test scores or reduce dropout rates among Hispanic students. Still, educators whose careers were invested in bilingual education insisted that English immersion would harm students. Dr. Josefina Villamil Tinajero, the president of the National Association for Bilingual Education, wrote in her 1998 newsletter, “It will be an evil day if this initiative succeeds. Everyone will be hurt if this initiative passes, everyone.”

The initiative did pass, and the results are now in – test scores for English learners have risen dramatically statewide. Districts that aggressively implemented English immersion had significantly greater gains than those districts that kept bilingual programs through the initiative’s parental waiver provision.

This success is creating converts in California. In Oceanside, for example, second-graders improved their reading scores from the 12th percentile to the 32nd percentile in the last two years. In neighboring Vista, which maintained its conventional programs through the waiver provision, second-graders showed much smaller improvement, rising from the 18th percentile to the 25th percentile.

That was enough for Oceanside Superintendent Kenneth Noonan. He was the founding president of the California Association for Bilingual Education, but now believes in the switch to English immersion.

There’s a lesson in this for New Jersey, which has one of the most heavy-handed bilingual requirements in the country. There are over 50,000 students in New Jersey enrolled in bilingual programs in 13 different languages at a cost of $53 million per year in state funding alone. (Two-thirds of the students are Spanish speakers.)

What impact will the new evidence from California have in New Jersey? Not much, it appears. Key supporters of bilingual programs – in the New Jersey Legislature and Department of Education – to whom I spoke had not even studied the results and did not seem interested. Instead, a new regulation requires that even preschoolers be enrolled in bilingual programs, rather than be immersed in English.

New Jersey is one of only nine states that still mandates bilingual education. State law requires that any school district with more than 20 English learners of any one-language group must establish a bilingual education program. Schools may apply for waivers when that is impractical because, for example, the age of the students varies too widely.

The state is stingy with the waivers, granting only one since 1995. Ivy Rios, regional coordinator for bilingual programs for the New Jersey Department of Education, said, “The department will not approve waivers for school districts which simply want to use an alternative program such as ESL (English as a Second Language).”

Would New Jersey even know if these programs were failing? The short answer is no. According to Rios, there is no statewide testing requirement for English learners. Before 1995, parents did not have the right to remove their children from harmful bilingual programs and were often not informed that their children had even been placed in these programs. In 1994, Hispanic parents and students had to testify before the state Senate to convince legislators to give them this basic right.

At the hearing, Joseph Ramos of the New Jersey Bilingual Council testified against the parents, asking, “Why would we require parents unfamiliar with our educational system to make such monumental decisions when we as bilingual educators are trained to make those decisions?”

The leading supporter of bilingual education in the Assembly, Rep. Rudy Garcia (D-Hudson), opposed allowing parents to remove their children from bilingual programs. He said he feared that some districts would encourage parents to opt out of bilingual programs to avoid the added costs.

Of course, bilingual education teachers have no incentive to mainstream students or allow parents to remove their children from these programs. Garcia said he wants to provide more funding for bilingual programs and less to alternative programs like ESL.

Former state Sen. Gordon MacInnis, currently the president of the New Jersey Institute for School Innovation, feels there is little chance for any reform coming from the current Legislature.

“The only legislators who seem active on this issue are the defenders of bilingual education,” he said.

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Bilingual education programs in New Jersey fail because they are based on the flawed theory that to learn a second language, a child must first be proficient and literate in his or her native language.

Under this theory, Hispanic students in California schools were forced to attend programs where they spent 80 percent or 90 percent of the school day in classes that were conducted in Spanish. It is no surprise that their skills in English lagged.

It is true that the California test results show larger improvement among younger students than older ones. This could be because the older students had spent years in flawed bilingual programs during their earlier grades. It also suggests that immersion works best for younger students, contrary to the assertion of bilingual advocates who argue that we should delay English instruction until a student is older and has learned to read and write in the native tongue.

It is disconcerting to see that some bilingual advocates, who have ostensibly dedicated their lives to improving opportunities for English-learners, refuse to consider the new evidence that immersion works better. One noted advocate of bilingual education, Kenji Hakuta of Stanford University, told the Associated Press that since the California tests were designed for English-speakers, the scores for English learners were essentially meaningless. “I don’t think they tell us anything, nor will they ever,” he said.

Despite its critics, the tremendous success of English immersion in California is unmistakable. Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, who campaigned against the initiative, is now pushing for a 600 percent increase in funding for it.

It is also not surprising that others wish to follow California’s lead. In Arizona, a coalition of Hispanic parents and teachers has succeeded in placing a similar initiative on the ballot this November. Hispanic activists also tried to place a similar English immersion initiative on Colorado’s November ballot but were blocked by the state Supreme Court -a decision that will delay their efforts until 2002.

Change need not come at the ballot box, however. In 1999, in a clear reaction to Proposition 227, Connecticut legislators amended their bilingual education law to limit the program to 30 months. They also mandated that schools get parental consent before placing a student in a bilingual education program.

Clearly there is no intention by the educational establishment in New Jersey to follow California’s lead, and if anything, they are making a bad situation worse by expanding bilingual programs and avoiding any sort of accountability, all at the expense of thousands of children whose first need is to learn the common language of the country in which they live.



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