The national bilingual vs. immersion education debate advanced not a bit with news prematurely trumpeting the test scores of some immigrant children in California.

These were students in a San Diego suburb who were moved out of bilingual education and into an English immersion curriculum last fall. It was the only school district to fully embrace the state’s all-English mandate rather than apply for waivers to continue some form of bilingual education. A year after California voters outlawed bilingual education, the results of the SAT-9 test scores to measure achievement showed, in some cases, astronomical gains.

For example, reading scores rose 56 percent for third-graders and a whopping 475 percent for seventh-graders.

The problem is, the test scores were wrong.

A day after touting the scores, apologetic school officials said a mistake by the testing company accidentally inflated the scores for the immigrant children. The company mistakenly listed some students who are fluent in English as non-fluent immigrants.

After adjusting the figures, the tests still showed remarkable improvements. In some cases, the scores actually increased over the initial results released by the district. It should escape no one that despite the welcome achievements, test scores for immigrants remain far below the national averages.

But to draw sweeping conclusions about the effectiveness of immersion-based education based on the results in the Oceanside district would be a big mistake.

First of all, switching to an all-English curriculum was but one of the many changes the district made in the past year. That’s not to say that moving, and making that move a very public act, to an all- English curriculum did not affect the test scores.

Other changes almost as surely would have had an equal, if not a greater, impact on improving the educational achievement in the Oceanside district.

For instance, a three-hour literacy block in the primary grades, is largely credited with much of the improvement in the test scores.

In fact, says one bilingual advocate, test scores went up for a number of reasons, including a back-to-basics curriculum and the allocation of funds to decrease class sizes.

But none of that may matter now, as officials continue to search for the true numbers reflected by the test scores.

Give the California schools credit for stepping up to raise achievement – for striving to produce quality public education .

But jumping to conclusions about the effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness, of bilingual education would be a mistake based on the recent test scores.

And the trouble here is that the testing company’s error calls into question all the scores – not just those of limited English students.



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