Tucson suffered a doubly awkward and unwelcome display Wednesday when California millionaire Ron Unz, leader of an anti-bilingual initiative, arrived to push his cause.

Angry, sign-waving supporters of bilingual education shouted him down as he and others explained their initiative to sharply cut the special studies. It was disrespectful and out of place. At the same time, dismantling bilingual education by state fiat is just as distasteful as the protest it inspired.

It is not especially surprising opponents of the initiative are so strident in their reaction when one of its principle supporters says things such as “bilingual education is the most insidious educational program for Mexican-American students.” Clearly, it is not.

An old “English immersion” program that ended in 1967 showed a Hispanic graduation rate of 40 percent while today, with bilingual education, it’s 87 percent.

Yet it could be better, and educators agree there isn’t enough tracking of achievement outcomes among all limited English-speaking students.

Lisa Graham Keegan, state superintendent of public instruction, sees the need for improvement but wants to fend off a statewide vote dismantling bilingual education. She favors a limit on the number of years a child can spend in bilingual classes, but she hasn’t proposed other changes yet.

What Unz proposes is replacing bilingual education with yearlong English immersion programs before mainstreaming the students. It would allow for parents to request their children receive bilingual instruction. Yet if the system is dismantled, one can foresee a problem filling the request.

In California, where Unz helped dismantle the former bilingual program, tens of thousands of parents have been making the request to restore it for their children.

The initiative will no doubt appeal to the “English-only” segment of Arizona. Without understanding the impact of gutting bilingual education, it might appear as a cost-saver and something vaguely patriotic. Yet this is a serious educational issue that must take into account the special and differing needs of children learning English without falling into an ideological, one-size-fits-all abolition.

Bilingual supporters could have behaved much more civilly to the initiative backers. And the backers need to understand how deeply off-base their proposal is to many Arizonans.



Comments are closed.