Many people are saying that the Orange Unified School District Board won a major battle when the state Board of Education agreed to let the district drop its bilingual-education program.

This’s one way of looking at it, but I take a different view: I beleive the real winners are the school children, not the school trustees.

This shouldn’t be a political issue but an educational question: What is the best method for bringing children who don’t speak English into the English-speaking mainstream of American society?

Bilingual education certainly isn’t the answer.

Bilingual education is a failed program, long on rhetoric and short on results. It began in 1968 as a $ 7.5 million federal effort to teach Mexican-American students in Spanish for a short period until they knew enough English to move into regular classes.

This small, sensible project has evolved into an elaborate system that keeps children out of the mainstream for three to seven years, sometimes longer. Only 5 percent of the students graduate into regular classes each year.

The trustees of the Orange Unified School District believe they know a much better answer to the challenge of teaching children who don’t speak English. They have a plan that willwork. It has been proved to work in the past and it continues to be the best way of helping children learn English as a second language.

Some people call the method “immersion,” but OUSD will not simply immerse children who do not know English in an English-only classroom to sink or swim.

Teachers will have bilingual aides to work with the children before and after each class session. In addition, each child will receive instruction in speaking and reading English for at least one hour each day. Finally, both students and parents will be offered after school and vacation time classes to improve their English language skills.

Bilingual education has little support outside the educational establishment, and even the California Teachers Association has questioned its success.

In a recent survey, 81 percent of Latino parents said they wanted their children’s academic courses to be taught in English; only 12.2 percent chose Spanish. The results came from a survey of 600 Latino parents by the Washington-based Center for Equal Opportunity.

From Los Angeles to New York, Latino parents have taken a leading role in fighting bilingual education.

Last year, Spanish-speaking parents in Los Angeles kept 80 students at home in a two-week boycott of the Ninth Street School.

Why? Because school administrators refused to honor the parent’s request that their children be moved into all-English classes.

In New York, Latino parents are suing the state of New York for keeping their children in bilingual programs longer than the state-mandated three years.

“My son has been in bilingual education for five years and he cannot read or write in English or Spanish,” one mother said.

Another said her ninth-grade son has been in bilingual education since he entered the school system.

Our children deserve better; they can do better. They deserve a program that helps them learn English quickly, a program that integrates them fully into the life of the school.

Only then can they, like the immigrant children of earlier generations, move into the mainstream of American society and share in its rewards.

THE ISSUE: Why bilingual education, as it is currently practiced, does not work.

THE WRITER: AssemblymanCampbell, Republican of Villa Park, represents the 71st State Assembly District.



Comments are closed.