Kelley: It's time to stop fighting Prop. 227 and make it work

RON UNZ: Initiative's author purposefully left some wiggle room.

It won’t be easy, getting used to dinosaurs having feathers, that is. The discovery of a fossil in China has led scientists to surmise that ancient carnivores like the velociraptor sported plumage rather than leathery scales. Michael Crichton, whose technothrillers combine scary scenarios with scientific seminars, is sure to incorporate this breakthrough in the second sequel to “Jurassic Park.” The question remains, however, whether ticket-purchasers who prefer their thunder lizards revoltingly reptilian, will plunk down $6.50 to watch the birdie.

Ron Unz, architect of Proposition 227, is facing an equally tough sell. Despite opposition on the editorial pages of every major Golden State newspaper as well as the counter-punch provided by the California Teachers Association and Univision ponying up a million bucks apiece (Unz was outspent 5-1), the end to bilingual education as we know it was codified by a 61 percent avalanche.

The people have spoken: Bilingual education should become extinct. Since legislators and educators failed to provide a workable model for three decades, frustrated voters held their noses and approved Proposition 227, despite the fact that Unz draped his solution in a “one-size-fits all” caftan and otherwise irked the very folks needed to implement his initiative.

Wednesday, at the epicenter of so many earthshakingly liberal court rulings, legal challenges mounted by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund as well as Multicultural Education, Training and Advocacy did not rock U.S. District Judge Charles Legge. Unz’s troubles, however, are hardly over.

The Clinton administration is scouring the legal landscape for possible conflicts with federal regulation. Several stubborn school districts are resisting reform. There are civil disobedience threats by as many as 1,500 petulant bilingual instructors. Ditto “Let ’em send me to jail” San Francisco school chief Bill Rojas. The gush of support from the Hispanic community, projected at 80 percent pre-primary, was reduced to a mere trickle by the persuasive opposition; an exit poll cites a humiliating 37 percent.

In Ventura County, where 5 percent more than statewide voters said si to Proposition 227, nearly 1 in 5 students are labeled “limited English proficient.” The biggest challenge in instituting Proposition 227, according to Ventura County Superintendent of Schools Chuck Weis, is “understanding it.”

He’s not the first to stumble over the ambiguity in Unz’s language. The need for a working definition of the hybrid methodology “sheltered English immersion” and some sort of quantification of murky terms such as “overwhelmingly” have kept Weis awaiting word from on high before he proceeds.

Why should Weis wait? Turning over even more control to state “educrats” is inconsistent with Unz’s motivation for initiating Proposition 227 in the first place. He would not have offered waivers and deliberately vague language if he didn’t mean to create some wiggle room for the local school districts.

He claims, “I do my homework on these issues before I do something about them.” Surely, the lesson of Proposition 13 — i.e., a seemingly inconsequential phrase, “by law,” ended up shifting municipal power to Sacramento — was not lost on this Harvard grad. Not only do you always hurt the one you love, it’s the unintended consequences that tend to smart the most.

Some facts lost during the surfeit of campaign soundbites are pertinent here:

1. Immersion has proved wildly effective with recent neurological studies supporting its superiority to traditional bilingual approaches. 2. Extra help for students is available via a $50 million annual state budget line. 3. No language police will be prowling immersion classes; nowhere in the initiative are teachers required to speak English at all times.

“Hope,” according to poet Emily Dickinson “is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” According to President Yvonne Larsen, the California State Board of Education (not a dinosaur in the bunch) unanimously adopted emergency regulations on July 9 to give local schools and parents as much flexibility as possible in realizing the enactment of Proposition 227.

Now there’s an optimistic strategy that might just take wing.

Beverly Kelley, CLU Department head



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