By law, California spends more on education than anything else, nearly $40 billion every year on K-12 alone.

California’s education establishment is fond of telling the public that it holds the monopoly on responsible spending of that money. But their backlash over the state’s new bilingual policy shows otherwise. Claims of fiscal perfection tend to appear when measures threatening establishment power appear on the ballot.

Californians have now voted overwhelmingly to change the law on bilingual education. The measure, Proposition 227, survived the ritualistic legal challenge but now faces a tide of evasion and obstructionism. District officials, teachers and activists say they will flout the law, with backing from Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa.

Some districts have begun handing out waivers from the law, before parents have expressed a desire for such waivers. Other districts protest that they are ill-prepared to implement the English-immersion classes the law requires.

These are the districts that had the freedom, before Proposition 227, to change their bilingual policies. The measure’s strong lead in the polls from start to finish, with support from key Latinos such as Fernando Vega, a Clinton campaign worker, and famed math teacher Jaime Escalante, failed to spur them to action. Instead they hunkered down in a bunker mentality, first hoping that the measure would lose, then for a successful legal challenge. Now that 227 is the law, they claim to be unprepared when that condition is entirely their fault. But the reactionary posture is nothing new.

Bilingual education began with good intentions, but one of the lessons of our time is that good intentions cannot carry the day and that unintended consequences often prevail. The law mandating bilingual education in California expired a decade ago, but the state Department of Education kept the system in place even as evidence of its failure became more evident. While it claimed to cultivate ever-increasing literacy in English and Spanish languages, bilingual dogma left far too many children illiterate in both English and Spanish.

In an increasingly high-tech state, where economic advancement depends heavily on skill in the English language, this amounts to an intellectual handicap and a kind of second-class citizenship.

Despite the legislative lapse, funds remained available, so the state continued to avail itself of the money, confirming that they placed the needs of the growing bilingual education industry above those of the students.

The state also doled out some $15 million, slated for adult English classes, to community groups whose activities did not fall under the state education code. Some in the Assembly charge that state money continued to flow even after these groups failed to account for how they spent the money. The state Department of Education has requested one group to return more than $4 million.

The groups deny impropriety, but the affair shows that the state does not lack funds for English instruction, only that it has failed to spend the money wisely. By the count of Proposition 227 founder Ron Unz, the state has spent as much as $1 billion a year on bilingual education. But the concept of a bilingual education “industry” did not originate with Unz.

At the recent convention of the American Education Research Association in San Diego, Elizabeth Saavedra, of the University of New Mexico, attacked bilingual education as a bureaucratized profession, operated by “professional minorities” who used their ethnic status for advancement and to perpetuate domination and control. This is not an academic debate.

The victims of this power play have been the children. At that same convention, even opponents of Proposition 227 conceded strong support for English instruction among inner-city Latino parents, children and teachers. Garment and restaurant workers want their children to aim for better jobs, including doctors and lawyers. For that, they will need full fluency in English, something they will not get from the failed bilingual policies a reactionary elite is struggling to preserve.

At a time when she should be showing leadership, state Superintendent of Public Education Delaine Eastin shows every sign of being intimidated by the backlash. That could come back to haunt her in November. In California, citizens can do more than change the law. They can chose those whose first duty is to enforce that law.

Billingsley is editorial director of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco.



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