Riley: Add 1,000 Schools Teaching In Two Languages

WASHINGTON—Hispanic students are twice as likely as black students and three times as likely as whites to drop out of high school, the Education Department said Wednesday in a study.

 

The study suggests the nation’s education system is ill-equipped to deal with the fastest-growing group of schoolchildren.

 

Hoping to paint a different picture for these children, Education Secretary Dick Riley called for public school districts to create in the next five years 1,000 new dual-language schools. These schools would instruct children in English and in a native language such as Spanish.

 

“If we see to it that immigrants and their children can speak only English and nothing more, then we will have missed one of the greatest opportunities of this new century,” Riley said. “It is high time we begin to treat language skills as the asset they are.”

 

In 1997, 25.3 percent of Hispanics age 16 to 24 dropped out of high school, compared with 13.4 percent of blacks and 7.6 percent of whites.

 

The study also said that 11 percent of Hispanics age 25 to 29 possessed at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 14.2 percent of blacks and 32.6 percent of whites.

 

Riley said dual-language instruction has proved to help Hispanic children do better academically as well as preserve children’s heritage and promote the bilingualism all students will need in a global economy.

 

“Unfortunately, too many teachers and administrators today treat a child’s native language as a weakness if it is not English,” Riley said, speaking at Bell Multicultural High School, which is not one of the nation’s 260 dual-language schools. “In some places, even the idea of bilingual education is controversial. It shouldn’t be.”

 

Of the 260 dual language schools that receive federal funding, there are only two in the Carolinas and they are in Charlotte: Collinswood Elementary’s Spanish immersion program and Sedgefield Elementary’s Japanese immersion.

 

While Charlotte-Mecklenburg has four other language-immersion programs, these do not receive federal funding and are not included in the Department of Education’s list of dual-language schools.

 

The number of limited-English students is among Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s fastest-growing population.

 

Last year, there were 3,799 students with limited English skills in the district, or 3.9 percent of the system’s population. That’s up from 2,044, or 2.2 percent, in 1997-98.

 

In his proposed operating budget unveiled this week, Superintendent Eric Smith wants to pump $14.5 million into certain schools that, among other criteria, have a high percentage of limited-English speaking students.

 

In addition, the school board is considering requiring all students to pass at least one year of a foreign language in high school to graduate.

 

In the Carolinas, the percentage of Hispanic children enrolled in public schools for 1997-98, the latest school year available, was 2.7 percent in North Carolina and 1 percent in South Carolina.

 

Dual-language instruction is one of three main, often hotly debated approaches to teaching the nation’s 3 million limited English proficient students, of which nearly 75 percent are Hispanic.

 

These students, designated by school tests and other measures as non-English speakers, also are taught in English-only classes or completely in their native languages.

 

Staff writer Jennifer Wing Rothacker contributed to this article.

 



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