THE CALIFORNIA STATE Board of Education is seriously considering major revisions to the state’s regulations on teaching English learners in California. If the board, led by appointees of Gov. Gray Davis, goes ahead with its plans, it could do considerable harm to Proposition 227. That is the initiative measure overwhelmingly supported by California voters in 1998.

Prop. 227 stipulated that 1.5 million English learners in the state’s public schools must be taught in English unless parents asked for waivers to place their children in bilingual programs.

The state board would turn that decision over to teachers and principals, allowing them to initiate waivers for students to be taught in bilingual programs. This could undermine the current system and return many California students to the failed bilingual programs of the past.

Prop. 227 was controversial among some educators and many politicians when it was first presented to the voters. But now, after a successful track record of more than three years, many former opponents of English-only instruction have changed their minds. No wonder; Prop. 227 has been among the most successful education reforms in recent state history, and it has cost taxpayers almost nothing.

The California Department of Education recently released new official statistics indicating that limited-English students who avoid bilingual programs perform far better academically than do their bilingual peers.

From 1998 to 2001, Latino test scores have shot upward statewide. The percentage of Latinos with reading test scores above the 50th percentile increased from 21 percent to 35 percent in those three years. The percentage of Latino students with math test scores above the 50th percentile increased from 27 percent in 1998 to 46 percent in 2001.

Some of this increase is due to changes in curriculum, but much of it is because of the demise of bilingual programs. In 2001, for example, limited-English second-grade students not in bilingual programs were 170 percent more likely to be reading at or above grade level than their counterparts in bilingual programs.

Again and again, data show English-learning students in schools that strictly followed Prop. 227 perform considerably better than students in schools that did not adhere to Prop. 227 guidelines. That is particularly true in the lower grades, but is also the case in higher grades.

As a result of Prop. 227, hundreds of thousands of students whose native language is not English are achieving academic success in grade school and are likely to have a better chance of receiving high school diplomas and college degrees.

It would be a grave mistake to do anything to jeopardize California’s pullback from bilingual education at a time when the current system is making such strides.

Gov. Gray Davis, who initially opposed Prop. 227, said he would support it. If he is true to his word, he will use his influence on the state Board of Education to persuade members to refrain from doing anything that would return students to faulty bilingual classes.



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