The Surge in Bilingual Education

City and Suburbs Struggle to Meet Rising Demand

The number of students not fluent in English is soaring across the region – especially in the suburbs – leaving educators to juggle tight budgets with the rising demand for bilingual classes.

Compounding the problem, experts say, is the fact that more and more bilingual students are not merely struggling to learn English but have little schooling of any kind and lack basic literacy skills in their native language.

“We get 13- and 14-year-olds at the second-grade level when they come here,” said Joseph Negron, chairman of the Illinois State Advisory Council on Bilingual Education. “(Many) can’t function in their own language, and then we are expected to bring them up to speed in English. It’s a very difficult situation.”

To be sure, Chicago is still home to the vast bulk of the state’s 87,000 bilingual students and has seen their numbers grow by 60 percent over the last eight years. But, according to a just-released analysis by the Illinois State Board of Education, schools in suburban Cook County saw bilingual enrollment shoot up 112 percent, and schools elsewhere in the region were not far behind.

Despite that growth, many educators fear that funds for bilingual programs could actually be cut back. Fueling those fears have been comments by Senate Republican leader James “Pate” Philip of Wood Dale, who has talked of eliminating bilingual funding altogether. When Republicans take control of the state Senate in January, Philip will almost surely become the chamber’s president.

Philip’s concern is whether bilingual education does what it is supposed to do – teach English, Mark Gordon, press secretary to Philip, said Monday.

Interviews and statistics gleaned from the 1991-92 state report cards also show that bilingual education demands are becoming more diversified than ever. The state’s annual report card measures achievement in math, reading, writing and science and details spending, class size and demographics, such as the number of bilingual students.

Spanish-speaking students still account for 65 percent of the state’s bilingual students, according to the state study. But the numbers of youngsters who speak Eastern European languages increased at a much faster rate. The number of Polish-speaking students, for example, has increased by 295 percent since the state first started gathering such statistics in the 1984-1985 school year.

In Elgin Area Unit District 46 alone, bilingual students accounted for half of the 1,000 new students entering the district last year. At the district’s Streamwood Elementary School, nearly every student is enrolled in bilingual classes.

In one Elgin fourth-grade classroom the other day, Sandra Miskovic was busy teaching her Span ish-speaking students about George Washington. About half the class sat crosslegged at Miskovic’s feet, listening to her lecture in English. The other half sat on the other side of the room, listening to a teacher’s aide who was telling the same story in Spanish.

“We make a lot of progress,” said Miskovic, who separates recent arrivals from those who have lived in the United States long enough to grasp conversational English. “The children feel very wanted. They don’t feel like outcasts.”

The feeling is the same at Cicero’s Warren Park Elementary School, where roughly 73 percent of the students are in bilingual classes. That’s the third-highest percentage in the region, behind Streamwood and Chicago’s Salazar Bilingual Center.

“We’ve seen a dramatic growth,” said Victoria C. Aksamit, director of bilingual education in District 99, which has a flood of newly arrived immigrants.

When Aksamit took over the bilingual program eight years ago, the district had six teachers and 200 students in two schools. At last count, the district had 70 bilingual teachers teaching 2,300 students in all 12 of the district’s schools, Aksamit said.

“Things have changed so quickly, it’s just incredible,” said Aksamit, who has taught in Cicero for the last 20 years.

The growth in Cicero is matched in places such as Blue Island, Palatine, Waukegan and Aurora, according to the annual report cards. In Palatine Township District 15, for example, the number of bilingual students rose by 125 percent to 1,123 students since 1985. Students with limited abilities in English now make up 10 percent of the student body.

“Funding is never adequate,” said Negron, who in addition to his state post is also the director of second-language programs for the Palatine district.

“After three years (in a pro gram), I would hope that bilingual students would be closer to narrowing the gap they have with other kids, but some may take longer,” said Negron, describing how bilingual education affects test scores. Research shows that it takes five to seven years to master a language.

“We have children from places like Pakistan (and) Vietnam and we are confronted with not only bringing them up to speed with the Chicago students but teaching them English,” said Rodolfo Serna, assistant superintendent of language and cultural education in the Chicago public schools. “In some languages, we don’t even have the materials (to teach bilingual classes).”

Educators fear that many of these students might abandon school out of frustration if bilingual programs can’t help them keep pace in subjects such as history, science and math while they try to learn English.

Such children are “doomed to fail,” said Sylvia Vela, director of bilingual education at Waukegan School District 60.



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