”THOSE who do not understand English are certain to find their classroom experiences wholly incomprehensible and in no way meaningful.” With these words, the United States Supreme Court set the stage six and a half years ago for a debate over the best way to integrate into the nation’s public schools the estimated 3.5 million children whose primary language is not English.

A dispute over bilingual education has simmered ever since, and now it is heating up again over a set of proposed regulations on which the Department of Education will hold six hearings next month. A study by the Federal Government estimated that the maximum cost of implementing the rules is $591 million, of which Washington would provide about a third.

The lines of disagreement on the issue are fuzzy because of several nuances, and it is more than simply a matter of one side being for bilingual education and the other side opposing it. Questions surrounding bilingual education include identifying potential students, assessing their needs, figuring out what kind of programs to give them and deciding when they should be placed in regular classes.

The controversy over bilingual education has been replete with emotional, sociological and nationalistic overtones, evoking tearful memories of immigrant ancestors who struggled to keep up in classes taught entirely in English and raising questions about whether this is the best way to educate first-generation Americans.

In the years since the Supreme Court ruling in Lau vs. Nichols, which was based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Federal Government has been contending with hundreds of school districts over the details of their bilingual programs. A major problem has been the lack of clarity by Washington as to precisely what was expected of local school systems.

Cutoff of Funds Threatened

Representatives of the Office of Civil Rights have threatened school systems with a cutoff of funds for not complying with the bilingual mandate, and local school officials, in return, have accused the Federal Government of bullying them with vague standards.

”Comprehensive standards and procedures have not heretofore ever been proposed or published in the Federal Register,” Shirley M. Hufstedler, the Secretary of Education, said in announcing the proposed rules on Aug. 5.

A basic disagreement in bilingual education involves the question of who should receive it. Some observers, including several in New York City, say that the classes include many students who do not belong, while others say that many students who belong in the classes have been excluded.

According to the proposed regulations, interviews with students and their parents, as well as questionnaires sent to the home, would be used to find youngsters whose primary language may not be English. Then, pupils would be tested to assess whether their deficiencies in English are so great that they should be in bilingual education.

Parents would retain the right to put their children in the programs or take them out, regardless of test scores.

Several Problems May Arise

Once the hearings begin, however, what seems like a straightforward solution to the problem of identifying eligible pupils could very well get snared in a thicket of disagreements over which tests to use, how high to set the passing score and what standards of comparison to use. The way that the Department of Education answers these questions after the hearings will determine ultimately how many students the schools must assign to bilingual classes.

”This is an issue we expect to have a great deal of comment on,” said Steven A. Minter, the Under Secretary of Education. Complicating the matter further is that some children who enter school speak a mixture of English and, say, Spanish, without proficiency in either language. A spokesman for the Office of Civil Rights said that 70 percent of the students eligible for bilingual programs are of Hispanic heritage and that most were born in the United States and raised in homes where little or no English was spoken.

”Experts disagree about which placement is best for comparably limited students,” the Department of Education stated in the Federal Register. Officials in the agency concede that they are looking for guidance in the hearings on what the requirements should be for students whose skills are low in both languages.

The Department of Education leaves no doubt, though, about what it expects the schools to do with youngsters once it has been established that their primary language is not English. Basically, bilingual education, as defined by the Federal Government, means presenting a pupil’s subject matter -science, mathematics, social studies and all the rest – in his native tongue, gradually introducing more and more material in English. Meanwhile, the student would get intensive English lessons so that he can eventually switch entirely into regular classes.

Objections From Several Groups

Eight of the country’s major education organizations have taken exception to this strict interpretation, arguing that the Department of Education is trying to dictate teaching practices to local school districts. Spokesmen for the groups – including the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National School Boards Association and the American Federation of Teachers – say they endorse bilingual education, but that they want the schools to have the option of choosing among various approaches.

”The Lau decision provides no legal justification for imposing any specific curriculum on the nation’s schools,” the dissenting groups asserted in a recent letter to Secretary Hufstedler.

In one approach rejected by the Department of Education, the ”English as a second language” method, calls for subject matter to be taught in English at the same time the pupil is learning the language.

Finally, regardless of the program’s specifics, there remains the highly sensitive question of how long students should remain in bilingual education.

Some critics say they suspect that some bilingual advocates want to use the schools to promote the establishment of Spanish as an official second language in the United States by holding youngsters in the programs long after it is necessary.

The regulations propose a minimum of two years in bilingual education for most students and a maximum of five years. A period shorter than two years is possible if tests show that a student has gained superiority in English.

One of the areas of difference among the authorities testifying at the hearings will undoubtedly center on whether the Federal Government is trying to exceed the mandate of the Supreme Court verdict by dictating the duration of the bilingual programs.

What is clear, regardless of the form of the final regulations, is that some important new ingredients are being added to the American melting pot.



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