White House opposes California English only move

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Clinton administration Monday announced its opposition to a California ballot measure that would require all public school instruction to be given in English.

California’s proposition 227, also known as the "Unz initiative" after its main backer Silicon Valley millionaire Ron Unz, would effectively end bilingual education programs in the state.

It would give students who do not speak the language one year to learn it in intensive English immersion programs before moving them into regular classrooms. It will be voted on in the June 2 state primary elections.

Clinton administration officials said they were taking the rare step of speaking out on a state referendum issue from concern that if it passed in the largest U.S. state, support could spread and federal bilingual education programs would be weakened.

"Proposition 227 … is not the way to (go)," Education Secretary Richard Riley said in a statement. "Adoption of the Unz amendment will lead to fewer children learning English and many children falling further behind in their studies."

White House spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters, "the president is concerned about the impact of that state ballot initiative."

Bilingual education aims to teach children in their native languages while they develop English skills.

Backers of proposition 227 say bilingual education has proven to be a failure after three decades in California, and cite statistics indicating that one-quarter of the state’s public school students lack English proficiency.

Supporters of the initiative include conservative groups and Latino representatives, who have often been on opposite sides of issues such as immigration.

But Riley said in his statement that recent research has shown that English-only programs can be less effective than teaching children first in their native language.

In addition, the proposition would restrict teacher discretion over how to best teach pupils, weaken local control of schools and conflict with federal civil rights laws, he said.

A better approach, he said, would be to set a three-year goal for students to learn English, accompanied by testing to measure progress, catch-up programs, and training of more bilingual education teachers.

McCurry acknowledged the administration faced an uphill battle. "We understand the public sentiment in California. And one can easily say we are flying in the face of whatever the conventional wisdom is California about the popularity of that measure," he said.

"At the same time, the president thinks you can make a good argument that communities need to make these decisions based on what’s best for their public school population and that trying to adopt a single model of how this should work is just not useful," he said.



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