8/29/00 11:25 a.m.
An “Evil Day” for Bilingual Education
In California, English works for the schoolchildren.

By Jorge Amselle, vice president for education
at the Center for Equal Opportunity in Washington, D.C.

t is hard to imagine that only two short years ago, Hispanic students in California were wallowing near the bottom in national tests with no chance of improvement. But then something amazing happened: Hispanic parents in Los Angeles boycotted a local school that refused to teach their kids English. They became the impetus behind a controversial education-reform effort to replace bilingual education with a specially designed English-immersion program, otherwise known as Proposition 227.

The initiative mandated that all English learners be educated through English immersion conducted "overwhelmingly" in English for a period "not normally intended to exceed one year." Two years ago, supporters of bilingual-education programs — which had failed for nearly 30 years to produce any significant results, in terms of either improved test scores or lower Hispanic dropout rates — claimed the measure would harm students. Dr. Josefina Villamil Tinajero, the president of the National Association for Bilingual Education, wrote in her 1998 newsletter: "It will be an evil day if this initiative succeeds. Everyone will be hurt if this initiative passes, everyone."

The initiative did pass, and test scores for English learners have risen dramatically statewide. Districts that aggressively implemented English immersion had significantly higher achievement gains compared to the districts that kept bilingual programs through the initiative's parental- waiver provision.

The Oceanside Unified School District was one of the former. Oceanside second-graders improved their reading scores on the Stanford 9 test from the 12th percentile in 1998 to the 32nd percentile this year. Neighboring Vista Unified, which maintained its bilingual programs through the waiver provision, showed much smaller improvement, with their second-grade English learners progressing from the 18th percentile in reading in 1998 to the 25th percentile in 2000. The results were so dramatic in Oceanside that its superintendent, Kenneth Noonan — the founding president of the California Association for Bilingual Education — has become a convert to English immersion.

Bilingual-education programs fail because they are based on the flawed theory that older students and adults learn languages faster and easier than young children, and that in order to learn a second language, a child must first be proficient and literate in his or her native language. Under this theory, hundreds of thousands of Hispanic non-English-proficient students in California schools were forced to attend programs that spent 80 or 90 percent of the school day teaching in Spanish — purposely delaying English.

It is disconcerting to see that some bilingual advocates, who have ostensibly dedicated their lives to improving opportunities for English learners, seem upset that test scores have improved. One noted advocate of bilingual education, Kenji Hakuta of Stanford University, told the Associated Press that since the Stanford 9 test was designed for native English speakers, the scores for English learners were essentially meaningless. "I don't think they [the scores] tell us anything, nor will they ever," he said.

Despite its critics, though, the tremendous success of English immersion in California is unmistakable. Even the Democratic governor, Gray Davis — who campaigned against the initiative — is now pushing for a 600 percent increase in funding for it. It is also not surprising that others wish to follow California's lead. In Arizona, a coalition of Hispanic parents and teachers have succeeded in placing a similar initiative on their ballot this November. Hispanic activists also tried to place a similar English- immersion initiative on Colorado's November ballot, but were blocked by the state Supreme Court — a decision that will delay their efforts until 2002.

Change need not come at the ballot box, however. In 1999, in a clear reaction to Proposition 227, courageous Connecticut legislators amended their bilingual-education law to limit the program to 30 months. They also mandated that schools get parental consent before placing a student in a bilingual-education program, essentially eliminating a 20-year-old bilingual mandate. Clearly there is no intention by the educational establishment to follow California's lead, and if anything, they are seeking to make a bad situation worse by expanding bilingual programs and avoiding any sort of accountability — all at the expense of thousands of Hispanic children.