BILINGUAL BILL, PROPONENT BLISTERED AT L.A. HEARING.

Byline: Sherry Joe Crosby Daily News Staff Writer

A proposed statewide initiative that would dismantle much of bilingual education was attacked Tuesday and its author repeatedly jeered during a state Senate committee hearing in Los Angeles.

Ron Unz, chairman of the ``English for the Children'' initiative, defended the measure against criticism and catcalls from bilingual advocates as he testified to a panel of state legislators moderated by state Sen. Hilda L. Solis, D-El Monte.

``The way to make a child bilingual is to teach that child English,'' Unz told the panel. ``Right now, it happens so slowly that the child doesn't know how to read or write English properly.''

But Unz sometimes had to speak over the din of the audience as the hearing continued.

Solis at one point had to call for order because members of the audience were yelling ``liar'' and other taunts at Unz.

``Los Angeles is a part of the state that most emphasizes bilingual education,'' Unz said during a break in the hearing.

``There was almost no one in this hearing who was in favor of the initiative,'' he said.

The Senate Select Committee on Bilingual Education held a daylong hearing at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters to discuss the effectiveness of the program, which graduates about 5 percent to 6 percent of limited-English-proficient students into English-only classrooms statewide each year.

The first of its kind, the hearing drew teachers, administrators, parents and students who described their experiences with bilingual education.

``It's about time we started shedding light on what bilingual education is about,'' Solis said. But she disagreed with Unz, saying that bilingual education seems to work. She told the audience that she based her confidence on LAUSD evidence showing that former bilingual education students outperformed their peers on standardized tests.

``There is convincing evidence that it does work,'' Solis said.

But researchers say too few qualified teachers and inadequate government funding for bilingual programs have left a legacy of poorly prepared students who can neither read nor write in English nor in their primary language.

``The fact that you can't get resources and teachers and that 25 percent of all limited-English-proficient speakers are not in a bilingual program at all is a failure of this program,'' said Jeannine English, executive director of the state's Little Hoover Commission. That panel - also known as the State Government Organization & Economy Commission - issued a 1993 report that called for an overhaul of bilingual programs statewide and a shift away from the state's emphasis on primary language instruction.

The LAUSD has the state's largest share of non-English-speaking students, with nearly half of its 309,802 students speaking little or no English. Fewer than one in 10 made the transition to an English program last year.

Statewide, bilingual education programs shift only 5 percent of their students into English-only classes each year although the number of students entering such programs has more than doubled in recent years.

Unz said he has filed about 800,000 signatures - nearly twice the number needed - to put the measure on the June 1998 ballot.

The initiative would impose English-only instruction in all public schools.

The measure calls for most non-English-speaking children to be placed in a yearlong program to build English fluency and then transferred into a regular classroom. Parents could request native-language instruction under certain conditions, but they would need the approval of school officials.

Bilingual advocates argue that dismantling the program would be a huge step backward for the 1.4 million California children who speak a language other than English.

``Your initiative would put students at the lowest achievement levels,'' said Solis, referring to studies that show limited-English students who received instruction solely in English fared worse than those who participated in a bilingual program.

The initiative ``would have a negative impact on parents, teachers and on education in California in general,'' said Maribel Medina, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. ``It would dismantle all language development programs and replace it with one method that is unproven.''

Opponents blamed bilingual education in part for the district's high dropout rate among Latinos. Of 13,704 high school dropouts in the 1995-96 school year, 9,186 or 67 percent were Latinos.

``We have a very, very high dropout rate due in part to bilingual programs that are not successful,'' English said.

Bilingual supporters say too often students are plucked from bilingual education programs before they are ready for the rigors of an English-only class, effectively handicapping them for the rest of their school careers. Advocates also say qualified bilingual teachers are hard to come by, forcing many schools to rely on classroom aides and teachers with emergency credentials.

According to district figures, the LAUSD is short 780 bilingual Spanish teachers - even after paying teachers a $5,000 annual bonus for speaking a second language.

The state's law governing bilingual education technically expired in 1987, though officials have largely kept the regulations governing the programs in force.