BILINGUAL PROGRAM RUN WITHOUT REGARD FOR LOCAL CONTROL.

Byline: Douglas Lasken

AS reported in the Daily News (``LAUSD split returning to the fore,'' March 30), the movement to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District is set to return to center stage, after a year of dormancy, with two state-sponsored hearings on laws related to breakup scheduled for May.

Once again, therefore, we can expect the district to treat us to tales of how breakup is no longer necessary because LEARN and clusters have given us so much local control, that we already have de facto smaller districts.

I'd like to take a closer look at this reputed local control in the area of the most controversial and widely criticized program in the district: bilingual education.

For 20 years, our district has chosen to instruct native Spanish-speaking children in Spanish, withholding formal English instruction until the child shows advanced ``proficiency'' in Spanish, at which time, the student may be ``redesignated'' into formal English instruction. The period of exclusively Spanish instruction typically consumes four or five years.

This means that a native Spanish-speaking kindergarten student can expect all of his or her textbooks and academic instruction to be in Spanish until the fourth or fifth grade. Thus, the phrase ``bilingual education'' is something of a misnomer. ``Primary language education'' would be closer to the mark.

This program is based on theoretical doctrines put forward by USC gurus Jim Cummins and Steve Krashen, who maintain that Hispanic children would get all mixed up if they were taught English too early in life.

How has the program worked in real life? One might point to the 40 percent dropout rate for Hispanics. Or to the state Department of Education figures, showing that while the number of students in bilingual programs more than doubled from 1983 to 1993, the number making it into English dropped 5 percent. Or to the district's CTBS scores, which show that fourth-graders who redesignate are hopelessly unable to perform in English.

In all fairness, there has been some district response to public outcry against the dismal performance of bilingual education.

The district's new Bilingual Master Plan, scheduled to be implemented in July, calls for about 90 minutes per day of English (up from 30 minutes in the old program), for students in the bilingual program. However, as Carmen Shroeder, assistant superintendent of the district's Language Acquisition and Bilingual Development Branch, stated at a recent unveiling of the Master Plan, this 90 minutes, like the old 30 minutes, may not involve ``phonics, spelling, formal English reading or any academic material in English.'' What is permissible? Some district suggestions: ``pointing, touching, role playing and group discussions.'' (In addition, a new section on ``non-mainstream languages'' - e.g., ebonics - blames teachers' ``adverse attitudes'' for learning difficulties experienced by African-Americans and calls for training in ``students' learning styles.'' No evidence that such an approach works is put forward.)

It seems fair to say, then, that bilingual education as practiced at LAUSD is at least controversial, and reasonable people might question it. And since 1987, when California's only law mandating native language instruction was ``sunsetted'' by Gov. George Deukmejian, there has been no law or court decision, state or federal, that requires native language instruction. Thus it would seem that our newly autonomous schools, freed from downtown, could engage in discussion of and possible modification of bilingual education.

Such, though, is not the case. No one anywhere is permitted to question or change the bilingual program. District officials routinely close off discussion by telling parents that native language instruction is mandated by law, though this is quite clearly not true.

What is true is that $130 million a year flowing into the district for this failed program could be in jeopardy, along with an elaborate, centralized bureaucracy.

So as the breakup debate heats up and we hear once again that our schools have already gained grass-roots decision-making powers, let's keep in mind that downtown lets local neighborhoods make decisions when, and only when, downtown feels like it.