Bilingual education: si o no?

The voters in California said "enough" to bilingual education. People elsewhere say it works. The debate continues.

Can a child learn English in a class where she speaks Spanish with her friends, hears Spanish at least half the time from her teacher and does math, science and social studies in Spanish? The voters in California said no.

After 20 years of accepting bilingual education as the best way to teach non-English speakers, educators, parents and policymakers started questioning the value of the programs. They criticized them as bureaucratic boondoggies, failing the children they were designed to help. Some children stayed in bilingual classes too long. Other kids were not performing well academically. Dropout rates remained high. Research was mixed on the effectiveness of these programs. "The Legislature realized that the state policy was not serving students with limited English proficiency well," says California Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni, chairwoman of the Committee on Education, "but was unable to move a bill through that would reform programs."

"I kept seeing kids doing poorly in the upper grades after they had gone through bilingual education," said Virginia Martinez, a former bilingual educator in Santa Ana. "There was no transition to English. I felt that bilingual education was holding them back."

So last summer when Ronald Unz, a successful white businessman from the Silicon Valley, initiated Proposition 227 (doing away with all bilingual education), it struck a chord with many - 61 percent of California voters, in fact.

Modern bilingual education has been around since the 1970s when educators, faced with a court decision, decided that using two languages for instruction (English and the child's native language) was a good way to help children learn English while keeping up with subject matter. Before that, children were dropped into regular classrooms taught in English to "sink or swim."

In the landmark case of Lau vs. Nichols (1974), the Supreme Court, ruling on federal law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, required that school districts take "affirmative steps" to overcome educational barriers faced by non-English speakers. The Court argued that identical education programs for non-English speaking students were not equal and ruled that the "sink or swim" method of immediate immersion was a civil rights violation. Congress passed the Equal Educational Opportunity Act that same year, extending the Lau decision to all schools.

Around the country, there are 3.2 million students who speak little English (officially classified as "limited English proficient"). Of the 1.3 million students in bilingual programs, 73 percent speak Spanish, 4 percent, Vietnamese, and fewer than 2 percent speak Hmong, Cantonese and Cambodian each. Immigrant children who aren't offered bilingual classes in their native languages learn English with the help of English as a second language (ESL) teachers. Their classes are taught in English, and teachers make use of visuals and other methods to communicate effectively.

Proposition 227 requires that students be placed in structured English language immersion programs for one year without native language support and then be mainstreamed into regular classrooms. But it too, is controversial. A number of educators, policymakers and parents don't like this narrow approach to education. "In California, prior to the proposition, we had some successful programs and some very unsuccessful programs," says Mazzoni. "The initiative was a one-size-fits-all approach that throws out everything."

A class action lawsuit filed immediately after it passed in June asserted the proposition violated federal law, but a July ruling upheld it for the beginning of the 1998-99 school year. However, waivers have been granted to school districts able to prove that students would be adversely affected by the law's requirements. Charter schools are exempt from the law, and more and more are popping up. Thousands of California parents have requested waivers. "It's better," says parent Oliva Rojas. "When the basics are explained in your own language, you understand more."

GOOD PROGRAMS WORK WELL

The debate continues around the country about the best way to teach English and get immigrant children to achieve academic excellence. Proponents of bilingual education argue that students need to study mathematics, science and social studies in their native languages to grasp the subject matter and learn the material. They point to research that shows students learn English better if they first gain literacy in their own language.

"The approach taken by Proposition 227 simply ignores the individual needs of each child and certainly is an educational straitjacket for teachers and parents," stated U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. "Good teaching starts with a child's needs and moves the child along in a timely and responsible manner. The one-year time limit and one-size-fits-all approach to learning English flies in the face of years of research that tells us that children learn in different ways and at different speeds."

Denver bilingual teacher Pamela Glover agrees. "Our native Spanish speakers continue their academic work in Spanish while they learn English. That way, they don't fall behind academically. And parents stay connected to school because they can talk to their children's teachers and help with homework in Spanish until their children are ready to work independently in English."

Glover is convinced that "children can't learn all the English they need to succeed, as well as that year's curriculum, in one year."

IT'S A HINDRANCE, NOT A HELP

Research on whether bilingual education helps or hinders language acquisition is mixed. "When strict comparisons are made that control for the background factors, children learn English at the same rate regardless of the kinds of programs they are in," said Kenji Hakuta, professor of education at Stanford University and chairman of a panel that produced a recent National Research Council report on educating children with limited English. "It takes most students two to five years to attain a level of proficiency in English that does not put them at a disadvantage in regular instruction."

Supporters of Prop. 227 argue that student achievement has deteriorated under bilingual education. The programs, they say, tend to put students in slower learning tracks where sufficient English skills are rarely learned. And by holding back their mastery of English, students are put at a competitive disadvantage in the workplace.

"There's no academic component to bilingual programs," argues Mary Mendoza of Tucson, a parent who pushed unsuccessfully for a ballot initiative to end bilingual education in Arizona. "Their goal is to keep Mexican students illiterate." She points to findings by the Arizona Department of Education last summer that just 2.8 percent of students classified as "limited English proficient" learn enough English to enter the academic mainstream.

Hispanics do have a higher than average dropout rate. The rate in 1995 of Hispanics ages 18 to 24 who were born in the United States remained at 17.9; for Hispanic immigrants it was 46.2 percent, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. This compares with 12.2 percent of African Americans and 8.6 percent of whites. Foreign-born blacks and whites had lower dropout rates than those born in the United States. But there is no significant difference between Hispanics in bilingual education classes and those not in them.

The problem with bilingual education may have less to do with curriculum than with those who teach it. Supporters contend that the programs have never been adequately staffed and funded and are thus unfairly blamed for the shortcomings of Hispanic education. "The saddest thing to me is how bilingual programs are often implemented - the only criterion for teachers is if they speak Spanish," says Ray Medina, assistant director of Las Vegas' English language learner programs. Less than one in five teachers who currently serve non-English speaking students are certified to teach them, and 80 percent of school districts report encountering significant difficulty in locating trained candidates, according to the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs in the U.S. Department of Education.

NO BANDWAGON EFFECT LIKELY

It should come as no surprise that California has adopted a special solution to the problem of educating non-English speaking students given that it has a unique population. The state has approximately 1.3 million students who do not speak English - almost one-fourth of California's total public school enrollment and about 40 percent of all non-English speaking students nationwide. Nearly 80 percent of the state's non-English speaking population is Hispanic. And between 1993 and 1997, the number of these students in California increased by 20 percent. The Department of Finance estimated that in 1997-98 the state spent as much as 70 percent of an appropriated $385 million of its funds for economically disadvantaged children in bilingual programs.

Other states, however, with large immigrant populations, such as Texas and Florida, show few signs that they will follow California's lead. Although bilingual education has been a hot topic of public debate, legislatures are doing relatively little to change existing laws. Some are even strengthening their bilingual programs.

"I think it's our responsibility to take a look at bilingual education," says Kansas Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Barbara Lawrence. "Is it working? We want these children to be productive and achieve what they can achieve and not hold them back."

Of the 22 states that considered some kind of bilingual education legislation in 1998, only a handful passed bills. Connecticut, for example, now requires school districts to exempt eligible children from bilingual education programs if their parents or guardians file a written request. Arizona considered legislation that would allow parents to select specific bilingual programs.

Sandra Alvarado, director of the Latino Parents Association in Boston, said the California vote "was not based on fact, but on personal feelings and fear. The reality is those children will not learn the academic English they need to succeed in a year. They will sink or swim. We will not let that happen here," she said. Students in her district move into regular education programs when their English is good enough, usually in three to five years.

"The way I understand the issue, people in California were upset because kids were put into bilingual education programs and never taken out," says Medina of Las Vegas. "That was their concern. We don't do that here.

"Everyone calls it bilingual, but the child is actually monolingual when they come to us," Medina says. "The goal is to get them proficient in English so they'll be able to read, write and speak in English. We want them to be bilingual." Las Vegas offers bilingual education only in elementary schools. Middle and high school students are assisted by teachers of English as a second language.

Texas officials are in no hurry either to follow California's lead in dismantling bilingual education. Texas has a "very good bilingual program," says state board of education member Mary Helen Berlanga. Students entering the system are tested to see whether their English is so limited that they need bilingual education. Parents get a say in whether the student is placed in the program, and student performance is checked afterward,she said. Senator Carlos Truan, author of the 1969 Texas Bilingual Education Act, said, "Bilingual education works, but it can be improved. We must focus on improving the bilingual education we have before we look elsewhere for a quick fix."

"I just know that where you have a good program, you have success stories. That's exactly what we want: children to be successful," Berlanga said. "We want that for all children in Texas."

CONGRESS JUMPS INTO DEBATE

On the national front, the U.S. House approved a controversial bill - HR 3892 - that would have overhauled federal bilingual education programs last fall, but the Senate didn't have time to act on it before adjournment. The proposed bill would have:

* Converted funding for bilingual and immigrant education programs to a block grant.

* Allowed non-English speaking students to spend no more than three years in bilingual education classes that receive federal funding.

* Nullified all compliance agreements related to bilingual education between states or districts and the U.S. Department of Education.

* Changed the name of the education department's office of bilingual education and minority languages affairs to the Office of English-Language Acquisition.

With the number of bilingual students nearly doubling in a decade to 3.2 million nationwide, legislators can expect bilingual education to remain an issue. In order to obtain a good picture of state policy needs, legislators should consider enrollment trends of non-English speaking students, available research and assessment data on student performance, and the quality of teachers in bilingual programs.

Eric Hirsch specializes in education issues at NCSL. Julie Lays is an editor for State Legislatures.