Editorial: Bilingual Balance

The old adage, “as California goes, so goes the nation,” has held true with many educational trends. But bilingual education has proven to be the exception.

Bilingual programs in the Golden State may have been curtailed with the passage of Proposition 227, but in other states, notably Texas and Florida, it is flourishing. Houston, El Paso, Chicago, Miami, New York, San Jose and 200 other districts even have programs that aim to graduate fully bilingual students.

The city of Austin recently appointed Edward J. Fuentes, a national expert on bilingual education and at-risk students, to oversee the city’s bilingual education programs. This move elevates bilingual education in the Texas capital to a level not usually encountered in other U.S. school districts.

Austin schools Superintendent Pat Forgione explaining the thinking behind the appointment of Fuentes said, “Bilingual education is not a stand-alone program; it crosses assessment, curriculum and professional development. Out of sight is out of mind, and it is critical to the future of this district and this city to make bilingual education a premier program.” About 13 percent of Austin’s 77,000 students are bilingual, and for most of them, Spanish is their first language. That number is expected to increase, following state and national trends, in the coming years.

Prop. 227 may not be setting the national agenda but its passage did encourage educators to put bilingual education under the microscope. Close inspection of these programs forced some administrators to admit that they just weren’t working. In Fort Worth, schools’ superintendent Thomas Tocco, discovered that students taught in Spanish were not getting enough English and weren’t doing well on tests in either language. Students in bilingual classes who took the English version of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills often failed, even after five to seven years in the district. Some who started in bilingual kindergarten classes remained in ESL classes well into middle and high school.

Instead of eliminating the programs, the Fort Worth school board voted to increase its funding of bilingual education by allocating $3.9 million over the next two years. The board also decided to concentrate scarce bilingual teachers in the lower grades and to eliminate bilingual instruction in fourth and fifth grades, replacing it with ESL language centers for limited English proficient students.

In Florida, state Rep. Anthony Suarez is exploring future legislation aimed at raising bilingual teaching skills. He is particularly alarmed by the rising rate of dropouts among Spanish-speaking high school students (see related news story on p.11). Suarez believes that the dropout rate may be connected to the language barrier and that the answer lies in recruiting properly trained and certified bilingual teachers and training more of these teachers. In Orlando, a pilot program to improve bilingual education is promising. The trial program tests students on their language skills, and then teaches students to become literate in their dominant language before transitioning them into English. Teachers prefer this approach to the current practice of pulling kids out of class to help them.

Even in California school districts have to make allowances for LEP students, a position backed by the state despite its mandate against the practice of social promotion. Educators say the different policies for English learners are fair because it can take up to five years to fully learn a foreign language and meet grade-level standards and that being held back could discourage English learners.

Despite the political battles over bilingual education, it is clear that, among educators, commonsense is prevailing. School districts are finding their own ways of teaching LEP students that take into account the realities of the situation and even opponents of bilingual education are realizing that it has a place in America’s schools. As Bill Lewis, a member of the Orange County school board that voted before Prop. 227 to end bilingual education admits, “The [English] immersion thing is a long process. You gotta cut ‘em a little bit of slack.”