J. Manuel Urrutia
On Thursday, January 29, I attended the second day of a two-day
conference titled "Generations at Risk:
the Realities and Debates of Bilingual Education." It took place at UC Riverside
and was sponsored by several UCR institutes as well as the offices of the
Superintendents of Schools of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. The
theme of the second day was "Providing Clarity to the Discourse on Bilingual
Education." The presentations touched upon the following subjects:
The luncheon keynote address was given by Mr. Henry Der, Deputy Superintendent of the California Department of Education.
The presentations debunked the myths advanced by the campaign being waged to promote an initiative perversely named "English for the Children."[1] The main points made by the proponents of this initiative, also known as the Unz initiative, after its chief promoter, Ron K. Unz, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, are: 1) English is the dominant language of this country and should be given official primacy over all others, 2) English is no longer being taught to immigrants in favor of foreign languages and cultures, 3) Bilingual Education is a failure since only roughly 5% of children whose first language is other than English are classified as English-fluent every year, giving raise to a widely quoted "95% failure rate," 4) Bilingual Education is kept because of profiteering by school administrators and teachers as well as their suppliers, 5) Bilingual Education is not wanted by its beneficiaries, 6) the initiative gives a choice, and 7) the initiative codifies into law the right to learn English.[2]
In what follows, I will examine each of these points and put them into perspective through the information disseminated at the conference:
1) Indeed, English has become lingua franca over much the world in the last century and is, by and large, a necessary condition for unqualified success in the U.S. However, this is due to historical events rather than to actual equal opportunity for other languages. Until the advent of Affirmative Action programs, it was fairly difficult for a person with a "foreign" accent to obtain high-level employment. Additionally, English has not always had universal acceptance in the U.S. As pointed out by Prof. Wiley of CSULB, historically there have been many communities which had a primary language other than English. This was the subtext of the recent movie "Fargo," which takes place in in Minnesota, where many trace their heritage to Scandinavia. Another very large community was that of German speakers, who, because of isolationism and fear-mongering during WWI, were severely restricted to the point where laws were passed forbidding the use of German in any public setting.[3] It is worth pointing that such hostility can be traced back to pamphlets written by Benjamin Franklin in which the possibility of German settlers overtaking English ones was alarmingly discussed.
2) English is still being taught to immigrants but not in the manner and pace that nativists would like. The opponents of Bilingual Education feel that a child, regardless of age, must be placed in an intensive English-only learning environment, without regard to any other parts of the curriculum.[4] They claim that conversational level English proficiency, such as that acquired through adult English as a Second Language classes is sufficient for any child to enter an English-only classroom, disregarding the fact that the vocabulary obtained in such classes is not sufficient for academic success. While it is indeed true that some children succeed in such environment, the majority will not, according to all research done to date. The most notable of these studies is the analysis[5] done by UC Riverside researchers of the data collected by the Santa Ana Unified School District. The findings indicate that mastery of English is achieved only after a period of, on the average, 7 years, even though progress in the initial years is rapid for monolingual children. In addition, learning of English is affected by many factors, among them socioeconomic class, primary language used at home, home literacy, etc. In essence, the absence of Bilingual Education would severely curtail the advances made by the children who receive this kind of instruction.
This conclusion is buttressed by examination of the test scores of the children who have been taken out of Bilingual Education classrooms. An ideal test case is provided by those children attending 9th Street Elementary School who were placed in English-Only classrooms at the request of their parents, who were "encouraged" into doing so by Ms. Alice Callaghan, self-styled savior of the homeless and the children in downtown's Skid Row.[6] When their scores were compared to those of children who remained in Bilingual Education classrooms, these children were found to have fallen behind academically. The assumption that these children would do better if placed in an English-Only environment is thus proven to be incorrect, at least for this well-publicized case.
3) The 5% redesignation figure is skewed by several facts: i) the actual percentage was actually 6.7% in 1996, ii) it represents the aggregate of all students, regardless of age and method of instruction [according to the California Department of Education, only 30% of the 1.38 million children classified as Limited English Proficient (LEP) students in California receive native-language instruction, commonly referred to as Bilingual Education; 30% received instruction only in English and the rest were mostly instructed in English with some informal support in their native language; thus, to accuse Bilingual Education of being a failure is a ruse. Parenthetically, there were a total of 5,612,965 students in K-12 California in 1996], iii) it is a one-year figure, iv) it does not take into account that the base number of LEP students changes yearly (for example, it increased by 4.4% in 1996), and v) it assumes that the rest (93.3% in 1994) never learned English.
A better perspective on what this number means can be gained by noting that a full immersion program in Santa Ana USD ran by Mrs. Gloria Matta-Tuchman, one of the initiative authors, and touted as the model of how non-English speakers should be taught English, has a transition rate of 17% when using this tortuous arithmetic![7] While this number is higher than the state's average, it is still not the panacea that the initiative proponents claim it is. The higher "success rate" is easily attributed to the higher socioeconomic position of the students that attend this school,[8] a conclusion supported by the UCR analysis of SAUSD data.
4) Mr. Unz claims that at least $400 million and maybe up to $1 billion is spent in Bilingual Education in California, and, hence, claims that schools are profiting from Bilingual Education programs. According to Mr. Henry Der, Assistant Superintendent in the California Department of Education, the amount is roughly $300 million out of a $30 billion budget, or 1% of the total. To put this number in context, in one particular school in South Central Los Angeles, the annual budget is roughly $450,000, not including the salaries of certificated and classified personnel. Only $60,000 is specifically earmarked for Bilingual Education and is chiefly spent on Teaching Aides and other bilingual support staff. This amount is dwarfed by the payroll cost at the same school (roughly $1.6 million for a faculty of 40+ teachers, not including administration and maintenance staff). Given these numbers, are exhorbitant profits being made out of Bilingual Education? Hardly.
5) If Bilingual Education is not desired by the parents whose children are being served, why is it that the "class boycott" organized by Ms. Callaghan is the only such action that has ever taken place at LAUSD? This "action" involved 100 children in a system that has more than 300,000 in Bilingual Education programs (out of a total of 667,000 students). If the lack of community support was as great as the opponents of Bilingual Education claim, there would have been more children pulled out of Bilingual Education classrooms. In contrast, a very vocal campaign was recently waged in Santa Barbara by a grass-roots coalition of parents and teachers to keep Bilingual Education in their schools. The protests, however, were stone-walled by the Santa Barbara Board of Education.
Another number often used by opponents of Bilingual Education is the "83% of Latinos polled by the Los Angeles Times in September 1997 disapprove of Bilingual Education." In reality, only 26% were in favor of English-Only instruction. The other 57% were in favor of "mostly English with some help in native language," a variant of Bilingual Education that the initiative would outlaw.
Yet another "proof" of community disenchantment with Bilingual Education is the poll conducted for Linda Chavez's[9] "Center for Equal Opportunity" by a "nationally recognized Hispanic polling firm," Market Development, Inc., on the use of Spanish in schools. Six hundred persons were questioned in 5 cities (Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Miami, and San Antonio) and it is claimed that 80% of the respondents favor English as the sole language of instruction. Closer inspection of the questions made available in the Web reveal that the survey has been designed to elicit this response. The sampled population, for example, is highly distorted since the great majority of the cohort selected has never had a child classified as having Limited English Proficiency (81.5%). Furthermore, the sample is not composed of recent immigrants since the majority has resided in the US for more than 10 years (74%, with 20.5% reporting being native-born). Additionally, the questions are highly misleading. For example, in order to ascertain "the importance of learning English," interviewees were asked "in your opinion, should children of Hispanic background, living in the United States, be taught to read and write Spanish before they are taught English, or should they be taught English as soon as possible?" The question is framed entirely in cultural terms and has nothing to do with the most common criterion used to enroll children in Bilingual Education classrooms (home language). Thus, it is not surprising that the pollsters had such high number of respondents agree with the stated aims of the sponsors: English should be given primacy over any other language in the US. That the sponsors of the "research" have an ax to grind is made very evident when the document containing these poll results is examined. At the top of the Web page containing it there is a call for activists to report negative experiences with Bilingual Education. Unbiased research, indeed.
6) The choices given by the initiative are limited and specially punitive. Under the language of the initiative,[10] a child who is not proficient in English and cannot function in an English-Only classroom for a minimum of 30 days must be classified by the school administration and faculty to have "special needs," either "physical, emotional, psychological, or educational" in order to receive consideration to receive native language instruction. What parent would want their child to be so stigmatized? The initiative also says that "the existence of such special needs shall not compel issuance of a waiver, and the parents shall be fully informed of their right to refuse to agree to a waiver." In plain English, parents are told that, in order for their child to receive instruction in his/her native language, the child will have to be lumped with "special" students prior to receiving a waiver that they don't have to accept and that the school does not have to give out because there is nothing in the law that says it must. This is not a choice at all.
7) The initiative implies that up until now there has been no right to be taught in English. This clearly shows that the proponents of the initiative have no knowledge of the history of California. If they did, they would know that prior to Governor Reagan signing the bill allowing for Bilingual Education, all instruction had to be given in English in accordance with California law. This requirement was highly detrimental to several generations of Mexican-descent children who were routinely punished for speaking Spanish, even in the playground. Many of these children were frequently classified as "slow learners" due to their minimal command of English. This state of affairs was found across the entire educational system, from public to parochial schools, and resulted in many children being traumatized and educationally stunted. Passage of this initiative will take us back to that era.
Given these facts, the initiative is a very bad idea. All evidence indicates that its proponents are thoroughly unfamiliar with what it takes to teach children academic subjects while at the same time introducing a second language. Their manipulation of statistics is reckless and devious. Examination of their "facts" turns out a series of individual anecdotes which have very little relevance to the overall immigrant population. The initiative is thus a political maneuver by nativists operating within the parameters of the English-Only movement, to which both authors of the initiative have close ties. It is imperative that all reasonable persons be informed of these issues and that they, in turn, educate others. Failure to do so will allow this initiative to pass and produce another roadblock to the advancement of many contributing members of this society whose only fault is to speak a language other than English at home. Since this segment of the population is expected to constitute the majority in 50 years by conservative estimates of the US Census Bureau, the nation can ill afford to waste its human capital in this way.
There is a number of resources in the Web that can
be tapped for further information. The references list some of these in the
context of the current debate on the Unz initiative. In addition, the following
should also be helpful:
This list is not meant to be comprehensive. All of these Web sites contain other links that will lead the Web explorer to many other resources.
References:
[1] The campaign has a Web page: http://www.onenation.org/.
[2] Ron K. Unz, "'Bilingual Education' ineffective," UCLA Daily Bruin, January 16, 1998, p. 11, available at http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/DB/issues/98/01.16/view.unz.html.
[3] T. G. Wiley, "World War I era English-only policies and the fate of German in North America," in Language and Politics in the United States and Canada: Myths and Realities, T. Ricento & B. Burnaby, eds., pp. 211-242, Lawrence Erbaum, Philadelphia, 1998.
[4] Article 2, Section 305 of initiative, available at http://www.onenation.org/.
[5] The full report can be obtained at http://www.education.ucr.edu/cerc/.
[6] Joy Horowitz, "The Woman Who Saved Skid Row," Los Angeles Times Magazine, Sunday, November 10, 1991.
[7] Nick Anderson, "Bilingual Backers Dispute Foes 'Failure Rate' Figures," Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition), August 8, 1997. Available at http://www.onenation.org/080897b.html.
[8] Nick Anderson, "Testing the Limits of Bilingual Education," Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition), August 8, 1997. Available at http://www.onenation.org/080897.html.
[9] Linda Chavez was director of U.S. English, see http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jwcrawford/HYTCH6.htm and http://www.ceousa.org/ for some details.
[10] Article 3, Section 311, paragraph (c) of initiative.