Advocacy for Language Minorities

I have posted this page on my website to give you access to my public advocacy statements on behalf of language minority students and educators. I believe that it is important that the voice of the minority be heard. I present these letters and editorials, most of which have been published, so that you can learn about the issues and concerns facing educators as we become an increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse society. You can go to the issues I discuss by clicking on the title here.

Change is inevitable. We can choose to grow and change as a united democratic community, or we can choose a more dangerous path of divisiveness and deterioration. As part of my mission as an educator, I freely express my vision of a more just and equitable society in which we nurture and value our diversity. To that end, I offer my writings on the public policy issues that affect education.

Issue: Literacy education for language minority students and California's reading reform policies

I am writing you in response to your letter to Robin Luby regarding the CATE resolutions on education reform, with was posted on CATENet on June 23. I am very encouraged to see this dialogue with organizations that represent teachers and their students. These discussions about state policies on literacy education are especially relevant to all of us who are concerned about the direction of recent reforms as these affect different students among California's linguistically and culturally diverse school-aged populations.

I am a professor of language and literacy specialized in teaching preparing teachers for the Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development (CLAD) credential. As you know, the CLAD teacher preparation program equips educators with the knowledge and skills to teach literacy and academic content to language minority students with limited English proficiency, now commonly termed English language learners (ELL). Students with limited English proficiency make up 25% of the total school population and 33% in grades K-3. In the five county Los Angeles area school districts, the percentage of students designated as ELL is 70%. In many school districts along the U.S. Mexico border, the percentage of ELLs in school districts is often over 95%.

It is my belief that these ELL students, and the teachers who are responsible for raising their level of academic achievement, are the missing piece in the state's reform efforts. The disaggregated 1998 and 1999 SAT-9 scores in reading are a testimony to the need for increased attention to the needs of ELL students in the area of reading instruction. At every grade level 2-10th, native English speakers scored within a three point range of the national mean of 50%. The scores of limited English proficient students ranged from 15-28 points below the mean for their English speaking peers at the same grade level. A careful and responsible reading of the STAR results clearly pinpoint where the focus of reading reforms should be if we hope to close the achievement gap.

As you know, passage of Proposition 227 last June changed the laws governing the education of language minority students, requiring that these students be provided one year of a program titled "sheltered English immersion" or "structured English immersion" before being placed in regular classes alongside their English-speaking peers. This new law dramatically shifted responsibility for literacy instruction away from trained and certified bilingual teachers and onto teachers who have less preparation and skill (if any) to teach reading and writing to students with minimal skills in speaking and comprehending English. Under Proposition 227, only in cases where parents receive exception waivers based on "special needs" of their children can they be given literacy instruction in their native language. Many research and professional education organizations, including the National Research Council, the American Educational Research Association, and the International Reading Association, have expressed grave concerns about this policy and the risks of reading failure it poses to large numbers of language minority students.

In spite of the urgent need for sound educational policy for 25% of our children, California's reading reform policies and the 1999 Language Arts Framework address the needs of these readers only superficially and often with what experts view as misinformed and misguided advice to teachers. The assumption appears to be that methods of reading instruction that are effective with native speakers of English will be equally effective with second-language learners, regardless of their level of language proficiency. Further, the state policies sidestep the controversial issue of whether a child benefits from reading instruction in his/her native language, before or concurrent with, instruction in English reading. For instance, in a brief discussion under the heading "Universal Access-Reading Difficulties or Disabilities--English Learners" (p. 40-41) that includes five bulleted items, teachers are advised to provide "brief practice sessions" and "additional systematic guidance" to ELL students.

Although no one can quarrel with extra practice and guidance, this cursory treatment of second-language reading hardly addresses the magnitude of long-term language and literacy development needs of these children. Consequently, monolingual English teachers in sheltered immersion and mainstream classrooms with ELL students are given the impression that there is nothing particularly special or difficult about teaching a child with limited English-language skills to read and write in English. This is not what the preponderance of research literature in second-language literacy and biliteracy indicates. However, users of the state framework would not be exposed to other ways of thinking about teaching a child to read in his/her second language, since the research accepted as sound and informative in this area is largely omitted from the document. The result is that teachers are left without a solid research and pedagogical base to understand and address the particular difficulties likely to be encountered in learning to read English by 25% to 33% of California's students.

My concern is that the focus on phonics underlying policies that prescribe instructional methods does not adequately support learning to read for students who must struggle with comprehending the language they encounter in texts because of their level of development of second-language skills. This inattention to vital issues of literacy instruction that impact every teacher of early literacy, and most likely every teacher of ELL students will severely limit the long-range effectiveness of the state's reforms. Narrowly targeted literacy education reforms will inevitably produce narrow results.

At a recent workshop in Sacramento (May 24-27, 1999) for California State University faculty conducted by Dr. Louisa Cook Moats and sponsored by the CSU Center for Education Reform, these concerns were brought to the fore. Dr. Moats conceded that effective reading methods must combine the best of what we know about second-language acquisition with what we know about effective reading instruction. Several of my colleagues and I who attended this workshop have offered to enter into dialogue with policymakers in hopes of seeing respectful and open-minded exchanges toward this end. This will require discussion between educators and policymakers as peers who do not seek to scapegoat or polarize theoretical and research perspectives, but rather who truly seek the best path of reform for all California's children.

The newspapers have been filled with statistics about public school students' reading achievement during the past few weeks and months. On March 4, the scores for California's population were released in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report. The NAEP scores showed that California ranks second to last among the states in reading and that only 20% of fourth-grade students are considered proficient readers. This compares to 29% nationally who are considered proficient enough to read and comprehend challenging reading material. There were sharp differences among students reported by ethnic groups, with only 7% of blacks and 8% of Latinos meeting the proficient level. Fourth graders in suburban schools outperformed their counterparts in large urban school districts and rural areas.

In July of 1998, reading scores on the SAT-9 achievement test were also made public. The test results for limited English proficient students were reported separately from the scores for native speakers of English, due to a court ruling in a lawsuit filed by the San Francisco Unified School District. The separate reporting of reading scores for these two groups of students showed that native speakers of English were within the average range as compared to their peers around the nation at every grade level except in grades nine through eleven. The limited English speakers, however, were scoring from 15 to 28 percentage points, or the equivalent of three to four grade levels, below their native English speaking peers.

It is a challenge even for professionals in the field of literacy education to make sense of this blizzard of statistics. It is even more difficult to translate these standardized test results into sound educational policy and meaningful school reforms. One disturbing trend in these test results is clear. Minority students are not benefiting from public education as they should and the gap between the haves and the have-nots persist. The important question is: How well will California's education reforms serve to close this gap and improve reading achievement?

Much time, energy and resources have been spent in fighting what are known as the "reading wars" to determine the best approach to reading instruction. What was once a healthy academic discussion, sometimes debate, among literacy educators and educational researchers over approaches to reading entered the political arena in 1987. Objections were raised to the California Language Arts Framework, which called for literature-based approach to reading called Whole Language. Soon attacks on this approach became a "cause celebre" for some influential public figures. Proponents of phonics instruction feared that the shift in emphasis to progressive teaching methods amounted to "throwing the baby out with the bath water." The concern was that children would not get "the basics" of reading unless there was a state mandate for teachers to teach phonics directly and systematically. When there was a dip in NAEP reading scores, Whole Language instruction was blamed.

The political posturing in favor of phonics appeared to strike a cord among conservative voters. Consequently, Wilson appointees on the State Board of Education, primarily Marion Joseph, have pushed for a return to a phonics focus rather than integrating phonics into comprehension and literature activities in the state curriculum documents.

In 1998, the State Board adopted a new Language Arts Framework designed to tip the scales back to more explicit phonics teaching. However, these shifts in policy were not supported by any research that indicated what was actually happening with reading instruction in California schools, nor how teachers themselves were implementing various reforms. Because of the lack of clear information about reading instruction in real classrooms with real teachers, much of the extreme push back into a phonics focus was based on political beliefs and ideologies. Policymakers became more concerned with making appeals to their political constituencies than with reliable data collected by literacy educators and researchers into the needs of teachers and the needs of students for improving the teaching and learning of reading. Consequently, a one-size-fits-all solution to raise reading scores was adopted that ignored the opinions of many experts in reading who claimed that the causes of students' low reading achievement were more complex and required more broad-based solutions than merely a return to phonics.

My own research into the approaches to reading instruction preferred by teachers conducted in 1995 focused on teachers of large populations of language minority students in two California school districts. In a survey using a research-validated questionnaire, I found that 83% of the 176 teachers who participated in the study espoused a balanced approach to reading. This means that they believe in, and therefore presumably utilize, strategies identified with both the phonics or skills approach to reading and Whole Language. Sixteen percent of the teachers identified their philosophy of reading instruction as a phonics approach. Only 1% of the teachers responding to the questionnaire in this population considered themselves to be Whole Language "purists."

These survey results suggest that what literacy educators call the "Whole Language scare" is really just a political straw man. The dichotomy between approaches to reading instruction perceived by politicians and the public is not reflected in the beliefs of teachers. The majority of teachers appear to believe that a balance of approaches to reading instruction is needed to meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse learners.

What do these research findings mean in terms of state educational reform policies? Policymakers should cease their attempts to force schools and teachers into extremes over pedagogical issue. Decisions about instructional approaches should be made by teachers in classrooms, not by Sacramento bureaucrats and politicians. Renewed confidence and trust in teachers' professional judgments about reading instruction will come through university and local school district collaboration in providing broad-based teacher training in a variety of methods and approaches for diverse learners. Policies that restrict teachers' exposure to different methods through professional development activities are unwise and ineffective. For example, the summer training institutes for teachers in reading proposed in Governor Davis' reform package must give teachers the opportunity to learn about a wide range of techniques and strategies so that they can blend and meld their own balance of methods to increase our children's reading achievement. It is the teachers themselves who must then decide what approaches are best suited for each individual student in their classrooms.

I am disturbed by the irresponsible reporting found in Richard Lee Colvin and Duke Helfand's "Twice Failed" series (Dec. 12, 13 & 15). They quote these statistics: 10% of California's students are classified as special education students; 18% of these have identified physical and psychological disabilities; another 26% have speech and language impairments. The other 56% are labeled "learning disabled." Consequently, the group labeled "learning disabled" makes up 5.6% of the total school population of the state. According to the article, these children have been wrongly dumped into special education because they haven't been taught to read and their reading difficulties would have been prevented if teachers were using systematic, explicit phonics for reading instruction.

Compare these statistics with what researchers from the National Institutes for Child Health and Development (NICHD) have to say about dyslexia in an article that appears in a document published by the State Board of Education's California Reading Initiative (1999), Learning to Read, p. 8. This document that has been widely circulated among academics and public school teachers.

Another document authored by Louisa Cook Moats from the NICHD titled Reading IS Rocket Science, research is cited that indicates that 95% of students "can be taught to read at a level constrained only by their reasoning and listening comprehension abilities" (p. 10). In other words, 5% suffer from an impairment of their ability to learn to read. Is it not entirely possible that the 5.6% of the student population that your article identifies as having been classified as learning disabled is the same 5% that Dr. Lyon and the NICHD claim suffer from dyslexia that is not "mitigated by and improved with appropriate teaching"? So where in these statistics is there evidence of an abuse of the "learning disabled" (LD) category in special education attributable to a lack of phonics instruction in the regular classroom?

In a one-liner buried deep in the article, you refer to the opinion of some unnamed "experts" that 2-5% of the population would need special services for dyslexia regardless of the effectiveness of regular classroom instruction. Some of these experts apparently conduct research for Dr. Reid Lyon and the NICHD. So where is the "leading research" that you claim now shows that these reading problems could have "reduced, or even avoided altogether" had these LD students received "the basics of phonics"? This is clearly not what the NICHD studies report.

Not satisfied with such a logical interpretation of the available data on dyslexia, a state taskforce has concluded that 5.6% of the school population of California placed in special education would not have any difficulties in reading if only they had gotten more phonics from their mainstream teachers. However, Dr. Lyon indicates that these children have a condition that is neuro-physiological, possibly inherited, and that a certain percentage need very specialized instruction that is beyond the level of "appropriate" classroom reading instruction. This does not represent a failure of California's reading instruction, but rather a human condition that afflicts a certain portion (5-6%) of our population. These children must be provided the individualized and intensive services by reading specialists above and beyond what a child can receive in a classroom with where they have 20-35 classmates, such as in special education or recognized intervention programs such as Reading Recovery.

You indicate that state officials in retrospect attribute the "rise" in special education referrals to phonics instruction being "downplayed across the country and in California in the late 1980's." Clearly, the conclusion we must draw from the NICHD reports is that even appropriate reading instruction in our classrooms cannot prevent, or correct, all incidences of reading failure. The proportion of California's school population seems to be in line with the national percentage, regardless of growth in numbers or changes in methods of categorizing special education students in our state.

It is merely speculative on the part of these "state officials" to attribute this phenomenon to a certain method of reading instruction, especially where reliable data is not available to document whether or not phonics was ever "downplayed" in California's classrooms. You speculate that the "reduction" in phonics lessons "contributed to a steady rise" in the numbers of students identified as LD. However, no causal relationship is established between the alleged "reduction" in phonics teaching and LD student identification. An equally plausible interpretation of these data is that students who had dyslexia and in fact needed extra help were only identified once reading of authentic texts and literature became the focus of instruction. In other words, we can just as well speculate that an excessive emphasis on phonics devoid of meaningful reading of coherent text masked real reading problems instead of addressing them. See Jeff McQuillan's (1998) excellent book, The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions.

Why are these distortions cause for concern? If we misdiagnose the reading problems of our students, we cannot find effective solutions. There are many more obvious, and reliably documented, causes for reading failure than the Whole Language movement of the late 1980's and early 1990's or a lack of phonics instruction. Thirty-three percent of California's students in K-3 are language minority students classified as limited English proficient. The majority of these children are delayed in their literacy development while they are learning English. Language minority children are restrained in their abilities to learn to read in English by their lack of knowledge of the language in order to process and comprehend written text. Consequently, skilled teachers need a large repertoire of approaches and strategies for these learners in order for them to benefit from literacy instruction in English.

Many experts in second-language acquisition and biliteracy, myself included, question the effectiveness of phonics instruction in English in addressing the educational needs of these children. Methods of instruction cannot be applied in teaching these children based on the same set of assumptions that underlie literacy instruction for native speakers of English. Consequently, as ill-informed policymakers and a misguided public push for a greater focus on phonics, educators are pressured to apply teaching approaches that exclude large numbers of learners rather than enhancing their opportunities to achieve success in reading.

Once again, the LA Times is carrying water for those who want to whip up sentiment against educators based on a distorted presentation of statistics, all designed to serve the cause of phonics. The strategy is to create a "crisis" in special education and blame it on a lack of phonics instruction in the classroom, which in turn suggests a "solution"--more phonics mandates from the state. The problem is that this "solution" would have us treat 95% of our students as if they were eligible for special education, while treating the 5% of our students who are eligible as if they should not be. Literacy educators and classroom teachers have every reason to resent these distortions and the overly prescriptive policies they have generated by misinforming the public about the realities of the difficulties facing our public schools.

The push to end "social promotion" by the state governors is just another sad example of "crowd-pleaser school reform" that will end up doing much more harm than good. This is really a policy of retention--flunking kids, if it call it by its real rather than its euphemistic name. Which students are the ones who will be retained? We know already that such policies will impact minority students disproportionately. In states like California and Texas with highly linguistically and culturally diverse student populations, language minority students will be harmed the very most. California, for example, has 25% of the total school-aged population that is classified as limited in English proficiency.

In California this is an especially cruel policy in light of passage of Proposition 227 restricting bilingual education last June. The new law requires that English language learners receive a one-year program of English instruction before being mainstreamed into regular classes. In other words, for at least one year, the focus of instruction must be on teaching these children language skills, with literacy and content learning taking a back seat. Then, the children will be expected to catch up in the content they missed out on while learning English, with English language and literacy skills that are far from being fully developed. Then, if they don't make two years of academic progress for every one year of instruction between grades 1-4, they face retention. This accelerated academic progress must take place in classrooms where teachers are not required to have any specialized training whatsoever in teaching language minority students and in programs designed with native-English speakers needs in mind, not theirs.

A recent study of achievement factors among Hispanic students conducted by researchers at the University of California at Santa Clara (Rumberger & Larson, 1998) found that students who were overage in high school due to retention and other factors were 80% more likely to drop out of school before graduation.

The drive for more grade level retention is not a cure for a "cancer" in the schools, it is the "cancer" itself. Why make children pay the price for poor educational policies and political demagoguery that result in inadequate programs and gross educational inequities? Our society must not let politicians at the state and national level get off the hook of "accountability" to minority communities who are negatively impacted by their ambitions to secure votes.

I read with interest your comments published in the March 14 edition of Insights in the San Diego Union Tribune. I agree with much that you have to say and applaud your efforts to improve education for all San Diego's children. My particular area of concern as reflected in my teaching and research in the SDSU School of Teacher Education, my involvement as Professional Development Coordinator for the SDEA Charter School, and my public activism, is with equal educational opportunities for language minority students. It is out of concern for these students that I write you regarding your comments on the district's "social promotion policy."

In the Insights article, you state the following. "The past policy of avoiding dropouts by advancing students through the grades regardless of whether they have demonstrably mastered their grade-level academics, serves at end only to deceive our students and to work a fraud on their parents and on the community." Words such as "fraud" and "deceive" are very strong and condemnatory, even inflammatory. Such statements, however, are even more alarming and disturbing in light of the research on in-grade retention with which most educators are familiar.

I refer you to a 34 page study published by the Intercultural Development Research Association in 1999 titled "Failing our children: Finding alternatives to in-grade retention." This report compiles the conclusions from numerous national research studies on retention and focuses especially from findings in Texas from statewide retention and promotion data. This report concludes that 50% of students who are retained do no better academically the second time they complete the grade they failed, 25% actually do worse academically the second time around, and that only 25% of the students show improvement. The researchers also concluded that retention is strongly associated with dropping out of school in later years and that African American and Hispanic students are retained at twice the rate of White students. The authors of the study state the following regard the research on retention: "It would be hard to find another educational practice on which the evidence is so unequivocally negative."

A study by Rumberger and Larson (1998) from UC Santa Clara on Hispanic students showed that overage students were found to be 80% more likely to drop out of high school than students who were not overage. I refer to Rumberger, R.W., & Larson, K.A. (1998). Toward explaining differences in educational achievement among Mexican American Language-Minority Students. Sociology of Education (71), 69-93.

In short, the research findings do not support the use of in-grade retention as a remedy for underachievement, and in fact, show that retention causes both short-term and long-term harm to students' academic success. This is what makes your statements about "social promotion" so disturbing. My concerns go even deeper, however, in light of the confusion and disruption to programs serving Latino students in the San Diego City Schools caused by Proposition 227. I am getting reports that some schools are now "restructuring" their programs for limited English proficient students for the third time this school year. Bilingual/ESL teachers at a recent SDEA meeting where I was an invited speaker, following Cristina Flores-Speer, expressed their concerns about the lack of definition of program structures and expectations. From these conversations, I conclude that although the school district is advancing in articulating programs for language minority students, many of these children are not receiving a coherent program of appropriate instruction.

Nor do I know of any remedial programs designed to address the academic deficit these children suffer while they are acquiring English. How then are these children to fare in decisions regarding retention or promotion when they have not received appropriate programs and instruction to prevent academic deficits and failure?

Research based on assessments of growth in language proficiency done by Ed De Avila (1997), designer of the Language Assessment Scales, is reported by the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. This research gives us a clear picture of what we can realistically expect for students who begin their school careers as non-English speakers. The data show that although students may gain up to 54 points on a 100 point scale of proficiency in their first year of language learning, they take from three to five years to gain academic proficiency that is reflected in their reading and writing skills. It is only at a level 4 in English, or near-native proficiency, that students can be expected to benefit from instruction and when reading and writing skills begin to catch up.

Further, De Avila found that students' continual growth is largely a function of program participation and the quality of the program. A student who begins as a non-English speaker in first grade would be expected to make 1.5 to two years of academic growth for each academic year in order to stay on grade level. This growth would have to occur in addition to normal progress of one language proficiency level per year for every year of instruction in order to reach a third grade level by third grade. In other words, in order to avoid in-grade retention, the average Latino or Asian or Somali limited English proficient child is expected to be a super-student in a super-effective program. Is your school district prepared to provide such programs?

Is the school district intending to represent to the public that there are remedial programs that will be in place to compensate for the deficits the children, through no fault of their own, are now suffering? I know from discussions with my colleagues throughout California that such programs have not been identified. According to the IDRA study, most remedial programs can be described as "...stronger doses of what had not been effective previously." Consequently, Mr. Bersin, I believe words like "fraud" and "deceive" must be applied equally to attempts to raise public expectations regarding solutions to complex educational challenges through in-grade retention and remedial programs that cannot deliver on their promises.

It is my sincerest hope your newly formed Academic Achievement Council and the already established Biliteracy Council will grapple with the issues of educational equity for language minority students, basing their deliberations and decisions on solid research findings rather than on political rhetoric and popular opinion. If in any way I can be of assistance in this effort, please feel free to call on me.

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to your editorial position on retention policy expressed in "Shell Game" (Oct. 14). The editorial is full of inflammatory terms like "educational malpractice" and "social promotion policy" used to refer to decisions not to retain students in-grade as a remedial strategy. Further, it states that a "tough stance" on retention is "fundamental to quality education." If only educating children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds were so simple! The controversy over whether to retain or promote hundreds of students in San Diego Unified is a prime example of the problems caused by one-size-fits-all approaches to complex education problems.

Any adolescent who is not progressing well in school must question the logic of staying at a grade level to repeat five subjects he already studied and passed, just because he can't master subject number six. Or is it four out of six? Three out of five? How can his parents explain such an arbitrary and irrational policy? Pity the poor middle school teachers who have to teach a class full of second-time-around over-aged students along with all the rest and still make the course relevant and exciting for all of them.

Formulating education policy based on popular opinion just creates administrative headaches, unreasonable demands on teachers, and healthy skepticism among parents and community members who believe that rules and regulations should promote learning rather than impede students' progress. Promotion and retention decisions should be made closest to the child by parents and educators working collaboratively at the local school level. The School Board and the public should not be given authority to supercede such important matters affecting the academic careers of our youngsters.

I received a critical response to the letter published in the Union Tribune. This was my answer to the reader.

Thank you for sending me a copy of letter to the Union Tribune in response to my commentary regarding in-grade retention of students in the San Diego City Schools. I have taken the liberty of gathering some materials discussing research findings on short term consequences and long-term effects of retention on students. These include Dr. Robert M. Hauser and Dr. Anne Wheelock. The authors of these two discussions of research are considered leading authorities on the issue. They are highly respected and credible among public educators and academics.

In your letter you suggest that I am focusing on a "small objection to holding students back" while missing "the big picture." I urge you to consider that it is perhaps members of the public who do not see the big picture, since few have access to research studies on these complex educational issues that are studied and discussed among the education professionals who must implement education programs. I challenge your contention that unprepared students are passed along because educators "take the easy way." Rather, I believe that decisions to retain students are used sparingly and with caution because there is very little evidence that this procedure benefits the child, while the risks of harming the child over time are very high. One large scale research study in Texas showed that only one out of four students who are retained show increased academic gains as a result.

To provide an analogy, if a doctor believes that there is a possibility of a high-risk treatment for an illness having beneficial effects, he or she must fully inform the patient of both the potential benefits and the risks involved. The ultimate decision whether or not to proceed with a high-risk treatment must be the patient's. This is much like in-grade retention. The decision to use this risky form of educational intervention must be carefully weighed by parents and educators together and, as I stated in my letter, not dictated by the public or the school board who are very far removed from the child's best interests.

We must not lose sight of who the immediate clients of the public schools are--the students who are enrolled and their families. This is why I am puzzled that the conservative philosophy of local control over schools and support for parental decision-making has been superceded by laws that restrict parent' choices in these matters of such strong and often irreversible effect on their children.

It is very unfortunate that the public is so hostile toward educators and so punitive in their thinking about education reform. This is the result of very limited black-or-white thinking that results from reactionary approaches, rather than careful analysis of alternatives and a willingness to dialogue with educators to solve our common problems. Your theory that retention of large numbers of students who don't meet "standards" will remedy their academic deficits is just that--a theory. This theory is not borne out by educational research and the many accumulated years of experience of professionals in the field.

Educators require much more evidence that a policy is sound and will attain the desired results before we are willing to implement it. If we are forced to implement unsound policies because of political pressures, the public should not expect positive outcomes. Both the unsound policy and the pressure to implement it against our better judgment breed resentment and further disconnection between the public and the educational community. Instead of leading to improvements in our schools, such policies will deteriorate our ability to enhance learning for all our public school students.

I enclose my business card in the hope that you will visit my CLAD website and become informed about my efforts to improve K-12 education. Certainly I acknowledge that you and I are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. However, if we keep an open mind, perhaps our efforts toward improving the schools might converge to really make a difference.

Issue: The professionalism of bilingual/cross-cultural teachers and teacher recruitment

Thank you for your thoughtful and thorough review of the implementation of Proposition 227 in California (Schnaiberg--California's Year on the Bilingual Battleground, June 2). The true effects of the law restricting bilingual education will only become apparent over the next few years as we observe how language minority students are progressing through public school system. One important area of concern that you pointed out in the article that deserves much more public scrutiny is the impact of the law on California's teaching force. You quote the teacher who states that she is mandated to implement a program (Structured English Immersion) that goes totally against her beliefs. Yet, according to Section 320 of Proposition 227, a teacher can be held personally liable and open to civil litigation for perceived failure to implement a program where classroom instruction is "overwhelmingly the English language" or "nearly all classroom instruction" is in English but "...designed for children who are learning the language." These terms are not clearly defined in the text of education code.

Bilingual educators know the consequences of Proposition 227, both in the short term and the long range. The California Teachers Association, the Association of Mexican American Educators, the California Association for Asian-Pacific Bilingual Education, the National Association of Bilingual Educators, and the Association of California School Administrators (CTA et al v. Davis) have filed suit in US District Court to have this provision of the law struck down. They claim that this provision is unconstitutionally vague and establishes an enforcement mechanism that lacks any standards to which educators can conform their conduct. Further, the law creates a chilling effect on the speech rights of educators to communicate effectively with their limited English proficient students both inside and outside the classroom.

Proposition 227 places public education in California on the horns of a dilemma. At a time of an increasing shortage of teachers due to high numbers of retiring educators and growing student-aged populations, the majority of whom are minorities, the new places new demands and new threats on teachers. Couple this intimidating liability law for teachers with growing public clamor for "accountability" and laws designed to eliminate "social promotion." The result is to dissuade talented bilingual college graduates from entering the teaching profession, especially when they know they will be required to compromise their beliefs and underutilize their valuable linguistic abilities. Proposition 227 shifts the burden of responsibility for teaching language minority students away from the most qualified teachers onto teachers who are not bilingual and may or may not be trained in effective teaching strategies for bilingual learners. Consequently, in many school districts, monolingual teachers with a minimum amount of training are expected to accomplish in one year what bilingual teachers with highly specialized training and skills in two languages were formerly expected to accomplish in three to five years of instruction. The power struggle and disharmony promoted by the proponents of Proposition 227 through their attacks against bilingual educators will inevitably take its toll on California's ability to attract and retain new teachers.

As we survey the "bilingual battleground" for casualties after one year under Proposition 227, let us not forget that teachers are not draftees in some army conscripted to fight the war for the hegemony of English. They are volunteers who have chosen a profession with the goal of educating children. If laws are passed that impede their goals, they will choose to go elsewhere to find professional fulfillment. Sadly, the language minority children of California will be the losers in this political battle.

The times have changed for teachers with greater demands for "accountability" from the public schools coming from all sectors of society. Traditionally teachers have been responsible for testing and evaluating students in order to prescribe appropriate instruction for each student in their classrooms and to report to parents on their child's progress. For the most part, teachers used assessment tools they themselves selected. In some cases however, standardized tests were used by school districts to measure students' achievement as compared to their grade level peers from throughout the United States. The assumption underlying the use of these norm-referenced tests was that we could compare apples to apples, since children in a particular classroom in California shared many characteristics in common with children of the same age in schools in Iowa or New York. These test scores were then analyzed by teachers and shared with parents to inform them and the community how students in local schools were faring in their academic progress. The teachers' accountability resided in making appropriate choices of instructional methods and materials to produce sufficient growth in students' learning to satisfy parents that their child was working up to his/her potential and keeping up with the curriculum that was being taught.

The definition of accountability for teachers is changing dramatically at a time when the complexity of teaching students from diverse linguistic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds is placing greater demands on their ability to address the needs of their students. In California, 25% of the student population is classified as limited in English language proficiency; 38% of all the state's public school students speak a language other than English in the home. Along with the demands on teachers for accountability for results in student achievement, there are new legal and professional liabilities placed on teachers by passage of Proposition 227 that dictate what processes must be used to teach these children. Proposition 227 created a personal financial liability for teachers because they now can be sued by parents for "willfully and repeatedly" failing to comply with the dictates of the law.

We must ask ourselves whether or not these new forms of "accountability" are fair to teachers. We ask this because a society that is not willing to examine policies that add to the burden and stress of teachers cannot expect to attract more and better teachers into the profession. There is not an endless supply of talented young men and women, or older people seeking a career change, waiting in the wings to go into teaching. Teaching is becoming one of the least preferred careers for college graduates. This is alarming, when projections are that 300,000 new teachers are needed in California over the next ten years to replace a large number of retiring teachers and to meet the needs of class size reduction and growing school aged populations.

A shorter version of this editorial was published July 1 in the San Diego Union Tribune--North County Edition

One year after the passage of Proposition 227, the release of SAT-9 scores in school districts throughout California is bringing claims of victory from the proponents of the anti-bilingual education initiative that passed by an 11% margin of votes in June 1998. Supporters of Prop 227, along with its author, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ron Unz, have taken an early lead in attributing gains in the test scores of students designated as limited English proficient (LEP) to enforcement of initiative and alleged successes of structured English immersion. There was near jubilation from the 227 camp in response to the release of scores from Oceanside School District on June 16 in the North County edition of the San Diego Union Tribune. Oceanside is a suburban district north of San Diego with a population of 4,000 LEP students.

The next day, the Wall Street Journal chimed in to the cries of "I told you so" with an editorial. The WSJ congratulated the 61% of California's voters, reassuring them that they "...can take some satisfaction for having ignored the demagogues last year by deciding to end a failed program." The editors attributed this "success" to six months of English immersion under Proposition 227 and to Oceanside Superintendent Ken Noonan's choice for strict enforcement of the new law. At the beginning of the school year, Superintendent Noonan had stepped into the media spotlight to become the darling of 227 proponents when he refused to grant waivers for bilingual instruction to 150 out of 155 parental requests.

The early release of Oceanside's SAT-9 scores, before the statewide scores were available, was clearly a political "pre-emptive strike." Following publication of the district's LEP student scores, Ron Unz appeared on National Public Radio (June 18) calling for an end to waivers for instruction in students' native languages. Unz claimed that statewide test results would clearly show bilingual education to be ineffective and English-only to be effective and that the proponents of 227 "...will move to outlaw bilingual forever."

Meanwhile, bilingual educators began to scrutinize the Oceanside claims with skepticism, making calls to the school district administration asking for additional information about students and programs. Knowing that many factors may account for rises or declines in standardized test scores from year to year, they wanted to get the full story before reacting publicly. Even Delaine Eastin, California Superintendent of Public Instruction, sounded a note of caution to proponents and opponents of Proposition 227 alike about reading too much into unanalyzed test results from isolated school districts before public release of scores statewide.

What was most bewildering for many educators was the degree of media "hype" over test scores generally considered abysmal from an academic perspective. These scores indicated that at most grade levels, limited English proficient students are performing two or three grade levels below their native English speaking peers. Educators with expertise in testing and assessment also decried the superficiality of analysis and the statistical validity of the reports and subsequent interpretations.

Letters to the editor of the San Diego Union Tribune pointed out that Oceanside was comparing "apples to oranges" because different groups of students were compared with each other, rather than a single group of students' individual progress from one point in time to another as a measure of academic growth. Furthermore, they expressed concerns that conclusions about the impact of Proposition 227 were drawn based on data was from .003 of the total English language learner student population of 1.4 million, hardly a statistically significant sample. Many educators and researchers agreed in on-line conversations that there was a lack of data from which to draw valid inferences about bilingual education in Oceanside, let alone about how a particular group of students had progressed in English immersion following passage of Proposition 227.

Note: After test publisher's errors in LEP/FEP students' classifications for grouping SAT-9 scores were discovered, Oceanside released a revised set of scores in late July. These scores showed only second graders scored at the statewide average for LEP students. Click here for a complete analysis of the corrected test data from Oceanside UDS.

The low test scores from Oceanside are no comfort to advocates for language minority students concerned with closing the achievement gap between English language learners and their native English-speaking peers. Standardized test scores in the teens and twenties mean that a school district has a long way to go toward bringing these students up to grade level in their academic performance. In order to get up to speed and on grade level by the time they are ready to graduate from high school, these students much progress academically 1.6 years for every year of instruction over the next five years. Proposition 227 will not help Superintendent Noonan accomplish this daunting task, since its requirements only cover a one-year immersion program before students are "mainstreamed" into regular classes.

While school administrators sift through their districts' test results in June and the media report both amateur and professional analyses to feed the public interest, what can we say about Ron Unz and his declaration of war on waivers? Mr. Unz has already come out against school vouchers in an article published in The Nation magazine on May 3, 1999. This position on school choice places Unz on the opposite side of the school choice issue from most conservatives. With a voucher initiative already being circulated for the June 2000 primary ballot and Republican candidates courting the Hispanic vote, it is questionable whether many conservatives will rush to join Unz in a frontal assault on parental choice.

Attacking parents who choose bilingual instruction for their children is politically risky, since many middle class Anglo parents join with language minority parents in supporting dual immersion programs. Many parents see the benefits of bilingualism, that gives their children valuable language skills to gain a competitive edge into careers in an expanding global marketplace. For instance, San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Alan Bersin recently launched a biliteracy program aimed at producing high school graduates who can speak, read and write in Spanish and English.

The renewed media debate over bilingual education raises speculation that the English-only movement and opposition to bilingual programs may be losing steam. If Ron Unz's efforts to abolish waivers fail to garner support, the proponents of Proposition 227 may eventually have to accept a simple reality. Behavior among consenting adults who find their collaboration mutually beneficial is extremely difficult to eliminate by writing laws.

Where there's a will, there's a way, and the will of parents still carries more weight in many school districts regarding decisions about their children's education than the will of a majority of voters. Where there are cooperative and forward-looking school administrators, qualified bilingual educators, and parents who can exercise their free and informed choice of educational programs they believe to be most effective for their children, bilingual education will survive and thrive. Bilingual education in California is very likely here to stay. As we grow to appreciate our linguistic and cultural diversity as the valuable resource it truly is, we will be glad we still have it.

Letter to Elizabeth Chey in response to her article about the first year of implementation of Proposition 227:

Thank you for your report on Proposition 227 in the August 8 edition of the Orange County Register. I agree with many of the conclusions you draw in your article. However, I also think you paint a much rosier picture the one seen from the point of view of many second-language educators.

I believe you have heard my name before from my colleagues. I am an expert in Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development or CLAD (note the slight correction over your labeling of this credential in your article). I absolutely agree that teacher training is essential in the post-227 era, as it was long before the passage of the initiative last year. However, we have taken a giant step backwards. We have in effect shifted the burden and the responsibility in California away from the teachers with the most expertise in educating language minority students and unto the novices. For example, you point out that in Orange County the number of bilingual teachers fell, but more teachers were qualified to teach immersion.

As a CLAD professor with particular expertise in literacy who has trained hundreds of bilingual and CLAD teachers over my 30+ year career, I have worked with many teachers in linguistically diverse classrooms. I know that no matter how well prepared and experienced a CLAD credentialed teacher might be, he or she will always be limited in his/her ability to teach children language and literacy in a second language as compared to their bilingual colleagues. Consequently, what Orange County is experiencing is a language education "brain drain," due directly to Proposition 227.

A bilingual teacher who is highly trained and highly skilled to teach children using dual language strategies is under-utilized in an immersion classroom where his or her use of the native language as a medium of instruction is restricted. Many opportunities for bilingual teachers will no doubt open up as dual immersion programs become more popular. This, however, creates a phenomenon that you might also have discerned in your article. Less experienced, less well-trained teachers will teach the students who are most in need, while the elite programs that serve a select clientele have their pick of the best and brightest bilingual teachers. In other words, greater inequities for language minority students are occurring and will continue to occur, exacerbated by Proposition 227.

You mention how teachers seem to be surprised about students' progress in English in so-called immersion classrooms. These are bilingual teachers you interviewed, of course. As a person who is familiar with various models of bilingual education and the expected growth curve in language and literacy of second-language learners, I think much is being made of this point when it really is no surprise to the experts. I recommend that you read my analysis of the SAT-9 test scores and the projections based on these data on my website at the URL below. These bilingual teachers have the easy job--helping students grow in the early stages of their language development, when the most rapid growth is expected. If these children's instruction is now turned over to CLAD and mainstream teachers, these teachers have the difficult part of the job--catching the children up academically and bringing up to grade level in reading and writing as well as in content area knowledge. All of these academic challenges have had a small beginning, but the children have been concentrating their learning efforts on the English language and all else has had to take a back seat. Now it is the job of the lesser skilled teachers to do the bulk of the work, while bilingual teachers can sit back and take the glory because their job is supposedly complete as they go on to the new crop of ELLs.

How long do you think this imbalance in responsibility in relation to expertise and training is likely to work? I believe that 227 is going to hit the skids when monolingual teachers begin to wake up to the great responsibilities thrust upon them by an ill-informed electorate for which they are not prepared. This is aggravated by the political motivations of many English-only advocates who are demanding a "take-over" of language minority education by teachers who renounce bilingual education and seek to eliminate bilingual educators from decision-making processes.

Very few credible language minority educators with expertise predicted immediate disaster from 227, contrary to what you suggest. Rather, we attempted to warn the public about the illusions created by an ill-conceived English-only instructional model that has serious and profound long-term effects on the quality of education language minority students will receive over time. You are correct in pointing out that after one year it is much too soon to tell much about the impact of 227. Let us not be lulled into complacency or put too much faith in anecdotal evidence and preliminary results. We must look at the big picture and the long term.

The true impact of 227--educationally, economically, socially and politically has practically remained unexamined. I invite you to investigate more deeply into the issues raised by such events as the filing of the complaint by parents on July 9, 1999 against the Oceanside Unified School District with the Office of Civil Rights and the protest march in San Diego on August 7, 1999. These issues of social justice and educational equity will not go away, and there are many others. So stay tuned for much more regarding this issue, which is so vital to the future of California's language minority students and to all of us.

Note: On September 29, 2000 the California Department of Education Compliance Unit found Oceanside Unified School District in violation of 13 federal and state legal standards in educating the language minority students in the district. The complaint has since been resolved, although OUSD is now under the scrutiny of the Comit� de Padres provisions of the CDE and the Office of Civil Rights.

Letter to editorial writer for the Sacramento Bee, Peter Schrag. A response to the October 20, 1999 editorial titled "Initiatives, Judges and the Crocodile in the Bathtub" about judicial review of voters' initiatives in California.

I read your editorial (Sacramento Bee, Oct. 20) about initiatives and judicial review. You mentioned Proposition 227. I wonder how many people are aware that the issue of language minorities' rights to use their mother tongue as a medium of instruction in the public schools in whatever country they live as an ethnic group is protected by international human rights law. There are clauses in the United Nations Treaty on the Protection of Human Rights that address the issue of linguistic human rights. There is even a Commissioner of Human Rights in the Hague charged with protecting these rights in nations around the world. The reason is that restrictions on ethnic and linguistic minorities' right to use their native language where governments have decision-making power is a common form of oppression by dominant monolingual groups.

According to Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, who is one of the Commissioner's appointees to the UN Linguistic Human Rights committee, there are only two demands made around the world by language minorities. These are the right of self-determination in matters of governance and the right to use their mother tongue in the public schools as a medium of education. These rights are very closely linked and are vital to the ethnic community's power to foster their linguistic and educational resources to maintain and improve their economic and social opportunities (including choices of acculturation or assimilation) within the dominant culture.

If it were not for the waiver provisions of Proposition 227 that appear to give parents some modicum of linguistic rights, I believe that 227 would be a violation of the treaties the USA has signed with the United Nations. However, I believe that the entire spirit of 227 is indeed a violation of the linguistic human rights of language minority students and their parents, because the ultimate power to decide the choice of language of instruction does not reside with the parents, but with the state. Consequently, the state can deny entire communities that wish to use their language as a medium of instruction the right to do so by merely denying individual waivers so there are never 20 or more.

The problem lies in that our Constitution does not recognize the rights of groups--only the rights of individuals. There are many scholars of international law who are calling into question whether or not human rights abuses are adequately protected under such a legal system. In order for the UN Human Rights protections to go into effect, a group has to be legally recognized as an ethnic/cultural/linguistic minority within society. There is such a high degree of integration and acculturation between Anglos and Latinos that this might be difficult to achieve through the mechanisms available under international law.

Certainly in light of the state and federal court rulings regarding 227, we are far from addressing and rectifying the injustices being wrought by this popular initiative. However, the minority community has a growing awareness and concern about the ability of the majority to vote away its human and civil rights with a nod of approval from the courts, until such time as enough children are harmed by this law. Eventually this will occur and parents will bring suit on civil rights violations, such as the ones already complained about in Oceanside USD in the Coalici�n de Padres letter of July 9, 1999 to the Office of Civil Rights.

There appears to be very little commitment to educational equity in California. Rather, we have a more powerful majority monolingual and monocultural group that dominates politics. Consequently, this majority can control the allocation of educational resources and opportunities and coalesce to deny these to a disfavored and less powerful minority. I have written an analysis of this phenomenon that is published in the Association of Mexican American Educators Journal (1999-2000). The article is titled California's bilingual education debate: Intergroup conflict and patterns of prejudice.

Many scholars have examined the dangers of majority rule, among them, James Madison. He warned the framers of the Constitution that if a majority is united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. As Lani Guinier (1994) points out in her book The Tyranny of the Majority, democracy in a heterogeneous society is incompatible with rule by a racial monopoly of any color. Minority groups have no way to veto or defeat issues that directing affect them and that they value intensely. Thus, a system of winner-take-all collective decision making favoring the dominant majority cultural group prevails unfettered. As Guinier points out, with this type of majority rule, politics becomes a battle for total victory rather than a method of governing open to all significant groups within the society. The majority can often be disinterested in deliberation or consensus, unless and until their dominance is threatened, as in the case of the growing numbers and political clout of California's Latino voters.

Some politicians have convinced a majority of Californians that they are threatened by the growing power of bilingual educators and language minority communities that value their bilingualism enough to struggle to have it supported and nurtured in the public schools. The battle over minorities' rights to use their mother tongue in the public schools is in part a symbolic battle to ensure that no other language and the culture of its native speakers are given official standing and prestige on a par with English. This is why the predominant political tactic of the proponents of Proposition 227 has been to denigrate and demonize bilingual educators. The idea that they sought to implant in the minds of members of the dominant society was that bilingual educators were harming language minority children by promoting their home language. Therefore, they concluded, the majority was justified and noble for intervening to protect them from their own kind. It is very difficult to refute this sort of prejudice once it becomes legitimized in the minds of the majority of the members of a society.

These tactics are not new to our history of ethnic conflict. We saw this pseudo-missionary mentality among the founders of the Carlisle Indian Schools of last century. These supposedly well-meaning citizens zealously pursued their agenda to "civilize" Native Americans by taking their children away from their parents and their communities to educate them in segregated boarding schools. The sad results are a black mark on American history that should serve as an example of how misguided we are when we arrogantly assume that ethnic and linguistic communities must somehow be "protected" by the dominant majority culture from the consequences, and the benefits, of self-determination.

Unfortunately, the federal courts to date have refused to entertain the possibility that Proposition 227 is motivated by an animus of racial prejudice. In Valeria G. v. Wilson the court rejected arguments by the plaintiffs that Proposition 227 is discriminatory against racial or national origin groups. Specifically, the July 15, 1998 decision denying an injunction against enforcement of 227 states, "This court cannot discern from the face of Proposition 227 any hidden agenda of racial or national origin discrimination against any group." (p. 4). Further, Judge Legge declared that "...[T]he voters of California expressed their policy preference by enacting Proposition 227." Judge Legge later contradicts the language of a previous ruling in Casta�eda v. Pickard (Texas, 1981) by stating that choices between "...sound but competing theories is properly left to the educators and public officials charged with responsibility for directing the educational policy of a school system."

I hope that you will keep these issues in mind in your analysis of the role of the federal courts in reviewing laws passed through the initiative process. Indeed, as you point out, initiatives are laws designed to regulate and control issues that the public feels deeply about. The problem is that frequently issues that evoke strong feelings are tapping into deeply held prejudices that are unaffected by logical arguments or pleas for justice. The better alternative would be legislation, where issues affecting the rights of minorities are discussed and negotiated in a context where power imbalances are addressed through representation, unlike a popular vote on a take-it-or-leave-it initiative. The true role of government is not to supercede and transcend the interests of the minority to impose the will of the majority, but to reconcile competing interests and protect minority rights in order to achieve our common aspirations. California's initiative process is working against this legitimate and beneficial role of government in issues involving the rights of immigrant groups and racial minorities.

Guinier, L. (1994). The tyranny of the majority: Fundamental fairness in representative democracy. New York: The Free Press.

I am writing in response to the article by Andrew Wainer published on March 20 titled "New Words to Live By." The English tutoring program created under Proposition 227 is just one of its many wrong-headed ethnocentric provisions. The underlying premise of providing English classes to immigrant parents so they can tutor their children and help them with their homework is that children are disadvantaged by speaking another language in the home. Nonsense! This attitude is profoundly demeaning and disrespectful of the funds of knowledge and linguistic abilities possessed by immigrant families. Immigrants' heritage language is an important asset to maintain and transmit to their children to further their academic and cultural learning. These children are advantaged by the opportunity to be bilingual in English and another language, which gives them greater opportunities for jobs and businesses in a growing global economy and transnational society.

To convey to immigrant parents the idea that they cannot nurture their children's learning unless and until they speak English is to deny them and their children the power of the family in supporting the greater and nobler goals of education. Most of these immigrant parents (82%) are Latinos. Many recognize the fact that Spanish is the third most widely spoken language in the world today. The Spanish language carries with it a rich cultural and literary tradition and value this heritage.

Rather than trying to convert children and their families into monolingual English speakers, we should be promoting and enriching their biliteracy skills to improve language minority students' prospects for the future.

I have read Michael Barone's article "In Plain English" in US News (May 29, 2000). It is fairly typical of the anti-bilingual education genre--full of half truths, overgeneralizations and outright lies. There has been precious little journalistic integrity in reporting on this issue. Many newspapers and reporters have seen it as their role to beat the English-only drum since they see their fortunes aligned with conservative movements and the status quo. It is very difficult to overcome this campaign. However, let me examine a few of the claims made in this article, which is really just another exercise in scapegoat wrestling.

First of all, the article lumps "Latino kids" into a single category, calling them "a lost generation." Barone never mentions the fact that only 15% of California's Latino students were ever in a bilingual program of any description. This is a common strategy in articles of this ilk, since the objective is to portray bilingual education as THE CAUSE of the low levels of achievement of Latino students. When Alice Callaghan, the Episcopal priest who staged the Ninth Street School drama in Los Angeles, adds her two-cents, she extends the fallacy. Callaghan says that older students "who went through bilingual programs" are not proficient enough in English to perform well on standardized tests. One must question how well Callaghan has documented what kind of program these students went through in her "research" or whether or not she is observing what happens to students from structured immersion programs also. Most of these students are unlikely to have attained a higher level of English proficiency than students in bilingual programs, especially if they have similar conditions of poverty in their neighborhoods. She tells how they go on to earn A's and B's in high school, so the problem they have with standardized tests is unlikely to be attributable to lack of English proficiency traceable back to their few short years in bilingual education. In all likelihood, if these students were in well-implemented bilingual programs, their chances for academic success and full English proficiency were enhanced rather than diminished.

Barone even extends the problem of "most Cal State University students" who need remedial instruction to bilingual education, even though the proportion of bilingual education graduates among this racially-mixed population is likely to be even more miniscule. Only 22% of CSU system students are Latino. Consequently, only 3% of the CSU's freshmen are likely to have ever been enrolled in a bilingual education program. It is inconceivable that bilingual education is the cause of the freshman class' under-preparation for college work when only 3% of them even received bilingual instruction.

Using classroom anecdote bolstered by misleading statements about Oceanside's test scores is a predictable strategy. The statement about the number of students who rated as "fluent" on the "state LAS test" is an example. As an expert, I would not be surprise to see many, if not most, of a class of second graders in a well-implemented bilingual program rated at a level 3 on the LAS, which under the new guidelines, may be the score that Oceanside has chosen as representing fluency. However, if as the SAT-9 test scores in reading indicate, the majority of these children are scoring 23% NPR, they do not meet the former guidelines for reclassification: A score of 36% NPR or better on a standardized reading test, a LAS score of 4, and teacher recommendation. We have no way of knowing this, of course, since we are given the example of the a single student who is reading with fluency and comprehension at an "upscale suburb" level, a descriptor that would be difficult to translate into a grade level equivalency. No doubt, for showcase purposes one of the better-performing immersion classrooms was chosen. However, if the published SAT-9 scores for Oceanside are examined, this classroom may not be typical of students' performance district wide.

Few US News readers will hesitate even a moment at one of the most disturbing lines in Barone's article, "Los Angeles Unified ...has tens of thousands in its "Model B" program, which, a grand jury ruled last year, does not comply with 227." Under 227's provision a civil cause of action was created, allowing personal liability lawsuits against teachers, school administrators and even local school boards. In Los Angeles and San Francisco, proponents of Proposition 227 have used this provision to convene citizens' grand juries to threaten educators with lawsuits for what they perceive as a lack of conformity with the law. The long-range implications of this newly created form of governance and regulation over education programs are staggering. Proposition 227 allows, even encourages, ad hoc citizens' groups to bypass the elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Department of Education, the governor's appointed State Board of Education, and locally elected school boards to force compliance with popular folk wisdom about the best way to educate language minority students. These grand juries are given the power to supercede and regulate the decisions of professional educators through an unprecedented instrument of coercion: Civil liability lawsuits against individual educators. These grand juries of un-elected and completely autonomous citizens, convened at the behest of community activists, are accountable to no one in dictating educational policies in local school districts regarding programs of instruction for language minority children.

Barone then goes on to line Gov. Gray Davis up along with other opponents of bilingual education, all declaring that "every kid can learn, can do better" which is a source of great comfort to all of us.

Barone concludes by cheering the fact that Latino kids are learning in plain English like immigrant children a century ago. Never mind the fact that 95% of the total schooling experience of Latino children, not all of whom are immigrants, was in English before passage of Proposition 227. Unlike immigrants of a century ago, many live in actively bilingual and bicultural homes with close familial and economic ties with their ancestral homelands. There is little or no incentive for them to give up Spanish and become English monolingual. The immigrant education ideology of 100 years ago will not serve the best interests of Latino school children in the 21st century who must be prepared to compete in the global marketplace and an information and technologically driven economy.

Barone has written a well-crafted piece of English-only propaganda designed to give the impression that now with Proposition 227 firmly in place, all is well with the education of Latino students in California. Those of us who are close to the problems and the challenges of educating language minority youngsters know differently. The reality is that Proposition 227 is a public policy failure.

Newspaper and magazine articles like this one do not deal with the larger issues we face in language minority education. They do not address the core issue: How do we teach English to non-proficient students while at the same time teaching them academic content in a language they do not fully speak or understand without having them fall further and further behind as they progress up through the elementary grades? Proposition 227 has not provided an answer to this difficult question. In fact, it has severely limited the options available to educators, parents and local school communities for achieving this task. Bilingual education is one effective means of accomplishing this in a way that also provides other benefits, such as affirmation of students' culture and biliteracy. Making bilingual education inaccessible to the small percentage who previously received some instruction in their native language does not solve the problems of the majority of language minority who no longer receive these services or who never received them in the first place. What is the meaning of a "political" victory for Proposition 227 when it cannot lead to educational solutions? It means that the fears of a majority have been temporarily assuaged at the cost of long range solutions to larger intractable social problems stemming from under-educating a growing minority population.

Education policy makers met on June 7, 2001 to determine cutoff passing scores for the high school exit exam (HSEE) that goes into effect as a graduation requirement in 2004. The Sacramento Bee announced that the pass rate had been set at 60% in English and 55% in Math. With these cutoff scores, 65% of the ninth-graders who volunteered to take the test passed the English portion and 45% passed the math portion. In the state's lowest performing schools, only 32% of the students passed and 8% passed the math portion. The newspapers reported on June 8 that only 17 percent of non-native English speakers passed the math test, while 30 percent passed the English test. An editorial by Daniel Weintraub titled �A crucial moment for California�s school reform� (June 7) appeared in the Sacramento Bee. Mr. Weintraub suggested that a high rate of failures on the test would turn up the pressure on the schools to �uncomfortable levels� and result in school reforms.

As a teacher educator specialized in instructional programs for language minority students, I do not believe that any cut off score for passing this exam will alter the inherent injustice of this test for California's student population. Let me explain the reality of California's demographics that the politicians are choosing to ignore. According to the Department of Education�s statistics, in 1998 there were 506,759 limited English proficient students in grades 6-12 in our public schools. 82% of these students are native Spanish-speakers. Let us examine the impact of the HSEE policy on these half million secondary students who are learning English as a second language. California has a higher percentage of ELL among our student population (25%) than any other state.

There are various paths toward meeting the requirements for a high school diploma, such as these listed for graduation in the San Diego City Schools:

44 Semester Credits to be completed in Grades 9-12 including:
Eight English to include a semester course which emphasizes American Literature, 6 mathematics, 4 science including 2 credits in life science courses and 2 credits in physical science courses, either 2 semesters of foreign language and 1 semester of fine or practical arts or 2 semesters of fine arts and 1 semester of practical arts, 6 social studies, 4 physical education--all course work must meet the minimum standard in each content area. Students must maintain a 2.0 overall grade point average to receive a diploma.

Many language minority students can fulfill many of these requirements through sheltered instruction and other types of programs designed with their needs in mind. It may take them longer to graduate and complete all the courses, especially in English, but they nonetheless are in school and learning language, literacy and content. Many may be motivated by a desire to go on to community college, where oftentimes specialized reading and writing courses contribute significantly to their eventually attaining full English proficiency and a level of literacy skill that allows them to be fully functioning participants in the economic and social life of our society.

The politicians and education policy makers have not fully assessed the social and political costs of the HSEE policy. The injustice of this examination cannot be avoided or ameliorated by decisions on an �acceptable rate of failure.� The HSEE is a travesty and must be reconsidered and eliminated to avoid an injustice to our language minority population.

I acknowledge the public�s concern about the level of academic achievement represented by the award of a high school diploma. I agree that it is unjust to give students a substandard education that does not prepare them adequately for each successive level of their schooling. I know that the public is concerned about how well prepared students are for the increasing demands of high technology and information oriented occupations, as these types of jobs take the place of lower skilled work in manufacturing and construction and other forms of manual labor.

The point I wish to make is that a high stakes examination does not offer us a solution to the problems we face in California because of our cultural and linguistic diversity. We must not penalize students for the injustices of the public school system. The HSEE assumes that there is a level playing field and that somehow if students fail to meet the standard it must be because of some lack of performance of their own. What the normal learning curve for English language, literacy and academic content of language minority students demonstrates to us is that a large number of these students do not have enough time in the traditional 7-12 grade schooling model to achieve the standard imposed by a single test for graduation.

I often wonder if policy makers who passed the legislation requiring the HSEE have fully weighed the options this test presents to high school students. An English language learner who is reading at a fourth to sixth grade level when he or she enters seventh grade, or a new arrival to the United States, must consider whether or not it is worthwhile to stay in school and complete course requirements, but possibly face repeated humiliation and frustration because of their lack of skills to pass the HSEE. What are the incentives for these students to continue their high school studies? My colleagues who are following this debate inform me that in the state of New York, recent imposition of a high school exit exam similar to the HSEE has increased the dropout rate among ELL students dramatically. A report on the Class of 2000 released by the NYC Board of Education Division of Assessment and Accountability on March 15, 2001 indicated that following the imposition of the English Language Arts exam for ELLs, the dropout rate among these students almost doubled from 17% to 31%.

Have our politicians and policy makers considered this question: Who presents a greater potential burden on society? A high school graduate who has completed all the course requirements but reads and writes at a sixth grade level? Or a high school dropout who reads and writes at a sixth grade level?

Rather than serving to remedy the injustice of inequitable schooling, the HSEE compounds the injustice for those students who are the most disadvantaged at every level within the school system. Certainly, poor quality programs for elementary-aged language minority students must be addressed through sound policy and proper allocation of resources. This, however, does not answer the concerns about students whose developing English language and literacy skills have not allowed them to make the accelerated academic growth (approximately 1.5 years academic growth for each 1 year of schooling) to close the academic achievement gap and progress at the same rate through school as native English speakers. Nor does it address the challenges of educating those later arrivals to the U.S. with low levels of native language literacy. It is neither wise nor feasible to sacrifice the educational opportunities for hundreds of thousands of California�s language minority students to get the public�s attention in an attempt to somehow force the schools to reform. The structures and policies now existing in the schools are not conducive to the type of reforms needed to address our diversity. We must examine the issues of school reform that can make a difference such as program development, teacher quality, equity of access to the core content, and school structuring rather than place our hopes on a single high stakes test that will aggravate rather than remedy our problems.

For More About Effective Schooling Practices for Language Minority Students:

Analysis of Prop 227 implementation	Analysis of structured English immersion
Role of the Regulators: Analysis of 227 Implementation Controversies	A Roadmap to the Bilingual Education Debate
Age of Enlightenment: A Rebuttal to Critics of Bilingual Education	Philosophical Assumptions of English-only vs. Bilingual Education
SAT-9 Test Scores for ELLs: An Analysis	Effective Schooling Practices for Language Minorities Bibliography
The Bilingual Education Debate: Prejudice Formation	Debunking English Only
Critical Thinking in the Bilingual Education Debate	How Long Does It Take to Achieve English Proficiency?
Prop. 227: A Public Policy Failure	Effective Language Minority Program Implementation
Prop. 227's Second Anniversary: Triumph or Travesty	Complete Proposition 227 Index
Accountability FOR and TO Language Minority Students	New Role of Advocacy for Language Minority Students

Return to Dr. Mora's Home Page	Go to MoraModules Index
PLC 915 ELD/SDAIE Syllabus	ED 516 Syllabus
TE 639 Syllabus	TE 930 Reading Methods Syllabus