Critique of a Critique: Hakuta et al v. Rossell

In the report titled "How Long Does It Take English Learners to Attain Proficiency" by Kenji Hakuta, Yuko Goto Butler, and Daria Witt (2000, January) the researchers present research findings intended to give an empirical basis for defining common terms used in the post-Proposition 227 policy context. Due to the inconsistency and confusion over implementation of Proposition 227's sweeping mandate for language minority education, this effort is worthwhile. Hakuta et al called for resolution of the basic issue of how long it takes students to become English proficient "...before we can get to a higher level of policy discussion." Professor Christine Rossell's critique of the Hakuta et al study (2000, June) clearly demonstrates that a higher level of policy discussion has not been reached. I argue here that Rossell and READ Institute's research and on-going polemic with language minority educators are merely a deployment of a hodgepodge of decontextualized data compiled in an effort to legitimate a previously staked-out political position. Consequently, their arguments do not serve to enlighten program implementation or to resolve outstanding legal questions, but only serve as another plank in the platform of the English-only movement's campaign against bilingual education (Petronicolos & New, 2000).

First, it is important to frame the policy debate that has given rise to the discussion at the current level. Proposition 227 mandates a program of one year of intensive English instruction for English language learners (ELL) before they are placed in regular curriculum or "mainstream" classes. According to the provisions of 227, during this year of "structured English immersion" (SEI) students are segregated by language proficiency level and given English instruction using a modified curriculum designed for children who are learning the language. As soon as the student has achieved "a good working knowledge of English" he or she is transferred to a mainstream class, where supposedly his or her classmates are native English speakers and/or proficient in English.

In the July 12, 2000 edition of Education Week on-line Report Roundup, John Gehring summarized Professor Rossell's objections to the Hakuta et al study, referring to her report as a Bilingual Education Critique:

Since Professor Rossell claims to only disagree with the conclusions that Hakuta el al draw regarding the policy implications of the length of time required to acquire academic English proficiency, let us examine what the LMRI researchers actually concluded. Rossell states that the essential question of research and assessment on the length of time involved in second language learning is "...to determine whether an LEP child is better off with special education services than without..." In essence, what Hakuta et al conclude from their analysis of the data is that since public policies exist that require special services for LEP students until they achieve parity with native English speakers, we should not set policies that cut off those services until such a point is reached. Rossell argues that since the measurements we have cannot provide a clear definition of "parity," an arbitrary cut off point for services is warranted. She claims that cutting off remedial services for LEP students is a good thing because they will be "better off." This appears to be based in part on her belief that terminating "special education services" ends English language learners' period of segregation from their native English speaking classmates. The Hakuta el al study makes these points:

1. There is no evidence in the accumulated data to support the claim by Rossell and Ross (1986) that the use of the native language in the bilingual program delayed English acquisition since the data did not yield different results in the length of time it took students to learn English in the bilingual program in one of the four school districts included in the LMRI study.

2. The data suggest that "policies that assume rapid acquisition of English--the extreme case being Proposition 227," are "wildly unrealistic." A "more sensible policy" is to consider the "entire spectrum of the elementary grades" as the range in which students acquire English proficiency. Consequently, policies should support a "balanced curriculum" that focuses on the full array of students' language-learning and academic needs.

3. Since slower progress is associated with higher levels of poverty and lower socioeconomic status, arbitrary limits on the number of years special services are provided would most adversely affect the most vulnerable students.

4. The achievement gap between English language learners and native English speakers continues and widens as students move up through the elementary grades. Since it may not be possible to address these academic deficits within the normal school day and academic year, alternatives such as special summer school and after-school programs must be seriously considered.

5. More research is needed to address the central policy issues surrounding the length of time required for ELLs to learn oral and academic English. Further research will help us pursue more reliable normative data on the language and academic development of these students so that we can analyze the tasks facing students in classrooms and design effective instructional environments based on a realistic set of assumptions about students' developmental course.

A common devise used in persuasive arguments is the "straw man" argument. This tactic involves altering your opponents' position so that the altered version is easier to attack than the original. Rossell recreates the conclusions made in the LMRI study to suit her purposes. Notice that Hakuta el al did not draw conclusions about the very points around which Professor Rossell centers her critique. The Stanford researchers do not speculate about the relative merits of "structured English immersion" classrooms versus mainstream classrooms. Nor do they express an opinion about the merits of bilingual education as compared to "English immersion." Nor do they suggest the length of time "special educational services" should be provided. In fact, Hakuta and his associates eschew an arbitrary cutoff point, such as the one embodied in Proposition 227. Consequently, we must examine Professor Rossell's use of the Hakuta et al study as a "straw man" to advocate for policies that mandate limitations on educational services to ELLs. This is in keeping with the political position of the READ Institute that sponsored Rossell's critique of the Linguistic Minority Research Institute's study.

Rossell's analysis of the Hakuta et al study relies heavily on distinctions she makes between SEI and mainstream classrooms, since the gist of her argument is that ELL students are "better off" in the mainstream. The mandate in Proposition 227 requires that these children be segregated into sheltered English immersion classes until they can understand some English, at which point they are to be "mainstreamed" to join their English speaking peers. According to Rossell, the sheltered English immersion classroom is not a desirable place for ELL students to be, since it is "below grade level" and "has a slower pace." In addition, students have "no English speaking role models." Consequently, she concludes that the quicker these children are moved out of these classes and into mainstream classes where "their classmates are speaking grammatical English," the better off they will be.

Although Professor Rossell does not explicitly describe these mainstream classrooms, we can infer that they have certain characteristics based on their differences from SEI classrooms. Mainstream classes 1) are populated predominantly by native English speakers or, at least, fluent L2 speakers of English; 2) have a curriculum taught entirely in English that is not modified in any way for limited English proficient students; 3) move at a regular pace and, 4) are taught on grade level. In other words, they are classrooms in which make no distinctions between students who are still learning English and those who are fully proficient.

Having made the dichotomy between SEI and mainstream classes, Rossell then offers a research paradigm to "definitely answer" the question of how long special services should be provided to limited English proficient students. She suggests that we should randomly assign ELL students at each grade to SEI classrooms or to mainstream classrooms. The students would be tested initially and then monthly, although Rossell does not indicate for what purpose and with what assessment instruments. She concludes that ... "[T]he point at which the students in the mainstream classroom outperform the students in the structured immersion classroom on the test is the point at which a student is better off in the mainstream classroom than in a structured immersion classroom" (p. 5).

What is wrong with this research paradigm, one might ask? For one thing, it is not clear what the results would tell us. Would "better performance" in mainstream for any particular student or for a number of students indicate that they had benefited from receiving no modifications in the curriculum, or that being with a group of fluent English speakers rather than a group of similarly limited English proficient students was beneficial? Or would the results tell us that it is better to teach grade level curriculum or to move at a regular pace? We also have no definition of "better performance." In addition, there is the ethical problem of placing a child in a classroom and, for the sake of the experiment, ordering the teacher to make no accommodations for his/her limited English proficiency or his/her lack of grade level knowledge. Certainly, any modifications a teacher could make would irreparably contaminate the data and ruin the experiment.

The more the characteristics of SEI and mainstream classrooms are blurred, the more meaningless these labels become. In fact, the direction of education reforms prior to passage of Proposition 227 was to make mainstream classrooms look more like ELD/SDAIE classrooms. This was based on the assumption that all ELL students, whether they had exited from a transitional bilingual education program or whether they had never been in such a program, would perform better academically if modifications in curriculum and special teaching strategies were provided. According to the California Department of Education Language Census reports, prior to passage of 227, 33% of all LEP students were enrolled in ELD/SDAIE classrooms where they received no support in their native language, while fully 16% were enrolled in "mainstream." classrooms. To this day, we have not been shown any credible empirical data to demonstrate that the 16% of students enrolled in mainstream classrooms were performing any better than their ELL peers in special programs.

Rossell argues in her critique that once a child can understand some English, they are better off in the mainstream. Are teachers to be told that since these students have "studied English" for one year, a lack of English language proficiency is no longer a factor in explaining why they are having trouble in their classes? According to Rossell, the "language problem" has been solved with one year of SEI or less, so if the child demonstrates low academic performance, there must be another reason. This facile dismissal of the complexities of teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students will not satisfy teachers who are struggling to meet higher academic standards and increase standardized test scores in the post-227 era. Teachers are growing increasingly frustrated and impatient over these political debates that in no way help them do their jobs of teaching language minority children any more effectively or efficiently.

Is the polemic over how long it takes to learn English just a warmed-over version of the debate over redesignation or exit criteria? Let us examine this possibility and the implications of a redefinition of the exit criteria. This is a timely discussion, since on April 8, 1999 the State Board of Education (SBOE) in effect did away with previously defined exit criteria, purportedly to give school districts more "flexibility" (META, 1999). This action was tantamount to the state giving up its ability to regulate language minority education in California. By abandoning the exit criteria, the state also abandoned standards for monitoring the progress of limited English proficient in any fashion other than through the state's "accountability system" in place to monitor all students, the STAR testing program.

Federal law and court cases, in particular, the Castañeda v. Pickard 1981 Texas decision, require that students be provided with special language services until they reach parity with their native English speaking peers. The courts make it clear that schools districts have a "dual obligation" to teach English and to make sure that students do not suffer any permanent academic deficit and in effect, "recoup" any lose of academic learning that may occur while they are learning English. The level of language proficiency that the courts demand for LEP students is "English language proficiency comparable to that of the average native speakers."

The purpose of the redesignation criteria is to determine when school districts are no longer obligated to provide services to overcome "language barriers" under federal civil rights law. The requirements were set forth in the Civil Rights Language Minority Regulations 1980 that services to language minority students had to have four basic components: Identification, assessment, instructional services and exit criteria. These required components became part of the definition of "appropriate action" on the part of school districts to address Lau v. Nichols 1974, and were affirmed in Castañeda v. Pickard 1981. These federal court decisions spell out school districts' obligations to provide "special services" to make sure that students are performing on a par with their native English speaking peers.

The redesignation criteria for LEP students for students to "exit" a bilingual program or no longer be provided special language services were set by CDE. Redesignation occurred when the following criteria were met: 1) performance at the 36th percentile on a standardized reading test; 2) a level 4 (on a 5 point scale) on a standardized language assessment instrument 3) teacher recommendation and 4)parental notification and consent. These criteria existed to make sure that school districts complied with federal regulations and were not in violation of children's civil rights.

These exit criteria mark the point at which educators can most likely expect the child to function in an all-English curriculum without having their lack of English proficiency be a cause of below grade level performance. Of course, as with any policy, the cutoff point is arbitrarily set, in hopes of having some uniformity to interpret how students are progressing. For example, an 80% correlation exists between a score of 4 or 5 on the Language Assessment Scales (De Avila, 1997) and students who score at the 36% in reading. De Avila found a 90% correlation between students who scored a 3 (Competent Literate) on the LAS literacy portion and a level at or above 36% on a standardized reading test. Thus, the "predictive ability" of these test scores has been established.

Rossell's Straw Man arguments are focused on issues of program placement based on a menu of three program choices: bilingual education, structured English immersion or mainstream classrooms. In reality, the options available to school districts and the broad array of programs offered are much more diverse and complex than Ms. Rossell would have us believe. Professor Rossell's mission is to convince the public that school districts can provide one year of something called "structured English immersion" and get results equivalent to 3-5 years of bilingual instruction. So far, none of the school districts who are implementing SEI have done it, nor did one year under Prop. 227 do it. Witness for example, school districts presented as exemplars of the "success" of the one-year immersion model who can claim results that are no different from, or worse than, "bilingual schools" with similar demographics. (Find links to several studies at this SAT-9 analysis webpage.) So where is the research evidence? Rossell really produces none, but merely tries to poke holes in research studies that might alert policy makers to the dangers of Proposition 227, which eventually they will discover for themselves in any case.

In fact, the most damning statement Rossell makes about bilingual education is this statement, found in a footnote:

Arguably, "better off" and "no effect" are not equivalent. Nor would a well-designed reputable research study involving a comparison of programs that finds "no effect" dare to infer that "no effect" was equivalent to students being "worse off" in one program than the other. Rather, other benefits and effects of programs that could not be detected by the measurements used would need to be explored. However, Professor Rossell makes "better off" and "worse off" arguments based on a cumulative body of research on various program types showing "no effect."

In Castañeda, the court stated the following: "In order to be able ultimately to participate equally with the students who entered school with an English language background, the limited English speaking students will have to acquire both English language proficiency comparable to that of the average native speakers and recoup any deficits which they may incur as a results of this extra expenditure of time on English language development."

No court decisions or regulatory actions post-227 have removed or altered this obligation under federal rulings. School districts must still demonstrate, in the words of the court, that they have in place "...programs which are reasonably calculated to enable these students to attain parity of participation in the standard instructional program within a reasonable length of time after they enter the school system." (Valeria G. v. Wilson 1998) Districts are not off the hook until this "parity of participation" is reached.

As a matter of compliance with federal law protecting the rights of language minority students, the question is this: Does provision of one year of special language learning services satisfy a school district's obligation under federal civil rights law and court rulings to language minority students? This is why Christine Rossell and the proponents of Proposition 227 argue that one year of special services is enough to give children "parity of participation." What Rossell rails against is the obligation that Proposition 227 was unable to either skirt or eliminate. School districts are obligated to look at test scores and ask, "How many of these children are performing at a level comparable to their native English speaking peers after one year in the SEI program? If the answer is only a few, then the program does not meet the federal civil rights guidelines and those students are still entitled to special services. What those will be is up to the school district, but provide them they must--not just because it is a legal obligation, but a moral obligation as well.

Hakuta et al describe the policy debate surrounding the length of time services to language minority students are provided under Title VII (Bilingual Education Act), as policy makers at the federal level have long argued for limiting funding. The most recent magic number derived by Congress in the debates over re-funding of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is three years. The proponents of Proposition 227 argue that even this is too much since it is a burden on taxpayers and school districts who wish to quickly dispense with their obligation to these "domestic foreigners" (Petronicolos & New, 2000).

Professor Christine Rossell lives in Massachusetts, not California. The schools she idealizes for immigrant children learning English to support her arguments for one-year immersion programs simply do not exist in our state. Rossell would have us believe that all language minority students attend schools where they, and other children who speak their language, are in the minority among their schoolmates--a few newly-arrived immigrant children scattered among a sea of white faces. According to Rossell's image, their goal in life is to become linguistically indistinguishable from their American peers as quickly as possible--"fast track" assimilation.

So, what's wrong with this scenario? Schools where language minority students make up a small portion of the population are the exception rather than the norm in California and throughout the United States. According to Orfield, Buchmeier, James and Eitle (1997) found that in 1994-95, 74% of Latinos in the U.S. were enrolled in schools that were 50-100% minority while 34.8% were enrolled in schools that are 90-100% minority. In many cases in districts along the U.S.-Mexico border there are schools where 95% or more of the students entering kindergarten are classified as limited English proficient. Where are the mainstream classes into which these students are to make the transition? School district administrators and teachers in these areas of California know that the norm is classrooms with a wide range of language proficiency and academic performance levels. Well-trained and certified bilingual teachers in well-structured and well-supported programs are the best qualified to deal with this diversity. They must have coherent guidelines, and they must believe in the program model they are expected to implement, in order to be effective. Simply telling teachers to treat all of the students as if they were proficient English speakers, able to perform on grade level, will not result in high levels of academic achievement. Yet, this is exactly what Professor Rossell would have us tell teachers who receive the students who have "exited" from mandatory SEI classrooms.

Rossell expresses great concern about inappropriate program placements for students who are native English speakers or who are proficient in English based on scores on language assessment instruments and on standardized test scores. She makes no reference to the many language educators who have long decried the use of any single measure for making important program placement decisions.

We also know that when students in well-implemented bilingual programs are tested in Spanish reading and score at or above grade level on a test such as the SABE-2, they demonstrate the potential to achieve at grade level when their lack of English proficiency is no longer a factor. Consequently, we have no reason to lower the bar for these children, or to dismiss their academic failures after only one year of SEI. Rossell's concern about mislabeled or misplaced students based on English language proficiency tests is disingenuous, and largely irrelevant. Federal law also calls for testing in the native language to prevent this, since in ambiguous cases it is the child's language dominance that should determine placement, not English language proficiency alone. No one condones sloppiness or negligence in placing students into special programs. However, merely narrowing the options for addressing the needs of students who are properly identified as limited English proficient to either SEI or mainstream classrooms does not address the huge challenge facing school districts. The challenge we face is how to help these children overcome barriers to achieving the maximum of their human potential.

In California, policies regarding reclassification of students in grades K-12 are in flux, with decisions by the State Board of Education and the state legislature sometimes even seeming to contradict each other. Take for example Assembly Bill 1116 (Ducheny & Alarcon, June 1999. This bill sets out procedures for awarding school districts an annual payment of $100 per student in grades 4-8 classified as an English language learner to participate in an English Language Acquisition Program. In addition, a one-time payment of $100 per student when he/she is reclassified as fluent English proficient is to be awarded to the district. However, this bill does not set out criteria for reclassification, but only requires school districts to describe their reclassification criteria to the Department of Education when they apply for the reclassification funds. However, AB 1116 does require assessment for initial classification of students as English learners based on English language proficiency and academic achievement. The bill makes reference to the state adopted ELD standards and academic content and performance standards that ELLs must meet. The legislation also refers to the ELD test, which is currently under development and not yet available to the districts.

California's school districts can hardly avoid the controversy surrounding how long it takes for students to acquire academic English language proficiency under the current legal mandate. The law requires that they have clearly defined assessment procedures and exit criteria, in spite of the fact that there are no longer any uniform criteria required by the state. Interestingly enough, school districts are free to decide at what point along the English acquisition path they wish to reclassify students in order to collect their $100 award. Obviously, once a district collects this funding, the student no longer qualifies to collect the $100 annual funding. There are pros and cons to the "earlier or later" debate. Once a student is reclassified as a fluent English speaker, his or her SAT-9 test scores are counted in the pool along with native English speakers. This is an incentive to not reclassify before the student's test scores are closer to average, since large numbers of low scoring students may make the district appear to not be performing well in educating their English-only population. On the other hand, as Rossell would argue, as long as a student is classified as limited English proficient, there is an obligation to provide him or her with some sort of special services leading to parity with native English speaking peers.

In addition, we have indicators that the state legislature is concerned about the rate of English acquisition in the post-227 era. In a major budget action in July 2000, the California Legislature approved $250 million for English Language and Intensive Literacy Program (Alpert SB 1667). Another $20 million will be spent for English language acquisition programs ($400 per student) for 120 hours of summer school. This means that $270 million dollars is allocated to supplemental programs to teach English language learners. We must question why this expenditure is needed if the mandated one-year sheltered immersion program followed by mainstreaming was supposed to be the cure-all for the challenges children face in learning English. Now the state legislature tells us that we need to spend more money on remedial programs for "English language learners who are experiencing difficulty learning English and reading in English."

To further illustrate this dilemma, let us examine research by Ed De Avila (1997) on expected gains in language proficiency based on data from administration of the Language Assessment Scales. Dr. De Avila describes the growth curve for language proficiency as measured by this instrument, which has been used in thousands of school districts throughout the United States for identification and program placement purposes. The growth curve, which includes both oral language and literacy components, is as follows:

Table 1 shows the expected gains plotted according to the description above on the LAS (McGraw-Hill, 1988) administered to elementary school L2 students.

Expected Gains in L2 Language Proficiency
for Elementary School Students
Language Proficiency Scales (De Avila, 1997)

Time Learning L2 in Academic Setting	LAS Points Gained	Expected LAS Score 1-100	Proficiency Level 1 to 5 FSI Scale
End of Year 1	15-30 points	35	High Level 1
End of Year 2	20 points	55	Low Level 2
End of Year 3	10 points	65	High Level 2
End of Year 4	5 points	70	Level 3
*End of Year 5 or Beyond**	10 + points	80	Level 4 or 5

These data on the expected gains in language assessment scores further illustrates the specious nature of Professor Rossell's claims that students can be expected to perform in a mainstream academic setting after only one year of instruction. De Avila (1997) makes clear that there are multiple components of a definition and measurement of language proficiency in academic settings. The definition includes listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, which develop at different rates (See Figure 4 in De Avila). Rossell would have us focus on a factor she calls "able to understand enough English" or "able to comprehend English instruction" that apparently leaves out literacy development. It is the literacy component of academic language proficiency that determines students' ability to perform academically, rather than simply comprehend English instruction. This ability to perform academic tasks is crucial to students' overall progress in school. From this assumption arises the concept of exit or reclassification criteria. The LAS researchers found that students who scored Levels 4 and 5 on the LAS passed a standardized reading test at or above the 36% NPR.

One of the more interesting aspects of Rossell's critique of the LMRI study is her analysis and display of California's redesignation rates over an 18 year period. Most particularly, Rossell claims to have identified and tracked the exit rates for a 1992 cohort school grade between AY 1993-94 and 1998-99 (Table 3, p. 17). The table below contains these data as presented by Rossell. (For Dr. Hakuta's rebuttal to this data when it was presented as testimony in Valeria G. v. Wilson, see #49 on this web page and the attached Exhibit D).

What is striking about these exit rates is the degree to which they support Hakuta el al's findings and the arguments against Proposition 227. Keep in mind in examining the trend seen in these exit figures that 70% of LEP students in this cohort group were in either ELD/SDAIE classrooms or mainstream classrooms before 1998-99, and during that year post-227, 88% of the students were in SEI or mainstream classrooms. What we see is that only 11% met redesignation criteria in first grade, after one year in whichever program they were enrolled, while 44% met the criteria in sixth grade.

Let us attempt to follow Rossell's reasoning. She claims that at no point will more than one half of all ELL students reach the redesignation criteria. Therefore, we must conclude that a 50% redesignation rate is actually our goal. Consequently, we know that after first grade, with one year of a program, we are 78% away from our goal, while at sixth grade we are only 12% away from achieving the 50% mark. We made a lot of progress, but it took seven years! This is exactly what Hakuta et al said in their study.

Year	1992 Cohort School Grade*	Cumulative % Redesignated to FEP in Cohort*	Percentage Away From Goal of 50% FEP
1998-99	6th	44%	12%
1997-98	5th	37%	26%
1996-97	4th	30%	40%
1995-96	3rd	23%	54%
1994-95	2d	16%	68%
1993-94	1st	11%	88%
1992-93	Kindergarten

These data do not provide a resounding endorsement of the ELD/SDAIE and mainstream programs that served the seven to nine out of ten ELL students before or after Proposition 227. Nor do the data serve to condemn bilingual education, since Rossell argues that it would be impossible for any program to provide parity for all ELL students when parity is measured by scores on a standardized reading test. Furthermore, the exit rates do not support Rossell's assertion that during their first year in immersion, students will understand enough English to be better off in a grade level mainstream classroom.

Rossell presents no evidence that the 16% who were in mainstream classes after passage of 227 in AY 1998-99 reached the mark any faster than the rest. This is inevitably a futile question of the chicken-or-the-egg variety. Are students in the mainstream because they can handle the regular curriculum taught entirely in English? Or are they doing better in handling the regular curriculum because they are in the mainstream? Data were never collected by the California Department of Education indicating what type of programs students exited from, nor would such data have been at all reliable, since very few children received a single program treatment in elementary school. Thus, we are back to square one. Where is the evidence to support Dr. Rossell's sweeping claims? See Dr. Hakuta's testimony before the court in Valeria G. v. Wilson regarding the lack of research evidence to support Proposition 227's one-year SEI mandate.

Basically, in this critique of the LMRI study, Professor Rossell does a great deal of complaining and offers no solutions. She obviously does not like to see ELL students placed in remedial classrooms or pulled out of their regular classroom for ESL instruction. On this point we agree. However, Proposition 227 is strictly a short-term remedial plan based on the assumption that children's bilingualism is deviant--a handicap that must be overcome as quickly as possible. Proposition 227 is clearly grounded in a deficit model for educating language minority students. It is more than just inadequate. The law puts in place a set of procedures that make it very difficult for school districts to formulate a coherent plan for taking students from point A to point B. Students' academic progress depend on high quality teaching and a coherent, well supported program. Such a program monitors students' progress from point A, limited English proficiency, to point B, full English proficiency AND academic parity. Years of research and practical experience demonstrate that bilingual education is the best way to accomplish this goal for certain populations of students. Eliminating one viable option for accomplishing this purpose-bilingual education--does not make the other options any more effective than they have ever been.

Hakuta, Butler and Witt (p. 15) clearly articulate the three central questions of their research study. They state correctly that in order for research to serve in formulating sound public policy, it must be highly contextualized and aligned with measurements and descriptions of real classroom tasks and types of instructional environments. These must be linked to the ability of ELL to perform academically so that we can derive a more realistic set of assumptions on which to base program design and decision making. Try as we might, we cannot find a statement by Professor Rossell of the purpose of her critique in accomplishing these same goals. Rossell's critique appears to be based on the question, "How can we justify doing as little as possible for language minority students?" Rossell proposes an experimental research design to "definitively answer" (p. 6) the question of how long students should be provided special services. She argues that this question is unrelated to how we define English language proficiency, since in her estimation, one year of SEI is all that is needed, regardless. Her conclusion is that "...children can understand and function effectively in English long before they have achieved parity" (p. 1). However, our goal in language minority education must still be parity.

If we say that one year of special English instruction is enough for the child to be on equal footing with his/her NES peers, that would be the point where a school district's obligation to provide special services ends. We know, however, that most school districts are not going to be satisfied with the low levels of academic achievement that the vast majority of students can demonstrate after one year of SEI, especially not with our current accountability system in place. Consequently, after all the arguing Rossell does over the issue of how much is enough, school districts are still faced with the same dilemma: How do we teach children in a language in which they are not yet fully proficient and also prevent them from falling further and further behind academically?

In the final analysis, the debate is not about dueling research findings and competing models of instruction. The core issue is commitment. What level of commitment will local communities and school districts make to garner the resources and the personnel for designing theoretically sound and coherent programs to do the very best job possible of educating their language minority students? How much can we count on the federal regulators and federal courts to not let the California public school system off the hook in providing equity for our language minority population? How much enforcement muscle can we expect from the new Bush administration? Will the Bush plan calling for limitations on federal funding for English language learners, and even sanctions against states for "slow mainstreaming" pass the Congress? What levels of state funding can school districts expect to receive when quick-fix, short term, and therefore, low-budget program models are mandated by state laws? However long it takes, we must persevere until the task is accomplished. To do otherwise is to shirk our responsibility to our children and to the democratic principles on which this nation is founded.

De Avila, E. (1997, November). Setting expected gains for non and limited English proficient students. NCBE Resource Series No. 8. National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Available On-line: http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu/ncbepubs/resource/setting/index.htm

Language Assessment Scales. (1988) Oral Technical Report. CTB McGraw/Hill. Monterey, CA.

Orfield, G., Bachmeieir, M.D., James, D.R., & Eitle, T. (1997). Deepening segregation in American public schools: A special report from the Harvard Project on School Desegregation. Equity and Excellence in Education, 30 (2), 5-21.

Multicultural Education, Training and Advocacy, Inc. (1999, Spring). State Board guts LEP regulations. Education Equity, 9 (1), 5.

Petronicolos, L., & New, W.S. (2000). Anti-immigrant legislation, social justice, and the right to equal educational opportunity. American Educational Research Journal, 36 (3), 373-408.

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Prop. 227's Second Anniversary: Triumph or Travesty?	Legal History of Bilingual Education
Proposition 227: A Public Policy Failure	Roadmap to the Bilingual Education Debate
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