In a Mike
Falick blog entry–apparently removed but still available via
RSS–Mike writes the following:
The Austin
American Statesman and the Houston
Chronicle (and I am sure most other papers in Texas) are carrying a major
education story today. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge William Wayne
Justice ruled that the Texas Education Agency is violating the civil
rights of Spanish speaking students. His opinion can be found here.
The Austin-American Statesman article shares:
U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice said the Texas Education
Agency is violating the civil rights of Spanish-speaking students under
the federal Equal Education Opportunity Act. Furthermore, the state’s
monitoring of programs for students with limited English-language skills
is "fatally flawed" because of unqualified monitors, undercounting of
students with limited English proficiency and arbitrary standards,
Justice said."The clear failure of secondary LEP students
unquestionably demonstrates that, despite its efforts, TEA has not met
its obligation to remedy the language deficiencies of Texas students,"
Justice wrote. "After a quarter century of sputtering implementation,
defendants have failed to achieve results that demonstrate they are
overcoming language barriers for secondary LEP students. Failed
implementation cannot prolong the existence of a failed program in
perpetuity."The new plans must be implemented by the
2009-10 school year.
This is an old conversation. One of the reasons I left bilingual
education so many years ago for technology integration was the fruitless
debates and arguments about additive vs subtractive bilingual education,
whether children should be transitioned out of bilingual classrooms at a
certain age or kept in. In a small East Texas district, it was clear
that simply getting teachers endorsed to teach English as a second
language wasn’t getting the job done; kids would drop out at soon as
they could.
So, the school district started hiring bilingual teachers (my wife and I
were two of those) and developed a bilingual program that focused on
maintenance bilingual education (help them develop in their first
language so that they can learn their 2nd language faster) rather than
transitional, even though the State preferred transitional (get them out
of bilingual classrooms ASAP). In that East Texas town, maintenance
bilingual education programs made sense because the children came
straight from Mexico (parents worked in the chicken plant, Pilgrim’s,
BTW) and by building them up in L1, they were better able to learn the
L2 (English). It worked and I was amazed. I found every word of the following
comment by ATE to be true in my experience:
There is plenty of research evidence proving that students who have
benefited from Bilingual Education programs learn English faster, do
better academically, and have better attendance and parental
participation rates. They also do better in high school and in
college.Research also shows that students who are struggling
in high school did not participate in bilingual education. They are
recent arrivals or students who did not have access to a quality dual
language program of instruction because: their parents listened to
ill-informed people who advised them not to enroll their children in
bilingual education, the program was not available at a school close to
their home, or they participated in poorly implemented bilingual
education programs that were step-children of their school districts.
The evidence also indicates most of these students, in fact, lose their
native language by the time they reach middle school and have to
re-learn it in high school when it becomes a requirement for graduation!
When I returned to the urban environment, though, the situation was
completely different. Here we had children who were born in the U.S.,
couldn’t speak/read English except at a functional level, if that, and
they were "bankrupt" in both languages due to poor upbringing and
circumstances. In that case, the best decision was to pick English and
work like heck to build them up.
I don’t have an answer or remedy, but I do know that every situation is
different. I would encourage schools to stop trying to blindly follow
the law and adhere to the principles of what is best for children, not
unlike what that East Texas school district did and continues to do (the
folks that began the program are still there).
