The Bilingual Battlefield

What we have today is a well-intentioned policy that just doesn't work. The reason the policy has survived as long as it has is more because of bureaucratic and political inertia than because of any deep support anywhere in the community.

I certainly have done everything possible to ensure that this initiative is in no way perceived as anti-Latino or anti-immigrant or politically partisan. A Los Angeles Times poll showed overwhelming support for our English education policy among all groups – regardless of ethnicity, ideology, political affiliation. And the strongest support comes from Latinos themselves. The reason for that support is that Latinos are primarily the ones in bilingual education, and they're the ones who most know that it doesn't work.

Supporters of the current policy told me, "Well, we know it doesn't really work today in California. We admit that. But we think we can make it work at some point in the future. We know it works in theory."

I'm a theoretical physicist by training. In physics, there's a tremendous difference between theory and experiment. If something works in theory but repeatedly fails the test of experiment, at some point you have to admit maybe the theory is wrong or maybe it's simply impractical to implement, and you should try something else.

We are not supporting sink or swim. I oppose sink or swim. What we are proposing is that young children who don't already know English when they start school should be put in an intensive English language development program, generally for a period of a few months to a year, until they learn English. Then they can be mainstreamed with the other children.

Nobody knows how much California money is being spent on the current failed program, but it's certainly in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It could even be a billion dollars. When you have so many people whose jobs depend on the continued existence of a failed system, it's very difficult to change that failed system. And under the current policy, schools are paid more money so long as children do not learn English. If a child successfully learns English, the schools lose money. They're punished for it. And I think that may be related to the view of bilingual advocates, who say that it takes a young child seven years to learn English.

The best way to unify California society along lines of race and ethnicity is to have something that everybody can agree on. And one of those simple things should be that children be taught English when they go to school.

KELLY HAYES-RAITTE, director of the No on Unz campaign and a longtime civic activist

Courtesy L.A. Cicero/News Service

Sixty days after the Ron Unz Initiative passes, if it does, the state will create a program for California's 1.38 million limited-English-speaking children. It will be an untested program. These children will be put into a classroom for one academic year, 180 days, to learn English. Following that year, they will then be put into mainstream classrooms even if they haven't mastered enough English to succeed.

Ron Unz and I definitely agree on two things. Children need to learn English. Latino parents want their children to learn English. Anglo parents want their children to read and write English successfully. All parents want their children to do well in school. But do we want a blanket one-size-fits-all proposal that creates a state-mandated program and eliminates the ability of local teachers, school districts and parents to determine the best method for teaching their children?

The other point that Mr. Unz and I agree on is that the current system of bilingual education is a failure. Right now, only about 30 percent of the students who need bilingual education are in a program. Any program that excludes nearly three-quarters of the children who need it isn't working right and needs to be fixed. The Ron Unz initiative is the wrong fix.

Every year, about 5 percent of the limited-English-speaking children are found to have learned enough English to be reclassified as English-proficient. That doesn't mean that 95 percent of the children have failed. What it means is that 95 percent of the children didn't learn enough academic English in one year to be reclassified.

Mr. Unz has no experience in education. He has no academic background to support his initiative in this untested experiment. In fact, he doesn't even have kids.

It's incumbent upon voters to look carefully at the details. Understand that it will become the law of the land. We will be stuck with Ron Unz's mistake if we pass this.

FERNANDO VEGA, regional honorary chairman of the English for the Children initiative

Courtesy L.A. Cicero/News Service

In 1967, my family opened a grocery deli-market in Redwood City. Many parents would come by and complain that their children had been placed in bilingual education and that their requests to transfer them out were being ignored. In 1987, my son enrolled his 5-year-old son at Hoover School. Without my son's knowledge, his boy was assigned to a bilingual class. My son requested that the boy be placed in an all-English class because he did not understand a word of Spanish. English was the only language spoken at home. My son was informed that Hoover did not have English classes. All the classes were in Spanish.

Parents are told that, before a student is placed in a bilingual class, the student is tested for English proficiency. So how did my grandson wind up in this bilingual class – which is not bilingual but all Spanish? I think that his Spanish surname was a factor.

We Americans of Latin ancestry continue to look to our elected officials to provide all our children with an education. That includes fluency in the English language, for that is the world language of science, technology and economic opportunity, and the language that will open the door to the American dream. As for the latest report that says it will take 10 years or more for Latinos to learn English – that is an affront and an insult.

MARTIN CARNOY, Stanford professor of education

Courtesy L.A. Cicero/News Service

What is the problem in education? It is not whether you learn in one language or another. The problem is finding the most effective method to break the code of reading or teaching symbolic representation.

It is a fact that European kids with highly educated parents who are immediately immersed in English are able to learn to break the code. And so if it were those kinds of children whom we were dealing with primarily, there would be no problem with this initiative. The real problem is that those aren't the majority of children.

We have a situation where we have children who have parents at home who don't have high levels of education. What we're looking for is a method to develop reading and math skills in these children who are not able to count on heavy educational support at home. There is a lot of willingness and desire by the parents, but not the capacity. That's the problem.

Ron Unz's proposal is identified not as a political initiative but as an educational initiative. I'm telling you it is exactly the opposite.

If you think this initiative is going to contribute to a consensus policy on bilingual education, it's not. It's going to be a tremendous political wedge. I doubt that it will stand up in court because it basically says that you can't have a local educational policy. Any school district that wants to sue is going to win.