From: "Ron Unz"

Subject: California vs. Boston on English Date:

Mon, 10 Sep 2001 06:24:09 -0700 Message-ID: <022901c139fb$dfe536c0$0200000a@G700mhz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 X-UIDL: b56aada484c7b17db0c649d49bfe7c28

Dear Friends,

Just a few days ago, the Massachusetts Attorney

General officially certified all of the three

versions of our "English" initiative as apparently

constitutional and appropriate for signature-

gathering, scheduled to begin within the next

couple of weeks.

This decision came despite some thirty-five pages

of legal briefs filed by our opponents and aimed at

preventing our measure from reaching the ballot.

This legal effort---far more massive and desperate

than I would have expected---probably indicates

that they correctly see very little chance of

defeating "English" on election day, forcing them

to rely on legal maneuvers as their only remaining

hope of preserving their failed bilingual programs.

Yet another nail in the coffin of these New England

programs comes in today's edition of the Boston

Globe, which carries a powerful front-page story

recounting the success of English immersion in

California. With test scores having risen

consistently---and dramatically---for three years

now, excuses for retaining failed bilingual

programs must necessarily begin to grow faint.

The dreadful failure of these programs is

underscored by another recent article from the

Globe, also included below. Although advocates of

these programs tend to publicly support a three-

year limit for tactical political reasons, the

actual teachers involved are the first to admit

that very few of their students actually learn

English in just three years, with five, seven, or

perhaps ten years or more being necessary. This is

exactly in accordance with bilingual theorists, who

universally claim that immigrant children require

an absolute minimum of five to seven years in

bilingual programs in order to learn English. I

suspect that both the voters of Massachusetts and

immigrant parents alike will overwhelmingly support

teaching children English in one year rather than

taking five or seven years to achieve this same

goal through bilingual education.

The utterly nonsensical foundation of this system,

which for thirty years has dominated the education

of so many millions of immigrant students, is well-

described in the piece below by Roger Hernandez, a

nationally prominent Hispanic journalist who has

now published a dozen or more columns strongly

defending bilingual education. Although quite

critical of Proposition 227, Hernandez is scathing

toward the design and theory of existing bilingual

programs, which he correctly describes as based on

"utter nonsense." My sole disagreement with

Hernandez lies in his misreading of our "English"

measures, which actually establish a system quite

close to his own suggestions for immigrant

education.

Sincerely,

Ron Unz, Chairman

English for the Children

======================

"Scores rise as Calif. schools immerse"

Gains follow halt to bilingual ed

Lynda Gorov, Boston Globe

Monday, September 9, 2001, FRONT PAGE

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Today we're learning about

the ''short I'' sound, Mrs. Schwyzer tells her

second-graders in their second week of classes.

Pig. Dip. Slip. Tim hid the stick.

The words go up on the blackboard. Hands go up in

the air. Children with names like Marina, Blanca,

and Umberto vie to spell the words.

Two years ago, most of Carol Schwyzer's pupils at

Harding Elementary spoke no English. Most came to

kindergarten from Spanish-only homes. But unlike

past generations, the youngsters were not eased

into a second language. They were immersed in it,

forced to grab onto English or sink among all the

unfamiliar words.

''I'm sorry to see the children lose literacy in

Spanish, but I'm happy to see them gain confidence

in English,'' said Schwyzer, who taught bilingual

education before it was voted down by ballot

initiative, Proposition 227, in June 1998. ''They

need it, and they know it, and they're proud of

themselves.''

As Massachusetts considers a similar law, the

experience of California is being watched closely.

Many educators there had forecast catastrophe with

the dismantling of bilingual education. That hasn't

happened. The 1 million or so public school pupils

classified as ''limited English speakers'' have

shown respectable, sometimes striking, gains on

standardized tests.

How much of the improvement is attributable to

English immersion is less easily charted. Advocates

and opponents alike say that other factors - from

state-mandated reductions in class size to an

emphasis on language arts - have helped, too. On

its own, they agree, immersion might have had a

less impressive launch.

As Harding principal Marlyn Nicolas put it,

''Ending bilingual is just one of the tools; I

couldn't say it's the most important.''

Still, advocates of the immersion method say its

role cannot be denied. Pupils in the program have

shown stronger gains in both reading and math than

have their nonimmersion classmates. For example, on

the 2001 Stanford 9, which tests relatively basic

skills, second-grade immersion pupils raised their

average scores by 3 percentile points, an

improvement twice as large as pupils considered

fluent in English.

''It's not proof, but it's strong circumstantial

evidence leading to the level of presumption that

immersion makes a difference,'' said Ron Unz, who

led the movement opposing bilingual education in

California, helped Arizona rid itself of the

classes, and is working to do the same in

Massachusetts. ''Those school districts that were

exempt from Prop. 227 showed minimal gains. Those

that most strictly complied showed gigantic

gains.''

Opponents of immersion argue that the gains are

statistically insignificant. They also say that

immersion pupils will not keep pace with fluent

English speakers over the long term. According to

them, the test score gains were inevitable, given

how low they had been and the extra attention

pupils now receive. With a shortage of bilingual

teachers, they say, most limited-English speakers

were already in ad hoc immersion classes.

No one disputes that children immersed in English,

particularly in the primary grades, are now

immersed in a stronger program overall. Among the

changes cited by both sides of the debate: a return

to a phonetics-based reading program, new materials

to guide teachers through lesson plans, and an

emphasis on preparing pupils for the standardized

tests.

''Bilingual education is just a scapegoat for

schools failing on other fronts,'' said Jill Kemper

Mora, an associate professor of teacher education

who specializes in English-language development at

San Diego State University. ''If knowledge of

language were the only issue here, why are black

students not achieving?...

''What we have now are all sorts of rewards and

punishments for scores to go up,'' she added. ''So

the scores have naturally gone up for all

students.''

In the Santa Barbara School District, which made

the controversial decision to end bilingual

education on its own a year before California, math

and English scores have steadily improved in almost

every grade.

Harding has been no exception. About 60 percent of

its 530 kindergarten through sixth-graders are

considered English-language learners. Just 10

percent or so of its pupils are non-Hispanic

whites. Most come from poorer families.

''I wasn't a big supporter of bilingual education,

because I didn't see the growth kids were supposed

to have,'' said Nicolas, the principal. ''Now our

scores are as high as the Anglo schools in the

district.''

Maria Calderon, a mother of three Harding pupils

who speaks no English, said she appreciates the

efforts to make her children fluent. But she

resents her inability to help them with their

homework and is concerned that they will not be

able to read the simplest signs in Spanish if they

ever visit her native Mexico.

''Bilingual is better, because they learn both

languages and they learn better,'' Calderon said.

''It's necessary these days to speak Spanish and

English. I want my children to know both well.''

Still, Calderon did not apply for a waiver to keep

her children in bilingual classes. Each year, fewer

parents have applied statewide, according to

educators. In the Oceanside School District, for

instance, about 150 waivers were requested the

first year. This year, none were, said

Superintendent Ken Noonan.

Noonan, who campaigned against Proposition 227, is

a convert to immersion. His pupils have improved

their performance on the Stanford 9 test by double

or more. Even the scores of those students

redesignated English-proficient - meaning that they

had left immersion classes for the mainstream -

continued to rise, although at a slower rate.

Test scores ''hadn't moved out of the basement for

many years, then all of a sudden there was a 100

percent gain,'' Noonan said. ''We thought it could

be a fluke. But we saw [improvement] again and

again. ... Anyone who tells me that's not

significant is spouting foolishness.''

Still, the numbers are far from good enough,

educators say. Even with all the changes, no more

than half of California's pupils are reading at or

above the 50th percentile in any grade but second.

At Harding, whose pupils have been taught

exclusively in English for an additional year, the

numbers are better. Seven of 10 grades scored at or

above the 50th percentile; eight grades

outperformed the state as a whole.

Those improvements do not impress Francisca

Sanchez, president of the California Association of

Bilingual Educators. Instead, she credited the

additional emphasis on reading among all students

and wondered whether the underlying program was

powerful enough to maintain continued gains. She

also called the comparisons made by immersion

supporters misleading.

''When Ron Unz talks about scores going up, he's

not comparing the same group of students,'' Sanchez

said. ''They're looking at how this year's second-

graders did compared with last year. The question

is: How are last year's second-graders doing, now

that they're in third grade?''

Immersion advocates expect similar criticisms to be

raised in Massachusetts, where they are aiming for

a November 2002 ballot initiative. But they argue

that the evidence is incontrovertible, even as

practitioners such as Nicolas stress the necessity

of preschool and afterschool tutoring programs.

At Harding, where school forms are still available

in Spanish, teachers sometimes still slip into the

language when pupils are confused. But Kendall

Lyons said his sixth-graders don't need him to

translate anymore, giving him more time to

concentrate on the day's lessons. All of the

birthday cards taped to Nicolas's door are in

English, almost all of them grammatically correct.

===============

"Bilingual education facing major test"

Anand Vaishnav, Boston Globe

Thursday, September 6, 2001

For 18 gap-toothed, fidgety first-graders, the

journey to English began yesterday in a Jamaica

Plain classroom headed by bilingual teacher Claudia

Jaramillo. Calling some of them mi amor - ''my

love'' - the Louis Agassiz Elementary School

teacher mostly spoke Spanish as she set her

students to work.

Gradually, Jaramillo will introduce more English.

Making her students fluent enough to survive in

non-bilingual classes will take at least three

years - and probably more, she said.

But that time frame, under which most bilingual

teachers work, has prompted critics to charge that

bilingual education classes have become

destinations, instead of vehicles to move students

into English classes.

That's the driving force behind Silicon Valley

millionaire Ron Unz's attempt to scrap the state's

30-year-old bilingual education law through a

ballot initiative. If he succeeds, as he did in

Arizona and California, students like Jaramillo's

will have just one year of English immersion before

being placed into all-English classes.

As the school year kicks off, the question of how

quickly students can learn English promises to be

fiercely debated. Bilingual advocates have begun

mobilizing, vowing to defeat Unz's campaign.

The ballot initiative cleared a hurdle yesterday

when state Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly

certified it. Unz has until Dec. 5 to gather 57,100

signatures to place the initiative on the November

2002 ballot.

Yesterday, as Boston's 130 schools officially

opened for business, a visit to several bilingual

classrooms underscored the complexity of teaching

non-English speakers, and why some advocates are

seeking a program overhaul.

In Boston, as in many districts, bilingual

education varies from school to school - and

sometimes classroom to classroom - as educators

tailor their program to their own philosophies.

Unz's effort aims to set stricter limits on an area

of teaching that has long operated with mixed

results.

About 17 percent of Boston's 63,300 students are

enrolled in bilingual education, compared with 4

percent statewide, figures show. The Commonwealth's

bilingual-education law lets students take classes

in their native tongues for up to three years,

although many students stay longer, allowed to do

so by principals who fear the students will fall

behind in all-English settings.

At the Agassiz, a 750-student school, students used

to remain in bilingual programs for five or six

years, Principal Alfredo Nunez said. That changed

several years ago when the school introduced a

strong literacy program. Now, the average stay in

bilingual education is four years, he said.

Nunez, a veteran Boston principal, is aware of the

three-year cap on bilingual education. But law and

research are two different things, he said, arguing

that studies show that it can take up to six years

for students to be competent in grade-level

English.

''Most students in our school can speak English and

converse in English and do it in the school yard

with native English-speakers,'' said Nunez, who

vigorously opposes Unz's initiative. ''But that's

one thing. Another thing is being able to deal with

content in English and compete [academically] with

a person in English. That takes much longer.''

Fourth-grade teacher Maria Jaramillo, Claudia's

sister, spoke mostly Spanish to her class on the

school's first day, and her 21 students wrote

essays in the language as well. Most have been in

bilingual classes since they started at the

Agassiz, and they'll take MCAS in English this

spring.

Maria Jaramillo said she will boost the amount of

English as the year progresses. She is confident

that by the end of fourth grade, her students will

transfer into regular education. ''Even though the

law says three years, I'm basing my decisions on

their own needs,'' she said.

Other educators, while agreeing that each student

must be analyzed individually, say that bilingual

education must return to what it first was - a

transition. At the Donald McKay School in East

Boston, Principal Janie Ortega arrived four years

ago to find that most of her bilingual students

were learning little English, despite staying in

bilingual classes for five years.

Moreover, there was no timeline to move students

out of bilingual classes, and some teachers weren't

spreading English throughout other subjects, Ortega

said. As a result, students often came to Grade 6 -

the McKay is a K-8 school - with a poor command of

English, she said.

Ortega tightened the McKay's bilingual programs,

but disagrees with Unz's initiative, saying three

years is the appropriate limit.

Anand Vaishnav can be reached by e-mail at

vaishnav@globe.com

===========================

"Making sense of Prop. 227"

Circuit court's ruling reveals the unseemly side of

bilingual law.

Roger Hernandez, Ventura County Star

Friday, September 7, 2001

You can now be sued for speaking Spanish. Last week

the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that

teachers in California public schools may be sued

if they "willfully and repeatedly" speak a language

other than English in the classroom. The court

thereby upheld the key enforcement provision of

Proposition 227, which in 1998 all but eliminated

bilingual education from the state's public

schools.

So far, nobody has been sued. Yet the possibility

that a teacher can be sued for speaking Spanish --

or Korean or French or whatever other language --

illustrates the ugliness of Proposition 227. Once

California voters made it law, there was going to

have to be an enforcement mechanism of some kind,

be it that a teacher got fired or taken to court.

Either way, passage of 227 inevitably meant that

the mere act of speaking a language that was not

English would become a punishable offense.

There could have been a better way. And there is

still, for schools in states that have not banned

bilingual education. What happened in California

three years ago and in Arizona last year was that

two language extremes went to war, blasting to

smithereens all logic and common sense.

On one side, there is a bilingual-education

establishment that has it exactly backward. Its

dominant theory is that the younger the child, the

more in need he or she is of bilingual education.

Pro-bilingual extremists insist that children

should first master their native language before

being taught English, with the result that children

are kept in school for years without mastering

English, even though they could do so easily.

It's one reason why anti-bilingual proposals seem

so popular. The pro-bilingual education forces did

it to themselves.

Their entire concept is utter nonsense. Kids in

elementary school soak up a new language like a

sponge soaks up water. That's not to say grammar-

school students who don't speak English can just be

left alone to learn for themselves, since there

will always be a transition period during which

they will need to formally be taught the English

language. But the transition period will be short

at that age.

I saw this with my own eyes growing up. In fact, I

experienced it myself: I entered school in fifth

grade knowing no English, and by sixth grade I was

pretty much on a par with native English-speakers.

I was not alone. Other classmates who did not know

English learned just as rapidly.

But it's not that simple. The problem comes with

adolescence. Whatever hormones fire up that make

teen-agers begin shaving or start wearing bras also

change the language-learning circuitry of the

brain. Numerous studies have shown that when

puberty hits, the ability to learn a new language

easily is lost.

Again, something I saw myself. Some in my high-

school graduation class could barely speak English.

They had entered the school system when they were

freshmen, as puberty was hitting, and just never

caught up.

Which is what the other side, the anti-bilingual-ed

extremists, willfully ignores. High-schoolers

should of course be taught English, but they should

also be taught subjects like math or history in

their own language so they do not fall behind while

they learn English. Otherwise you have immigrant

kids sitting in a chemistry class taught in a

language they do not know.

Hard to think of a more pointless way to spend the

school day. Even Ron Unz agrees. The man behind the

California and Arizona anti-bilingual movements

wrote to me during the height of the Proposition

227 fight acknowledging that, "For a high-school-

age student, I think bilingual education may make a

lot of sense."

Yet such an acknowledgment is not a part of the

Unz-backed anti-bilingual laws in Arizona or

California.

Voters simply threw out bilingual education,

without stopping to consider that high school

students actually need it.

Unz has been trying to take his show to other

states, including Colorado, Massachusetts and New

York. People there ought to keep in mind what he

told me, even if he won't.

Roger Hernandez is a syndicated columnist and

writer-in-residence at New Jersey Institute of

Technology.