What hath Prop. 227 wrought? What's the fallout of Dismantling bilingual education?
You don't have to be a cucumber to be "in a pickle," fourth-grade teacher Sheryl Anderson explains to her class of English language learners at Jefferson Elementary School in Santa Ana. After giving a brief explanation of the age-old expression, she asks her students to write the phrase in English, and then draw pictures to demonstrate their comprehension of what "being in a pickle" might mean.
Sheryl Anderson explains idioms to her fourth-grade class of English language learners in Santa Ana.
One student draws a sad child being sent into the principal's office. Another depicts a child being bullied. Several students draw people stuck in a tree with a ladder that's fallen down.
The lesson in idioms - entirely in English - moves on, with students writing phrases and drawing pictures that illustrate such sayings as "burying one's head in the sand" to pretend danger doesn't exist, and "killing two birds with one stone," which Anderson explains means doing two things at once, rather than killing innocent birds.
She tells the students that such expressions are common in literature, and it is important for them to understand that a phrase may have a different meaning than it may seem. Most of the Hispanic students follow the lesson, which includes lots of visual props and body language, such as outstretched hands joining to depict "clamming up." Their teacher helps them sound words out and points to pictures of what she is talking about. This type of instruction is known as "structured English immersion."
But Jessica Lagunas, newly arrived from Mexico, is baffled. She says, through an interpreter, that she doesn't understand what's being said and feels "very uncomfortable" being taught in a language she doesn't understand. A teacher's aide works with her for a short time, translating some of the words from Spanish to English. Soon, Jessica will be expected to follow along in English without any special help, in the same way her fellow classmates are now able to follow the lesson without apparent difficulty.
Two years ago, children like Jessica would have been placed in a bilingual classroom at Jefferson Elementary School. Core subjects would have been taught in Spanish, with time set aside each day for English language instruction. But with the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998, which dismantled bilingual education in California, most non-English-speaking children go straight to English-only classes.
It's been two years since voters passed 227, but the controversy surrounding it has not ended. Some say that it has been a huge success, while others say it has been detrimental to students. Perhaps, like most controversies, the truth lies somewhere in between. Before looking at the aftermath of Prop. 227, a look backward might be helpful.
Some say that the birth of Prop. 227 can be traced to Ninth Street Elementary School in Los Angeles. In 1996, a group of Hispanic parents pulled their children out of the school, angered over the school's supposed failure to teach their children English. The boycott, which lasted two weeks and was extensively covered in the media, caught the attention of Ron Unz, a software tycoon who used his personal fortune to finance a statewide ballot initiative to dismantle bilingual education.
Agustin Sandoval teaches Spanish for native speakers at Pomolita Middle School in Ukiah.
Others have disputed this widely accepted version of events, maintaining that an outsider instigated the boycott by spreading misinformation. Parents supposedly could have enrolled their children in English-only classes at the school at any time by simply signing a consent form, but were told by the outsider that they would lose free child care by doing so.
In any event, Unz capitalized on the media attention and led the "English for the Children Initiative" to a 61 percent victory.
Under Prop. 227, students not fluent in English must be taught in special English classes for one year - but no more than two years - before moving into mainstream classes. These "structured English immersion" programs are taught in English; however, the English is geared to those learning it as a second language. Some refer to this as "sheltered English," or "English as a second language" (ESL). This differs from the "submersion" - or "sink or swim" - approach in which English learners are thrust into mainstream classes, without support in their first language.
The issue of bilingual education was controversial long before Unz came along. Among legislators, parents, ethnic organizations and teachers, a debate raged as to what the true purpose of bilingual education should be. Some maintained that bilingual education should be a short-term, transitional program designed to get children into mainstream classes as quickly as possible. Others felt bilingual education should be a long-term "maintainence" program to help students retain their native language, culture and identity - as well as teach them English. Some groups resisted setting any time limits on transitioning children into English.
In hindsight, many believe that resistance to reforming bilingual programs statewide may have backfired and made the issue a ripe campaign target for someone like Unz.
While the majority of bilingual education programs did transition children into English classes within a timely fashion - usually within three years - the media tended to focus on the few schools that kept children in bilingual programs much longer. Some critics say there was a monetary incentive for keeping them there, since schools received Title VII funding based on the number of students enrolled in bilingual programs.
Little attention was given to the success stories of children who could read and write in two languages by third or fourth grade, but a great deal of attention was focused on students who had been in bilingual classes for several years and still could not speak fluent English. These students presented a distorted picture of what was happening in most bilingual education programs, say many teachers.
CTA campaigned against Prop. 227. After it passed anyhow, CTA lost a challenge in federal court, which specifically opposed the portion of 227 that allows parents and guardians to sue individual teachers if they "willfully and repeatedly" violate Prop. 227. In August, a divided federal appeals court upheld the section of Prop. 227 allowing parents to sue teachers and school officials who fail to provide instruction "overwhelmingly" in English.
Jeffrey Corado in Santa Ana shows how he illustrated an idiom. His classmates are Charlie Diep and Nathan Orszewski.
According to CTA Chief Counsel Beverly Tucker, no teacher has yet been sued by a parent for violating 227.
Today, Unz continues to work toward ending bilingual education in other states and replacing all native-language instruction with English. After victories in California and Arizona, he has turned his attention to Colorado and Massachusetts.
Although the impact of Prop. 227 is huge, the number of students affected is relatively small. In 1997-98, 29 percent of an estimated 1.4 million English learners were assigned to bilingual classes. The next year, after 227 passed, 12 percent of these students remained in bilingual classes.
Before Prop. 227, 70 percent of all English learners were in English-only programs. Now, 88 percent receive English-only instruction. Bilingual classes are only made available by school districts if enough parents sign waivers at each grade level.
Like many reform measures, 227 is vague and poorly written. With little in the way of guidelines, school districts have implemented 227 in a variety of ways. In a minority opinion rendered by Judge A. Wallace Tashima following the federal appeals court denial of CTA's appeal, citations showed that some districts require 90 percent of instruction to be in English while others require only 60 percent. Tashima also found that teachers have no clear-cut guidelines on how to meet the legal requirements of 227.
Prop. 227 was written "more like an essay than legislation in its level of specificity," notes David Dolson, coordinator for the immigrant education programs for the state Department of Education. "It had ambiguous terms that were not legally defined."
For example, 227 mandated that students should not be placed in an immersion class for more than a year unless needed, but provided no definition of compliance and did not define "structured English immersion." It said children should be transitioned upon attaining a "reasonable level of proficiency" but offered no definition of what might be considered reasonable.
"Naturally, school districts are struggling with 227," says Dolson. "Each district has taken it upon itself to create its own definitions and policies. … Implementation varies from school to school, grade level to grade level and classroom to classroom."
Melecia Morales learns English at Russell Elementary in Santa Ana so she can help her children Diana and Luis succeed in school.
At the top of the continuum, says Dolson, a school might have English learners in classrooms where core subjects such as math, science and social studies are taught "using methodologies appropriate to second-language learners, such as sheltered instruction" along with one or two periods a day of ESL instruction. At the opposite end, "schools just provide 20 minutes a day of ESL instruction and the rest of the day it's sink or swim."
Prop. 227 also did not address the "redesignation" or reclassification of students from English learner to English proficient. In some cases, says Dolson, students are being mainstreamed without being redesignated - and are being redesignated without being mainstreamed. Students put into mainstream programs should still be receiving English Language Development (ELD) assistance, and should be monitored to verify whether the redesignation was appropriate. In many districts, this follow-up isn't happening, says Dolson.
California's teaching shortage means that large numbers of emergency permit teachers are teaching English learners without adequate training - or a CLAD certificate that demonstrates they've had instruction in methods of teaching sheltered English. (For the past three years, CTA has offered a professional development program leading to certification to work with English language learners. CTA's SB 395 program is the only one approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the U.S. Office of Civil Rights.)
"If you look at emergency permit teachers, you see them heavily placed in schools where there is poverty and a high proportion of English learners. That's the reality of where the vacancies are," says Dolson.
During the campaign, foes of 227 warned that students would be grouped together in a single classroom, regardless of age, background and academic ability, to be taught in structured English immersion. They warned that a 6-year-old learning to count and a 13-year-old learning algebra could be thrust into the same classroom for a year or two. Fortunately, says Dolson, there are no reported cases of that happening in the state.
Unfortunately, say teachers, higher numbers of English learners are not being promoted to the next grade level because of 227, since the dismantling of bilingual education coincided with the outlawing of social promotion. At one Huntington Beach elementary school, a third of the students, mostly English language learners, were held back.
"They have held kids back here, related to language acquisition," says Sheryl Anderson, a member of the Santa Ana Educators Association. "Under the new guidelines, we expect them to be functioning at grade level within a year and a half or so. If they are not functioning due to language, it can be problematic."
The U.S. Office of Civil Rights investigates complaints that schools are not implementing 227 in a way that is consistent with federal law. In the Pittsburg Unified School District, for example, parents and teachers complained to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights that English learners were being denied an education, and that 227 was being implemented illegally, using mainstreaming or submersion rather than structured English immersion.
"Pre-227, we had a lot of bilingual classes," says Marc Sternberger, immediate past president of the Pittsburg Education Association. "After 227, administrators said to teachers, 'Don't speak Spanish, and good luck.' The district implemented 227 in a way that left non-English-speaking kids without a real program - and left teachers hanging there. The district told teachers what they couldn't do - but not what they should do."
The California Department of Education has given Pittsburg a list of deficiencies and will release funding for English immersion programs once the situation is corrected.
Oceanside took a similar approach by putting English learners in mainstream classes, and was also sued. Now the district is offering "bridge" classes in English immersion rather than putting students straight into mainstream classes.
School districts have also gotten into hot water for not informing parents that they can petition for bilingual classes through the waiver process, says Monica Nava, a member of the Oceanside Teachers Association who is "on loan" to the California Department of Education's language proficiency and academic accountability unit.
"There continues to be a lot of misunderstanding about what is allowed and not allowed under the Education Code," says Nava. "I think there are districts that believe they should be providing English only - and don't realize that parents must be informed that an option to have an alternative program is available to them. The Attorney General has released information since 227 stating that districts have to outline what kind of alternative program they would provide in case a large number of waivers is received and granted. This has to be in place if parents request alternative programs."
Proponents of 227 say higher test scores prove it is working. Opponents say that the test scores are not indicative of true academic success with English language learners. Others say it's much too early to tell. Like everything else about 227, trying to measure success is difficult.
In 1998-99, the first year under Prop. 227, a San Jose Mercury News analysis of test scores showed that schools that switched to English-only instruction had somewhat bigger achievement gains in the early grades than schools that used waivers to keep bilingual instruction.
Scores also went up for the 1999-2000 school year. "Many educators had predicted catastrophe if bilingual classes were dismantled in this state … but the prophesies have not materialized," notes The New York Times. "In second grade, for example, the average reading scores of a student classified as limited in English increased 9 percentage points over the last two years, to the 28th percentile from the 19th percentile in national rankings. In mathematics, the increase in the average score for the same students was 14 points, to the 41st percentile from the 27th."
According to state test results from the 1999-2000 school year, the percentage of limited English students who scored at or above the 50th percentile rose from 25 percent the previous year to 32 percent. Newly released scores from the 2000-01 school year show that second-grade scores for English language learners in reading and math rose another three points from the previous year.
However, Dolson points out that test scores have gone up across the board - especially in the primary grades - and this can also be attributed to class size reduction, intervention programs and more teachers trained to work with English language learners. In addition, the drill-and-kill approach to standardized testing could be responsible for the higher scores. "If you focus on English - and focus on what is going to be tested - it looks as if they are learning English more quickly," says Dolson.
UC Davis researcher Patricia Gandara found that English-only testing has an "extraordinary impact" on the instruction that English language learners receive. "Often teachers told us that they did not feel good about what they were doing - leapfrogging much of the normal literacy instruction to go directly to English word recognition or phonics bereft of meaning or context. However, they worried greatly that if they spent time orienting the children to broader literary activities - storytelling, story sequencing activities, reading for meaning or writing - their students would not be gaining the skills that would be tested on the standardized English test. As a result, the school and students could suffer sanctions."
Evidence shows that the positive test scores for English learners in early grades may not be permanent. "In later grades, as the better students become fluent in English and leave the limited English category, overall scores go down," reports the San Jose Mercury News. "By fifth grade, bilingual students classified as limited in English test slightly better than English-immersion students."
A comparison of Oceanside and Vista shows how the "transition effect" impacts test scores. The media made much out of the fact that Oceanside Unified, which eliminated bilingual education, had reading scores rise by 93 percent and math scores rise by 100 percent for English learners during the 1999-2000 school year. The media also contrasted this with nearby Vista Unified, which retained bilingual classes and was lambasted for having the scores of English language learners fall in most subjects during the same year.
What the media didn't report was that SAT-9 scores are lower in Vista because students are transitioned out of the English language learner category at a much faster rate than in Oceanside, says Vista Teachers Association President Randy Wiens. "What's left behind are lower-level English learners. If we did a poorer job and didn't transition so many kids out, our scores would be much higher. We are penalized in some degree."
However, he adds, "our SABE scores were awesome - among the best in the nation." (SABE stands for Spanish Assessment Basic Education, the Spanish equivalent of the SAT-9).
Comparing immersion schools and bilingual programs may be like comparing apples and oranges. Successful bilingual programs don't show results overnight, but eventually students may catch up or even surpass immersion students - as well as gain fluency in two languages.
"People in Europe speak multiple languages," says Wien. "Speaking two languages is a distinct advantage. We should promote multilingualism in this country."
Prop. 227 has not proven to be the disaster that some predicted, much like Y2K did not result in doomsday. Teachers report that students are learning English faster. But Dolson and others say it's much too soon to celebrate the success of 227.
"Draw an an-gle," Sheryl Anderson tells the class, putting her hands together on top of her head, fingertips touching. "Say angle." The students recite the word and draw angles, repeating the same procedure with other shapes.
Her 31 fourth-grade immersion students present a wide range of language abilities. Some have just arrived in this country and don't understand a word of English. Others are in a state of "pre-production," meaning they understand many words, but are not ready to speak. Some have large English vocabularies.
As the students recite along with her, she wonders how much they really understand. "I do see growth," she says. "Kids want to learn. But we're expecting kids who don't know the language to walk in the door and, two months later, do academic work in English on a fourth-grade level. They may speak enough English for playground survival, but it takes years to become reasonably proficient."
Before 227, when Anderson taught a bilingual class of fourth-graders, students learned core subjects in their native language so they would not fall behind academically while learning English as a second language. Now, she says, "it's much harder to teach both language and concepts at the same time."
"We used to be able to say 'This is what it means in Spanish.' It's much harder to explain something without a common point of reference. You are building from the ground up, and it's very time consuming. And you find big holes in their academic language and vocabulary."
"Kids can learn oral English pretty quick," says Tony Duarte, an El Monte Elementary Teachers Association member with a third-grade English immersion class. "But problems show up when they start to write. They are deficient in grammar and sentence structure because they did not transfer over these skills in their own language. Everyone says, 'Don't worry. They'll learn if you expose them to the curriculum.' But we could have this whole generation of kids in a few years who are going to start failing unless we start helping them."
Pablo Garcia, an Oceanside Teachers Association member who teaches structured English immersion at the middle school level, also has doubts. "In terms of growth and assessment tests, you see them gain at a quicker pace in initial years. If they are exposed to English 100 percent, they learn English quickly. But in the long run, I'm wondering if we haven't been doing damage."
Teachers say it's easy to mistake verbal fluency for literacy, and to mistake decoding for true comprehension of reading material. These gaps in knowledge tend to surface in older grades, as material becomes more challenging.
Also, teachers may resort to watering down the curriculum when students don't have a strong command of the language. For example, Oceanside Teachers Association member Jim Stant uses middle school materials for his high school English-transition classes in U.S. history, world history and economics.
"I have students with an intermediate English ability. I modify the way I teach, making sure I have materials printed in English at a level they understand. I use materials for sixth grade or maybe eighth grade that covers the same subjects and matches the state standards. It's a more recognizable form of English and easier to understand."
But even when curriculum is modified, English language learners often fall behind academically.
"Students get behind because they are busy learning English while other students are learning core subjects," says Dolson. "Then they need remedial help. Research shows that many students redesignated as being fluent in English are not at grade level in their academic studies. They go from being an English student to a compensatory student, instead of going from an English learner to a mainstream learner."
This is the case in Ukiah, says Alexandra Condon, a United Teachers of Ukiah member who is on special assignment for English language development through the district's bilingual education program. "Kids are falling behind academically, then trying to catch up.
I hear that in high school and middle school, students are totally unprepared. They are functioning at the fourth-grade level in an eighth-grade class. This is because they are learning English while everyone else is learning academics."
"When medical researchers want to know whether a drug works, they compare outcomes of a group taking a drug to those not taking it. But that type of experiment is rarely done in education," notes USA Today. Unfortunately, it is not really possible to determine under what conditions English language learners have shown the greatest gains, since the state has not conducted controlled studies in which the same children are followed over time or compared with those in different programs.
"Prop. 227 is not being studied to the degree necessary to make adequate decisions about the future," says Dolson. "At the state level, there is no systematic collection of data, and no collection of information as to how 227 is being implemented throughout the state. We aren't collecting the right information to help us make the right decisions in the future."
"To really find out how students are doing, we need to keep all English language learners and former English language learners in a database and see where they are after X number of years. Years from now, we want to know if they are at grade level in their academic studies and how they are performing. Are they earning C's or better in their classes? Can they do the work?"
Even if the proper studies were conducted and students were found to need different alternatives, says Dolson, Prop. 227 may be set in stone.
"Even if we did study it, what process could we use to amend or change 227?" he asks. "Legislation can be amended. But Proposition 227, a voter initiative, has an unprecedented legal foundation. Technically, it requires a two-thirds vote to amend an initiative. So even if Prop. 227 doesn't work adequately, we have very limited options for improving it. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future."
Sheryl Anderson explains idioms to her fourth-grade class of English language learners in Santa Ana.
Agustin Sandoval teaches Spanish for native speakers at Pomolita Middle School in Ukiah.
Jeffrey Corado in Santa Ana shows how he illustrated an idiom. His classmates are Charlie Diep and Nathan Orszewski.
Melecia Morales learns English at Russell Elementary in Santa Ana so she can help her children Diana and Luis succeed in school.
