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Original URL:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_1508856,00.html
Campos: Her own worst nightmare
Rocky Mountain News
October 29, 2002
One of the oddities of life in general, and of political life in particular, is
that people often end up becoming exactly what
they have spent their lives fighting against. A classic example of this neurotic
pattern is provided by Rita Montero, the leading proponent of Amendment 31,
Colorado's anti-bilingual education initiative. Montero's battle against
bilingual education began a decade ago when her son was placed in a bilingual
program against her will. Her frustration with the Denver school system's
bilingual education programs inspired her to win a spot on the city's board of
education, and to play a key role in a federal lawsuit that altered bilingual
education in the Denver schools in ways Montero and her
supporters advocated.
What Montero has advocated is that parents should never have their children
forced into a particular language acquisition program. Parents whose children
aren't proficient in English should have choices: if, for example, a parent
doesn't believe a standard English as a Second Language (ESL) program is
appropriate for his or her child, the parent should have
the option of having the child spend the entire school day in an all-English
environment. And Colorado parents have been
exercising that choice: thousands of Colorado schoolchildren have been waived
out of bilingual education programs.
Having choices in regard to bilingual education is no different than having
choices in regard to charter schools, or in regard to other programs (such as
tax vouchers) designed to give parents more control over their children's
education. The key to such programs is that if, like Montero, parents find they
are unhappy with some aspect of their local schools, they should have options
that give them the power to do something about this.
The irony of Amendment 31 is that Montero is now fighting to take away all
choice from Colorado's parents regarding bilingual education. Amendment 31 would
mandate a single system of English language acquisition: a system based on the
theory that students who aren't proficient in English won't need more than a
year of special instruction before being placed full time in the regular school
curriculum. In fact, similar initiatives in California and Arizona have failed
to produce this result: a majority of the students placed in Amendment 31-style
immersion classes have not been ready for full "mainstreaming" after a year of
such classes.
If Amendment 31 passes, every school district in Colorado will have its freedom
to deal with such problems taken away from it. In other words, if Rita Montero's
preferred brand of English acquistion turns out to be a disaster for a
particular district, or a particular school, or a particular child, that will
just be too bad: It will be unconstitutional for Colorado's parents and teachers
to do anything about it.
Montero's own child spent a month in a bilingual education program against
Montero's will. She was sufficiently outraged by that to dedicate the next
decade of her life to fighting the bureaucrats who had been insufficiently
sensitive to the fact that their version of bilingual education wasn't
appropriate for her child. Yet now she wants to make it illegal for Colorado's
parents to do exactly what she and thousands of other Colorado parents have
chosen to do. Amendment 31 would take away all choice from parents regarding
bilingual education. A decade after she began her battle against those who
didn't respect her right to control her child's education, Rita Montero has
ended up becoming the most extreme version of the thing she despises most:
someone who claims to know what's best for everyone else's children, and who
wants the power to impose her views on anyone who disagrees.
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be
reached at paul.campos@ colorado.edu.
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