Original URL:  http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E73%257E947216,00.html

Bilingual' education only slows learning
By Ken Noonan
Denver Post, Friday, October 25, 2002

For a little over 30 years in the United States, bilingual education has been an official strategy for teaching students whose native language is not English. In most of the country, the majority of students in bilingual programs are Hispanics who are first taught to speak, read and write in Spanish and are gradually moved into English a few years later. But there are flaws in the rationale for using this method of instruction, which has consumed billions of taxpayers' dollars over the decades.

First, bilingual instruction is not bilingual at all. For Hispanics, Spanish is used for instruction almost exclusively until about third grade, with varying degrees of increased English use from fourth to about sixth grade, sometimes beyond. "Bilingual" is a misnomer; the reality is that, during the critical first years of school, instruction is mostly in one language - Spanish.

A second flaw stems from the theory that teaching students to read and write in their home language first will make them stronger speakers and readers of English. We do know that children who come to our schools literate in their home language make the transfer to English fairly well.

But most of our Hispanic immigrants are not literate in Spanish when they arrive. Spending up to six years teaching them Spanish does not make them stronger speakers and readers of English, but instead creates a deficit in their development of the English language.

By the time these students reach grades six through eight, they are already as many as seven years behind their English classmates in mastering English.

Under the traditional "bilingual" model, these students are just beginning to develop their English skills at this most critical period in school when they are rotating among many teachers and getting increasingly difficult reading and writing assignments that they must complete in English. The gap only widens as these students move into high school.

That's the essence of the second flaw in most bilingual programs. Using the first three to six years of a child's 13 years in school to teach them to speak, read and write Spanish puts them at least that far behind their English-speaking classmates. These students cannot cram 13 years of English skills development, plus subject matter, into seven or
eight years.

If they could, there would be just as many Spanish-speaking students in high school honors and advanced placement classes as there are English speakers.

To the contrary, the number of students who have come through bilingual education and who are enrolled in these challenging courses is appallingly small.

In fact, after 30 years of bilingual education, Hispanics have the highest dropout rate in the nation, and their graduation rate is dismal. Few are admitted to four-year universities on merit and fewer still earn a university diploma.

Some say that students are learning core subject matters in their bilingual classes, but learning subject matter in Spanish doesn't cut it. What is essential for the academic success of immigrant students is development of literacy skills in English from Day One. These students need and deserve the full 13 years of English language development received by their English-speaking classmates.

And therein lies the most serious flaw of bilingual education. These students need to develop their English skills first, when children learn easily and quickly, not last. Our students, all of them, must first become proficient in English. Only after that should we engage in the development of literacy in our immigrant children's home languages.

The promise of bilingual education, made more than 30 years ago, has not been kept. We must move away from the unsuccessful bilingual programs of the past to a method of immersing these children in English - all day, every day.

Where English immersion is used, students are effectively reading grade-level literature in English by second grade. Our immigrant students deserve this kind of success. Sometimes we have to put aside even our most cherished beliefs.

Bilingual education must be replaced with programs like English immersion, which will help our immigrant children succeed in school and in life.

It is time.


Ken Noonan is superintendent of the 22,000-student Oceanside Unified School District in California and is a former bilingual teacher. Oceanside schools ended bilingual education in favor of English immersion more than four years ago.