Bilingual education: approaches, benefits, and implementation

Bilingual Education in Los Angeles

According to the Los Angeles Times articles, "Hundreds Wait for Bilingual Education," by Louis Sahagun and Nick Anderson (October 23, 1998), there are hundreds of students awaiting arrangements for bilingual classes; these students' parents have petitioned the Los Angeles (LA) school system to provide the resources and facilities their children need to learn the English language outside of total immersion classrooms. This article examines the impact of Proposition 227 which provides an alternative to the total immersion approach by offering classes bilingual classes taught in English with support in their native language. The problem cited in this article concerns the paucity of requests for exemption for in any given school, and at least 20 are required in order to form such bilingual classes in a single school.

Review of "Hundreds Wait for Bilingual Education" by Louis Sahagun and Nick Anderson (October 23, 1998)

Although the Los Angeles Unified School District received what appeared to be an enormous amount of requests (11,809) for exemptions from total English immersion classrooms, the fact remains that this district is so large that these numbers do not equate to enough students in a given school to provide for what many parents and educators believe is a superior model. If a school receives at least 20 requests for exemptions, Sahagun and Anderson say, California Proposition 227 allows the school's principal to form classes where all lessons are taught in English, but where students are provided with native language support at the same time. "At least 68 schools received 1 to 20 waiver requests. Under the law, schools are required to offer bilingual classes when at least 20 students in a given grade are granted so-called waivers from English-intensive classes" (Sahagun & Anderson, 1998, p. 2). Although the intent of Proposition 227 was to facilitate the process for parents and students in selecting the most appropriate learning environment, it appeared the program was getting off to a very slow start.

At least 10 schools in the LA United School District were faced with the situation where just one student had requested an exemption under Proposition 227, and the vast majority of these schools have been unable to accommodate these isolated requests, and the authors note that at least one elementary school student has been placed in an English immersion class until officials can determine if another school can take the child. However, another school was more accommodating: "At Norwood Street Elementary, a third-grade girl was the child whose parents sought a waiver. She is being taught mostly in Spanish in a class shared by 16 English immersion students" (Sahagun & Anderson, 1998, p. 3). The authors note that the district is attempting to respond to the parents' desires in these cases since they have the insight and intimate knowledge of their children concerning which language approach would best suit them. According to Norma Diaz, a district bilingual education coordinator, "The district says we must comply with a parent's request -- we've done that. These parents felt their child would better understand and be more successful in her primary language than she would have been in English language instruction. We respect that" (Sahagun & Anderson, 1998, p. 4). The Los Angeles Unified School District analyzed the data it had collected to date and found that many schools in the LA area will experience fundamental changes as a result of Proposition 227, and not all for the good.