Mexico’s Education Secretary Studies L.A. Bilingual Effort

Using a little Spanish to impress the guest of honor, state schools chief Bill Honig on Friday showed a model East Los Angeles school to Mexico’s secretary of education, who is here to firm up an agreement to bring more Mexican bilingual teachers to California.

“This class is remarkably calma, “ Honig, an acknowledged novice to the language, said in ungrammatical Spanish (the correct usage is calmada ).

Honig led Miguel Gonzalez Avelar and a cavalcade of media into a second-grade classroom at Eastman Avenue School, where half the student body of 1,700 speaks mostly Spanish.

The youngsters were taking a spelling test in Spanish, while Honig and school officials explained Eastman’s unique bilingual education program to Mexico’s education secretary.

Eastman runs a highly touted bilingual program that separates Spanish-speaking youngsters from their English-speaking peers for half of the school day so they can learn the basic subjects, such as reading and mathematics, entirely in Spanish.

Scores High

Most of the students enter all-English classes within two or three years. This approach has resulted in student test scores that meet or exceed district averages.

Saying he was “very impressed” with what he saw, Gonzalez Avelar promised his government will support such efforts as much as possible.

Already, the Mexican government has helped the Los Angeles Unified School District hire 15 Mexican teachers to staff bilingual classrooms. The teachers, who will stay a maximum of two years, began work last September.

Gonzalez Avelar said Mexico does not have a teacher surplus but can spare a few on a temporary basis. He hopes to find 25 teachers to send next year. However, that will barely make a dent in the demand for bilingual instructors in California, which has a growing population of limited-English-speaking pupils, now estimated at 600,000.

Honig, who is state superintendent of public instruction, said he hopes to eventually establish a teacher exchange program so that bilingual California teachers can spend a year teaching and studying in Mexico.

Sergio Flores, 28, one of the 15 Mexican teachers hired by the Los Angeles district, teaches a second-grade class at Eastman.

He said the experience he has gained will help him be a better teacher.