Ruling Could Ease Schools’ Multilingual Problems

A federal court ruling this week in a Berkeley case could allow school districts more flexibility in educating growing numbers of limited-English-speaking students and help ease the intense and costly competition for fully credentialed bilingual and language teachers, educators said Wednesday.

After a closely watched five-week trial in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Judge D. Lowell Jensen on Tuesday found that the Berkeley Unified School District’s programs for limited-English students--programs denounced as wholly inadequate by advocates of bilingual education--complied with equal educational opportunity requirements of the U.S. Constitution.

Hindering Their Progress

A central issue in the trial, according to Jensen, was the extent to which the district’s limited use of teachers with certified language training was hindering the performance of non-English-speaking students. The district, whose students speak 38 languages, has taught many limited-English students with English-speaking teachers and tutors in a so-called “immersion” program. Critics called the program a poorly devised “sink or swim” approach and charged that students’ rights to an equal education were being violated.

But Jensen, appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan, said in a 23-page written opinion, “The evidence shows that the educational theories upon which (the district’s) programs are grounded are manifestly as sound as any theory identified by” the district’s critics.

Jensen also said he found no evidence that limited-English students who had fully credentialed language teachers did better than those who did not. “Good teachers are good teachers, no matter what the educational challenge may be,” Jensen wrote.

Celia Ruiz, an attorney for the school district, said the ruling is important because it is one of the few to address directly what constitutes an adequate program for limited-English students. “The judge is saying you can put together alternative theories. . . . You have the ability to experiment,” Ruiz said.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig agreed Wednesday that the ruling affirms recent state efforts to give school districts more latitude in developing alternatives to traditional bilingual education.

Peter Roos, a lawyer for the students in the case, said he plans to appeal the ruling. In addition to determining if Jensen’s ruling stands, the appellate court would determine how far-reaching the precedent will be. Advocates for the limited-English students argued that the judge relied on skimpy comparative evidence to judge the effectiveness of the district’s program.

Honig and other observers said the ruling, if upheld, could have the effect of easing the intense recruiting wars for bilingual and language specialty teachers, particularly in Southern California, where two-thirds of the state’s 650,000 limited-English students are found.

“Certain districts are going to take advantage of it and (reduce efforts) to train and recruit” fully certified language teachers, said Chuck Acosta, co-chairman of the California Assn. for Bilingual Education.

But for political as well as instructional reasons, many districts, including the heavily minority Los Angeles Unified School District, are not likely to retreat from newly developed bilingual master plans that call for increased use of state-certificated language teachers. To meet the demand for bilingual teachers, the Los Angeles district is offering $2,000 annual bonuses to fully trained teachers and is considering increasing that to $5,000.