Bilingual

Only recently, Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos decried the sorry state of our educational system. We are lagging behind other nations. We are not turning out literate students. We have far too many dropouts. Though spending billions more, we are getting less for our educational dollars.

For the past 20 years, we have had mandated bilingual education, which legislators have interpreted to mean native language instruction for our Latino students. Those students who are not Latino but happen to be in a Spanish-instruction class get one-half or one-third of the teacher’s time.

And now Cavazos advocates more native language instruction (Part I, Aug. 26)? Why?

English instruction programs, with native language support, have worked for decades for all other language minority students, also for Latino adult students. Why can they not work for Latino children?

ANGIE PAPADAKIS

Rancho Palos Verdes