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How Do You Say ‘Catch 22’ in Spanish? : Education: A child learning English must be schooled only in Spanish no matter how fluent she seems. The rule just begs to be bent.

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<i> Douglas Lasken teaches at Ramona Elementary School in Hollywood. </i>

I’ll call her Irena. She sits with the other 7-year-olds in Ms. Ybarra’s science group, reading in Spanish about plants. Suddenly she is at my desk, holding open a copy of the English science text to the same passage she has just read in Spanish. “Listen, Mr. Lasken!” she cries, beaming, and reads aloud, without hesitation: “Some plants stop growing in fall. Some plants die and others rest. Seeds are carried away by animals.” She reads several pages without faltering. Irena tells me she taught herself to read English. And yet, she will be using only Spanish textbooks, in all subjects, for the next three to four years. Remarkable? No. I teach a bilingual second grade for the Los Angeles Unified School District, and I have several kids like Irena in my class every year.

A little background: Bilingual education has had strong federal support in this country since the 1974 Supreme Court decision of Lau vs. Nichols. The Laus, a Chinese-speaking family, brought action against the San Francisco School District on behalf of their child, who spoke no English yet was thrust into an English-only classroom with no support services. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the failure to offer special educational services to children like Lau was prohibited on two legal grounds: as a violation of the student’s constitutional right to “equal protection under the law,” and as a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The decision was handed over to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights, which, through the so-called Lau Remedies, specified bilingual education as a vehicle to correct past practices.

The Lau Remedies did not prescribe in detail how a bilingual program should be run, but court decisions in several states mandated various guidelines for school districts to follow. In 1980, the California Legislature passed the Bilingual Education Improvement and Reform Act, which required specific programs for students designated “limited English proficient,” or LEP. In 1987, school districts in California were freed to interpret federal mandates as they saw fit. In Los Angeles Unified, the Bilingual Master Plan, which governs my classroom, was developed.

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Because children like Irena were designated LEP in kindergarten, I am unable to provide them with textbooks in English. Transition from LEP to an English program requires passing the district’s CARE (Criteria for Addition of Reading in English) test. The CARE test is in Spanish, and is quite difficult. There are no figures on districtwide passing rates for the CARE test, but I do not see my students beginning to pass this test until they reach fourth or fifth grade.

It turns out that the district has evolved a kind of cult of the primary language. The story is spelled out in the district’s “Bilingual Methodology Study Guide,” which cites numerous studies showing that children who master their native languages first master their second better and faster. A seemingly innocuous truism, but the guide goes on to decry use of English in the classroom: “Excessive use of English in bilingual classrooms tends to lower students’ achievement in English. Thus, students in bilingual programs do better if instruction in their native language is continued through the fifth or sixth grade.” Further, the guide claims, parents will impede their children’s mastery of the native language if they speak English at home: “Teachers should not encourage minority parents to switch to English in the home. Rather, they should encourage them to strongly promote the development of the primary language.”

And what about the LEP kids in my class who speak and read English like fourth-grader natives? The guide says that we should not be fooled by such ephemera. It just means that these students’ BICS (basic interpersonal communicative skills) have overshadowed their lack of CALP (cognitive academic linguistic proficiency).

Many teachers and administrators have tried to do something about this situation. I got my chance last year. In November, the district began its “cluster transition” process, in which regions directed from downtown will be replaced this school year with “cluster complexes,” composed of high schools and their “feeder” middle and elementary schools. The complexes are supposed to enjoy new autonomies in managing their affairs.

Superintendent Sid Thompson urged that all “stakeholders”--people involved in the schools in any way--work with subcommittees that would prepare recommendations for the clusters. I joined the instructional subcommittee and managed, without much difficulty, to get this recommendation into the final report in February: “Schools should exercise greater flexibility in assessment, placement and redesignation of LEP students within guidelines.”

In July, the superintendent’s instructions to the 27 cluster leaders included this charge: “Each cluster leader will be held responsible for increasing the number of LEP students redesignated to FEP (fluent English proficiency).” This is a hopeful sign.

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The question now is whether the district will permit schools to modify the role of the CARE test in making the redesignation.

Meanwhile, Irena beams at me in class as she reads page after page of English.

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