Bilingual Education

The unhappy parents at Ninth Street School need to blame the state of California’s educational policies, not “bilingual education” (Jan. 16). Bilingual education presupposes a child’s ability to attain literacy in the home language. Thanks to the state framework, which was implemented in the late ‘80s, most of the children attending public elementary schools throughout California have not been taught to read, write, or count in any language. Thus we have produced a generation of illiterates, some of whom are bilingual.

LORRIE MITCHELL

Los Angeles

* The Hispanic families that want the L.A. Unified School District to alter the bilingual education programs that are currently in use are running into the bilingual bureaucracy that has taken root in many of the school districts in California.

The administrators of many of these districts subscribe to the theory that they know what is best for the English-learning student, regardless of what the parents want. The state of California must also share the responsibility of this mind-set. Over the last year, as a school board member, I have seen firsthand what the state and school officials across the state will do to retain the vise-like grip that they have on these programs. Those that I feel the most sadness for are the English-learning students that are put through six or more years of this nonsense. Then, when they are graduating high school, or trying to get into college, the reality hits that they are not truly fluent in all aspects of the English language. Are we truly serving these students and parents to the best of our ability?

MICHAEL J. VERRENGIA

Board Member

Westminster School District

* Ninth Street School is proud of so many recent accomplishments which you failed to mention in your article about Alice Callahan’s parent rally against bilingual education. We agree that our students, probably the neediest in the district, have not always achieved at the levels we desire for them, so as a LEARN school we have made significant changes in our program, and continue to seek out bold new ways to increase our students’ academic achievement.

The most dramatic change we have made in the past year has been to our bilingual program. Clearly, many of our children need more instruction in English than they have had in the past. Through a team-teaching model, every student in the new bilingual program has a monolingual English-speaking teacher for math and science daily. In addition, art, music, dance, physical education and other enrichment subjects are taught in English every afternoon. Students only receive 90 minutes of primary language support, and this is withdrawn as they master literacy skills and English. In the first year of our program (‘94-’95) 65% of our fourth-graders transitioned to an all-English program. We have already reached that figure for this year, with more months to increase it.

We are proud of our improvements. We would welcome a visit from Callahan, from LAUSD leaders and from other Angelenos interested in watching reform in action.

MARTA ANN GARDNER

Lead Teacher, Ninth Street School