District Tests Eased Bilingual Teaching Rule

Fueling the debate over bilingual education, a state Board of Education panel took steps Thursday to let Orange County’s multiethnic Westminster School District teach all students in English but compensate by increasing the use of bilingual teaching aides.

The district proposal, the first test of new state bilingual education rules giving schools more latitude to abandon native language instruction, was unanimously approved by the board’s policy committee and is expected to be ratified by the full board today.

“Our feeling was this is a model program, and I would expect the board to approve it,” said Yvonne W. Larsen, chairwoman of the board’s policy committee. “We want the kids to be literate. The more quickly they can function in English, the better.”

Backers of bilingual education argued that the Westminster proposal would only hurt students struggling to keep up with English-speaking peers while also learning a new language.

“The sad truth is that Westminster is simply not interested in meeting the needs of bilingual students through methods that have proven to work,” said Rosalia Salina, president of the California Assn. for Bilingual Education.

Approval of the plan could break new ground in the tug-of-war over how best to educate California’s 1.2 million students who do not speak English. If successful, the program may be copied by other districts around the state.

But in Westminster, which has experienced a large influx of Vietnamese-speaking students and has a sizable Spanish-speaking population, the idea may have a more profound effect on teachers than on students.

Currently, just 60 pupils are enrolled in bilingual Spanish classes at two elementary schools, while the district’s remaining 4,100 students with limited English skills already are taught all subjects in English.

Nevertheless, Westminster was required by the state to employ 90 teachers who have bilingual certification, or are training to obtain it, because the district has more than 50 students who speak a language other than English. Westminster complied with the state mandate by paying teachers to take language classes in Vietnamese and Spanish, languages spoken by nearly half the K-8 district’s 9,000 students.

That put some district teachers in the position of being forced to take the language classes or face the threat of transfer or dismissal.

Westminster is the first school district in the state to test a July 1995 state policy that allows schools to use any combination of English and native language lessons, provided they prove nonfluent students are progressing.

If the plan is approved by the full school board today, Westminster would have 22 months to implement the new approach. After that, the district would have to return to the state board and demonstrate that the program was a success.

Thursday’s vote came despite harsh criticism from the California Assn. for Bilingual Education, several community members and the district’s two bilingual teachers, who would be forced under the new program to teach in English instead of Spanish.

Opponents contend the program is an expensive alternative that will almost certainly hurt the academic progress of limited-English students. They also argue that the district has a poor track record in providing meaningful education to bilingual students, making it dubious that a new program would succeed.

Bilingual aides, foes argue, will essentially be thrust into the role of teacher without the proper training needed to be effective.

“The person doing the communicating will be doing the teaching,” said Marina Williams, a Westminster bilingual teacher who opposes the plan. “The assistant’s ability to translate will become the key” and could act as “a buffer” between student and teacher, hurting the child’s academic progress.

Williams also said the Westminster school board, which approved the plan on a 3-2 vote in December, “turned a deaf ear” to concerns of many Vietnamese and Spanish-speaking parents who would prefer that their children be taught in their native languages. Instead, she said, the board listened to “the interests of monolingual teachers” irked by having to learn new languages.

Westminster school officials, however, argued that the program will allow students to stay abreast of academic subjects while more quickly achieving fluency in English.

Westminster Supt. Gail Wickstrom agreed the plan had become “very controversial” in the community, but said the district simply had been unable to recruit enough certified bilingual teachers to comply with state rules.

Wickstrom told the state board that the district had a training program in place for the aides who will be hired. The bilingual teaching assistants will be required to pass reading, writing and oral tests in both English and their native languages.