District Cites Study in Bid for Bilingual Education Waiver

Aiming to become first in the state to win a permanent waiver of the state bilingual education code, officials of the Westminster School District tonight will present its trustees with a study showing that non-English-speaking students are benefiting from English-based instruction that includes part-time bilingual teaching aides.

Preliminary data indicate that, across this multiethnic district, standardized reading test scores have improved in the past two years. Though Westminster’s bilingual students still score below national averages, district officials said their alternative bilingual program is successful.

“We expect the state waiver will help us close the gap between the national average and our students’ averages,” said Tracy Painter, director of special projects at Westminster, where nearly half of the students speak limited English.

In February 1996, Westminster became the first district in the state to win a temporary bilingual waiver because it could not find enough bilingual teachers to meet state requirements.

If a school district has more than 50 students who speak another language besides English, it must hire bilingual teachers for those children, according to state policy.

Now that its waiver is about to expire, the district hopes to demonstrate to the State Board of Education in December that its alternative program is working. If the state board is convinced, Westminster could be granted an unprecedented permanent waiver and never have to reapply for an exemption.

Such a decision would strengthen a statewide campaign by Silicon Valley businessman Ron Unz and Santa Ana teacher Gloria Matta Tuchman for a ballot measure requiring English-only instruction in public schools.

Besides Westminster, only three other California districts--all in Orange County--have obtained temporary waivers.

Evidence supporting Westminster’s program includes improved test scores among students learning English and students moving from limited-English status to fluency at a higher rate than before the program began in 1996.

In the past two school years, Westminster tracked students’ performance on the nationally administered California Achievement Test IV, which scores them on a scale of 1 to 99. In the English reading section, students overall gained four points to an average of 30; the English language comprehension average rose by five points to 39; and math scores improved by one point to 47.

The scores still fall below the national average of 50 on each test, Painter said. “We cannot be at the 50 mark when almost half of our students are not proficient in English,” she said.

The gains, however, exceeded district expectations. Administrators had set out to lift test averages by three points, a goal that they and state officials determined was ambitious.

Despite the increasing scores, one testing expert questioned their significance. Margot Gottlieb, director of assessment and testing at the Illinois Resource Center, which evaluates student testing procedures, said that because Westminster does not have comprehensive test results from before it started its alternative bilingual program, it is hard to make comparisons based on the new data.

“How do we know that these students weren’t already scoring four points higher in previous years?” Gottlieb asked.

Silvina Rubinstein, executive director of the California Assn. for Bilingual Education, argued that Westminster’s study was insufficient because it does not compare nonnative students to their English-speaking peers in all subjects. She said regular bilingual instruction was more effective because students are taught “all academic subjects” in their native languages, then moved gradually into English instruction.

But Westminster administrators said their bilingual teaching assistants bridge any instructional gaps by clarifying concepts in the students’ primary language.

“Our program could not succeed without our bilingual instructional assistants,” Painter said.

She and others cite steady progress in the classroom.

In Sarah Silane’s second-grade class, 17 of the 19 students are Vietnamese and speak limited English. Teaching assistant Hien Pham spends 17 1/2 hours a week in the class, where he speaks Vietnamese to explain lessons to small groups of students.

On a recent school day, Pham presented a science exercise to five students while Silane, at the other end of the room, worked on the same activity with the rest of the class. Once in a while, Pham would insert English words while talking about the ocean and sea creatures.

“When the water runs high up the sand, what do we call that?” Pham asked the pupils in Vietnamese.

“High tide,” they answered in English.