Studies Supporting Bilingual Programs

Re “Opinions Vary on Studies That Back Bilingual Classes,” March 2: One needs to question a test of the effectiveness of the LAUSD bilingual program that excluded 3,000 fifth-grade students because they couldn’t read English well enough to even take the test.

It’s time to set aside self-serving tests and return to common sense. In a country of immigrants, most of us know people who learned English quickly through immersion. My wife was fluent six months after her arrival at the age of 6, being fortunate not to be placed in some foolish bilingual program that forced her to speak German for five years before “transitioning” into English.

She went on to teach in the LAUSD system and still does.

THOMAS W. ECKER

Los Angeles

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To make bilingual education look good, the L.A. schools’ study had to eliminate 42% of the kids. These students had studied in the bilingual program for all five years of grade school and couldn’t read enough English to take the test. They used 100% of those in the English Language Development program, however.

BARBARA RENDAHL

Torrance

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Re “Alpert-Firestone: Recipe for Chaos,” Commentary, Feb. 26:

Could anything have revealed the self-serving motivation behind Ron Unz’s crusade against bilingual education more than his petulant diatribe against legislation which seeks to place control of bilingual programs in the hands of locally elected school boards?

Unz lectures that school board elections create a “chaos” which is antithetical to sound policy-making. But his real issue is apparent: After manipulating the hot-button issue of bilingual education to position himself as the savior of public education--a tactic he deplores in others--he is quite put out over the possibility he might be rejected in favor of the chaotic process known as democracy.

If Unz is sincere about improving the education of all of our children, then I challenge him to stop electioneering on behalf of his long-term political ambitions, and do what the overwhelming number of us who are parents of children in the public schools do: Go to a school, roll up your sleeves and make a difference child by child.

DARYL G. NICKENS

Los Angeles