Bilingual Classes a Knotty Issue

It’s an unlikely spot to find an educational cause celebre--a poor and sun-scorched farm town on the Mexican border.

Yet the school district here has achieved renown far beyond its alfalfa and hay fields. It is touted by supporters of bilingual education as a model for teaching students who speak little English.

The acclaim was evident recently in Denver, where the head of the nation’s largest Latino organization lauded Calexico Unified School District for keeping its students from dropping out and sending so many--80%--on to college.

“Calexico, the poorest school district in California with the highest rate of farm workers and most Latinos, is graduating kids at a higher rate than Beverly Hills!” boasted Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza.

But here at Calexico High School, 120 miles east of San Diego, folks are uneasy with the role-model talk. The schoolyard chatter--in a borderland fusion of Spanish and English--is about the prom, tests coming up and the fate of the Bulldogs baseball team. Not educational miracles.

That bit about beating Beverly Hills? People here know better. Calexico’s 2.8% dropout rate is an achievement, half the state average for Latinos. But almost no one bails out in Beverly Hills.

And while a survey of last year’s 380 graduates did find an impressive 271 planning to continue their studies, fewer than 40 were headed to four-year colleges. In most cases, higher education here means the local community college.

Still, it’s easy to see why Calexico has become a provocative talking point in the debate over bilingual education. For its schools defy the popular notion that what’s most important is moving kids quickly into English fluency. The measure of success here is simpler--how kids turn out in the end.

This is a place where a corps of dedicated teachers and concerned parents and the closeness of a small town help legions of children surmount the hurdles of language and poverty that seem to trip up their counterparts elsewhere.

Here you find teachers such as Juan Orduna, who holds extra calculus classes every Saturday and gets local groups to pay for students’ Advanced Placement exams.

“What you try to do is create a culture where everybody supports everybody,” said Orduna, who--like nearly half the school’s faculty--is a product of Calexico schools. Support can mean early morning tutoring or a simple endearment--mijo, “my son”--in Spanish.

Poverty Is Prevalent

Though sprawling Mexicali is just over the border, rural Calexico seems distant from urban ills. The town has responded quickly to sporadic gang outbreaks. A dress code means no bare midriffs for the 1,425 high school students. Graffiti are next to unknown.

Yet poverty is as near as the fields. Almost a fourth of the students are the sons and daughters of migrant farm workers, many immigrants from Mexico. The average family makes less than $12,000 a year. Unemployment runs above 25%.

What’s most significant for the schools, though, is this: Hardly anyone enters kindergarten speaking English. Three-fourths of the district’s 7,180 students are classified as having limited English skills.

Nearly 30 years ago, Calexico was one of the first districts in America to take advantage of federal bilingual education money. Students usually start kindergarten being taught in Spanish and get more instruction in English as they proceed through the grades. The goal is to make the full transition to English in about four years. But bilingual help is offered all the way through high school for students who enter the system late.

Even so, getting the children to master English has proved tricky. Calexico students trail the state average for achieving English fluency (4.7% a year compared with 6.7% statewide) and score below average on the verbal SAT (422 compared with 490 statewide).

Supt. Roberto Moreno insists that it is more important to ask whether students are staying in school--and going on to the next level.

But those who reach college often face a struggle. Of 25 Calexico graduates entering the elite University of California system last year, 20 required remedial writing classes.

And while some local kids go on to Yale, Stanford and Berkeley, the lion’s share pursue their education at the two-year Imperial Valley College. Many attend because there are few alternatives in the area--job prospects are dim.

“They stay one year and a lot of them just stop,” said calculus teacher Orduna.

He’s not the only one who gives a measured appraisal of the district’s touted results.

“Calexico is a fair argument in favor of bilingual education,” said Gary Watts, who teaches Advanced Placement English. “We do a good job of protecting students who are disadvantaged by language.”

Even in a senior college-prep English class, though, Spanish is in the air as students in small groups hunt literary features in a Blake poem. “Tenemos syntax?” one girl asks her group. “Que es motif, eso?” inquires a classmate.

Watts said many students lack the proficiency to tackle sophisticated literary concepts, such as spotting metaphors.

Maricruz Acevedo, 17, a senior in Watts’ class, said she will sit out the Advanced Placement test--she fears that her writing is weak. She hopes to attend Imperial Valley and later transfer to a UC campus.

But it’s clear there’s a culture of learning at Calexico, nourished by care.

About 400 parents showed up at a recent high school open house. They picked up report cards, addressing teachers as maestro and maestra in respectful Spanish.

Jesus Santillanes made the rounds with his wife, Francisca, and their 17-year-old daughter, Fabiola. With a son at San Diego State, Santillanes has high hopes for Fabiola, a budding poet.

She is uncomfortable, however, writing in English. That worries her father, who speaks halting English learned on his delivery job. He frets that he has hindered Fabiola’s progress by insisting that she speak proper Spanish or proper English--not the hybrid “Spanglish” favored by her friends.

“We need to know the language,” Santillanes said. “Why are we in this country?”

An assistant principal, Mario Martinez, recalled the similar proddings of his father, an appliance repairman, as he grew up here en route to UC Berkeley.

“He said, ‘With an education you don’t have to do this kind of work. You can hire someone to do it.’ ”

To some on campus, the challenge for Calexico is to not lose sight of that culture, and the real gains, even as the schools endure streams of visitors drawn by the they-beat-Beverly Hills hype.

Acclaim is nice, Orduna said. So would be replacing two dozen outdated computers lining his classroom.

“We’ve done some good things,” the calculus teacher said. “But we have to keep our feet planted on the ground.”