House Bill Would Downplay Bilingualism

Three years after Californians voted to curtail bilingual education, the House this week plans to consider a proposal meant to help push students with limited English skills into mainstream classrooms nationwide.

The proposal, part of a larger education bill under debate in the House, says that school systems accepting federal aid for such students should seek to give them all-English instruction within three years.

To back up that standard, the legislation says the students should be tested on their English reading and language skills after being in U.S. schools for three--or at most four--consecutive years.

Though backed by President Bush, the three-year standard is not part of a companion education bill moving through the Senate. That means its ultimate fate is unclear.

At stake is a potentially important shift in emphasis for federal programs serving hundreds of thousands of the least-advantaged children in American schools.

More than 4.1 million students nationwide have limited English proficiency. Many are immigrants, or are children or grandchildren of immigrants. About two-fifths are in California schools.

In recent years, critics have attacked programs that aim to teach limited-English students in their native languages for a substantial part of the typical school day, complaining that the bilingual approach fails to help them master the nation’s dominant tongue. Proponents of bilingual education reply that problems have far more to do with a lack of resources than with curriculum.

California voters spoke on the issue in 1998, approving Proposition 227, which required crash programs in English immersion for students with limited English skills unless parents near a particular school mobilized to preserve bilingual instruction. Arizona voters approved a similar measure last fall, and anti-bilingual movements have gathered steam in New York and elsewhere.

But the federal government, which has encouraged bilingual education since 1968, so far has not made major changes. President Clinton, in fact, opposed Prop. 227.

Now his successor is calling for a reform that--while far less sweeping than the recent California law--would nonetheless attempt to hold schools accountable for teaching children English. The measure, which could affect some California schools that still offer federally funded bilingual programs, is part of legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act for the first time in seven years. Debate on the House bill is expected to start Thursday.

Emblematic of the shift in the bill is a provision to rename a unit of the Department of Education. No longer would the department have an Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs. In its place would be the Office of Educational Services for Limited English Proficient Children.

In addition to the proposed three-year standard for students to gain English fluency, the House bill would require schools to seek parental permission to put limited-English students in classes taught in other languages. That provision, sought by Rep. Thomas G. Tancredo (R-Colo.), goes further than the Bush plan.

The new restrictions would be tied to as much as $750 million in federal funding available in the next fiscal year to help students who are immigrants or who have limited English skills. Whether Congress would actually appropriate that much funding--an act that requires separate legislation--is unclear. The current year’s funding is about $460 million--a small fraction of what states spend on education for limited-English students. The Senate, meanwhile, voted last week to authorize hundreds of millions of additional dollars in funding over the next several years.

Bilingual education advocates criticize the House bill. The parental consent requirement, they say, would only bury school officials in paperwork. The three-year limit, they say, fails to reflect complicated educational realities.

“All the research indicates you can’t hurry children developmentally,” said Delia Pompa, executive director of the National Assn. for Bilingual Education, who served in Clinton’s Education Department. “You can’t set an arbitrary time limit for children to acquire a second language, whatever that language may be.”