[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 204 (Tuesday, December 19, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2395-E2396]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   BILINGUAL EDUCATION'S FATAL FLAWS

                                 ______


                             HON. TOBY ROTH

                              of wisconsin

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, December 18, 1995

  Mr. ROTH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call the attention of my 
colleagues to the excellent article on bilingual education that 
appeared in the September 25, 1995 U.S. News & World Report, ``Tongue-
tied in the schools.'' The author, Susan Headden, makes a compelling 
argument that bilingual education is a public policy failure that has 
been kept alive by bureaucratic inertia.
  Ms. Headden's assessment of the program's effectiveness is 
unambiguous; she writes that ``along with crumbling classrooms and 
violence in the hallways, bilingual education has emerged as one of the 
dark spots on the grim tableau of American public education.''
  The article goes on to show that current bilingual education programs 
are inadequate and actually counter-productive in helping new Americans 
and their children integrate into American society by learning English. 
Surveys have shown that today's immigrants want a chance for their 
children to learn English because it is the key to success in America.
  Transitional bilingual education has failed to meet the test Congress 
established for it in 1978--namely, that it improves students' 
performance in English. The research evidence on transitional bilingual 
education indicates that it may, in fact, have a negative impact on 
students in these programs.
  The first step we must take is to eliminate the bilingual education 
bureaucracy which has a vested interest in continuing along the same 
failed path. The money the Federal Government spends on bilingual 
education could be better spent on English classes for immigrants and 
intensive English instruction for their children. An afterschool 
program could do these children far more good than 6 years of a 
bilingual education program.
  In the past, America has always been a shining example of how people 
from all corners of the world can live and work together in cultural 
harmony. This was the case because our country has enjoyed a common and 
unifying bond, the English language. We must preserve this bond to 
protect our future as a nation.
  Bilingual education is a threat to that unity, because it doesn't 
help teach children English. That's why I introduced the Declaration of 
Official Language Act. I addition to declaring English our official 
language, H.R. 739 also seeks to repeal Federal mandates--like 
bilingual 

[[Page E2396]]
education--which discourage the use of English. If my bill passes, the 
bilingual education boondoggle would cease to exist.
  I hope you will heed this article's warning and join me today in the 
effort to refocus our country's educational efforts towards the goal of 
teaching children English quickly and effectively. We want all of our 
children to be fluent in the language of opportunity in our society, so 
that they too can take hold of their share of the American Dream. 
Cosponsor H.R. 739, the Declaration of Official Language Act. I ask 
that the full text of Susan Headden's article appear in the Record at 
this point.

         [From the U.S. News and World Report, Sept. 25, 1995]

                       Tongue-tied in the Schools

                           (By Susan Headden)

       Javier Sanchez speaks English like the proud American he 
     is. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., the wiry 12-year-old speaks 
     English at home, and he speaks it on the playground. He spoke 
     it in the classroom, too--until one day in the third grade, 
     when he was abruptly moved to a program that taught him in 
     Spanish all but 45 minutes a day. ``It was a disaster,'' says 
     his Puerto Rican-born mother, Dominga Sanchez. ``He didn't 
     understand Spanish.'' Sanchez begged the teacher to return 
     her son to his regular class. Her request was met with 
     amazement. ``Why?'' the teacher asked. ``Don't you feel proud 
     to be Hispanic?''
       Along with crumbling classrooms and violence in the 
     hallways, bilingual education has emerged as one of the dark 
     spots on the grim tableau of American public education. 
     Started 27 years ago to help impoverished Mexican-Americans, 
     the program was born of good intentions, but today it has 
     mushroomed into a $10 billion-a-year bureaucracy that not 
     only cannot promise that students will learn English but may 
     actually do some children more harm than good. Just as 
     troubling, while children like Javier are placed in programs 
     they don't want and may not need, thousands more children are 
     foundering because they get no help with English at all.
       Bilingual education was intended to give new immigrants a 
     leg up. During earlier waves of immigration, children who 
     entered American schools without speaking English were left 
     to fend for themselves. Many thrived, but others, feeling 
     lost and confused, did not. Their failures led to Title VII 
     of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which ensured 
     supplementary services for all non-English-speaking newcomers 
     to America.


                            armenian to urdu

       Significantly, the law did not prescribe a method for 
     delivering those services. But today, of the funds used to 
     help children learn English, 75 percent of federal money--and 
     the bulk of state and local money--goes toward classes taught 
     in students' native tongues; only 25 percent supports 
     programs rooted in English. That makes bilingual education 
     the de facto law of the land.
       Historically, Hispanics have been the largest beneficiaries 
     of bilingual education. Today, however, they compete for 
     funding with new immigrant groups whose urge to assimilate 
     some educators say, may be stronger. Further, not many school 
     districts can offer classes in such languages as Armenian and 
     Urdu. So for practical reasons, too, children of other 
     nationalities are placed in English-based classes more often 
     than children of Hispanics. The problem, as many see it, is 
     that students are staying in native-language programs far too 
     long. In a typical complaint, the mother of one New York 
     ninth grader says her daughter has been in ``transitional'' 
     bilingual education for nine years. ``We support bilingual 
     education,'' says Ray Domanico of the New York Public 
     Education Association. ``But it is becoming an 
     institutionalized ghetto.''


                            learning chinese

       In theory, bilingual education is hard to fault. Students 
     learn math, science and other ``content'' subjects in their 
     native tongues, and they take special English classes for a 
     small part of the day. When they are ready, ideally within 
     three or four years, they switch to classes taught 
     exclusively in English. The crucial advantage is that 
     students don't fall behind in their other lessons while 
     gaining competence in English. Further, supporters claim, 
     bilingual education produces students fluent in two 
     languages.
       That would be great, if it were true. Too often it is not. 
     What is sometimes mistaken for dual-language instruction is 
     actually native-language instruction, in which students hear 
     English for as little as 30 minutes a day. ``Art, physical 
     education and music are supposed to be taught in English,'' 
     says Lucy Fortney, a third-grade teacher from Sun Valley, 
     Calif. ``But that is absolutely not happening at all.''
       Assignments to bilingual programs are increasingly a source 
     of complaint. Many students, parents say, are placed in 
     bilingual classes not because they can't understand English 
     but because they don't read well. They need remedial, not 
     bilingual, help. Others wind up in bilingual programs simply 
     because there is no room in regular classes. Luz Pena says 
     her third-grade son, born in America, spoke excellent English 
     until he was moved to a bilingual track. Determined to avoid 
     such problems with her daughter, she registered her for 
     English kindergarten--only to be told the sole vacancies were 
     in the Spanish class.
       In some cases, the placements seem to defy common sense. In 
     San Francisco, because of a desegragation order, some 
     English-speaking African-Americans end up in classes taught 
     partly in Chinese. Chinese-speakers, meanwhile, have been 
     placed in classes taught partly in Spanish. Presented with 
     evidence that blacks in bilingual programs scored well below 
     other blacks on basic skills tests, school officials recently 
     announced an end to the practice.
       Whether a child is placed in a bilingual program can turn 
     on criteria as arbitrary as whether his name is Miller or 
     Martinez. In Utah, federal records show that the same test 
     scores that identified some students as ``limited English 
     proficient'' (LEP) were used to identify others as learning 
     disabled. The distinction depended on the student's ethnic 
     group: Hispanics were designated LEP, while Native Americans 
     who spoke Navajo or Ute were labeled learning disabled. In 
     New York City, where public schools teach children in 10 
     different languages, enrollment in bilingual education has 
     jumped by half since 1989, when officials raised the cut-off 
     on a reading test. Critics say that 40 percent of all 
     children are likely to fail the test--whether they speak 
     English or not.
       Misplacement, however, is only part of the problem. At 
     least 25 percent of LEP students, according to the U.S. 
     Department of Education, get no special help at all. Other 
     children are victims of a haphazard approach. In Medford, 
     Ore., LEP students received English training anywhere from 
     three hours a day, five days a week to 30 minutes a day, 
     three days a week. The results? Of 12 former LEP students 
     reviewed by education department officials, seven had two or 
     more F's and achievement scores below the 20th percentile. 
     Four more had D's and test scores below the 30th percentile. 
     In Twin Falls, Idaho, three high-school teachers had no idea 
     that their students needed any help with English, despite 
     their obvious LEP background and consistently failing grades.
       Poorly trained teachers further complicate the picture. 
     Nationwide, the shortage of teachers trained for bilingual-
     education programs is estimated at 170,000. The paucity of 
     qualified candidates has forced desperate superintendents to 
     waive some credentialing requirements and recruit instructors 
     from abroad. The result is teachers who themselves struggle 
     with English. ``You can hardly understand them,'' said San 
     Francisco teacher Gwen Carmen, In Duchesne, Utah, two 
     teachers' aides admitted to education department inspectors 
     that they had no college credits, no instructional materials 
     and no idea what was expected of them.
       What all these problems add up to is impossible to say 
     precisely, but one statistic is hard to ignore. The high-
     school dropout rate for Hispanic students is nearly 30 
     percent. It remains by far the highest of any ethnic group--
     four times that of whites, three times that of blacks--and it 
     has not budged since bilingual education began.
       Although poverty and other problems contribute to the 
     disappointing numbers, studies suggest that confining 
     Hispanic students to Spanish-only classrooms also may be a 
     significant factor. A New York study, published earlier this 
     year, determined that 80 percent of LEP students who enrolled 
     in English-immersion classes graduated to mainstream English 
     within three years, while only half the students in bilingual 
     classes tested out that quickly. A similar study released 
     last fall by the state of California concluded that students 
     stayed in native-language instruction far too long. It 
     followed an independent investigation in 1993 that called 
     native-language instruction ``divisive, wasteful and 
     unproductive.''
       Not everyone agrees. More than half of American voters, 
     according to a new U.S. News poll, approve of bilingual 
     education. Jim Lyons, executive director of the Bilingual 
     Education Association, says the recent studies are flawed 
     because they fail to measure mastery of academic content: 
     ``They don't even pretend to address the issue of the full 
     education,'' he says. Learning English takes time, insists 
     Eugene Garcia of the education department. ``And it's well 
     worth the wait.''


                           Practical approach

       The alternative to native-language instruction is to teach 
     children exclusively in English, pulling them out of class 
     periodically for lessons in English as a second language. 
     Lucy Fortney taught exclusively white American-born children 
     when she started her career 30 years ago; now her classroom 
     is almost entirely Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Armenian. ``I 
     can't translate one single word for them,'' she says, ``but 
     they learn English.''
       Today, bilingual education is creeping beyond impoverished 
     urban neighborhoods to rural and suburban communities likely 
     to expose its failings to harsher light. Until now, no 
     constituency has been vested or powerful enough to force the 
     kind of reforms that may yet come with civil-rights lawsuits. 
     ``Everybody's appalled when they find out about the 
     problems,'' says Linda Chavez, one-time director of the 
     Commission on Civil Rights and a dogged opponent of bilingual 
     education, ``but the fact is, it doesn't affect their kids.'' 
     That may have been true in the past. But as a rainbow-hued 
     contingent of schoolchildren starts filling up the desks in 
     mostly white suburbia, it is not likely to be the case for 
     long.

                          ____________________