[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 12 (Tuesday, January 30, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H926-H927]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        FEDERAL BILINGUAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS MUST BE REEVALUATED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Young of Florida). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. 
Roth] is recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. Speaker, actions have consequences. it is about time 
that we as a Congress analyze how our congressional actions impact on 
America's future.
  Mr. Speaker, in September, U.S. News & World Report put on its cover 
the issue of making English our official language. It was an absolutely 
eye-opening investigation into bilingual education, and I recommend it 
to every Member of Congress to read this portion of the magazine.
  Mr. Speaker, the billion-dollar program of bilingual education 
reasons that children taught in their native language will somehow 
learn English more quickly. I would like to share some of the article's 
conclusions, as I found their analysis to be right on target.
  Mr. Speaker, the first point and criticism that can be made of 
transitional bilingual education programs is that they are not really 
transitional. Too many students are held in these language maintenance 
programs, never acquiring enough English fluency to regain mainstream 
classroom capabilities. U.S. News pointed out a woman in New York who 
had a ninth grade daughter in the classroom of bilingual education for 
9 years and this family had a very poor experience in that the 
youngster never did get into transitional English.
  Mr. Speaker, all kinds of examples in the magazine, in U.S. News and 
World Report, point out that the family's experiences are all too 
common. For example, Ray Domanico, of the New York Public Education 
Association, says that bilingual education, ``is becoming an 
institutionalized ghetto.'' Arthur Schlesinger in his book, ``The 
Disuniting of America,'' points out that ``bilingual education promotes 
segregation, nourishes racial antagonism, and shuts the door to 
students,'' all things that we do not want to happen in America.
  Bilingual education also is all too often not actually bilingual, as 
the report points out. The word ``bilingual'' implies that students in 
these programs receive equal amounts of instruction in two languages. 
This could not be further from the truth. Many students in bilingual 
education get as many as 30 minutes a day in English.
  Mr. Speaker, how can anyone expect to pick up English quickly under 
these conditions? How can we expect the students to pick up English 
under these conditions? The answer is that they cannot.
  Bilingual education does not help children learn English quickly and 
effectively, as Congress intended it to do, yet the program has 
flourished for at least three decades, going from a small pilot program 
28 years ago to a $10 billion business, spawning a bureaucracy bent on 
self-preservation. Some of the Government's worst bureaucratic excesses 
can be found in the administration of these programs.
  The inertia of billion-dollar budgets drives bilingual education 
expansion. In many areas across the country, children are misplaced 
into these programs. In some cases they are put into bilingual 
education classrooms not because they do not understand English well, 
but because they cannot read English well. These children need remedial 
English classes; not history in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese.
  Worst still, Mr. Speaker, some children are placed in these programs 
simply because they have ethnic surnames. In a complete perversion of 
the so-called multiculturalism, children with names like Ming or 
Martinez are red-flagged on school rolls and are placed, without their 
parents' consent or permission, into these programs.

  In New York City recently, a number of families became so frustrated 
with the bilingual bureaucracy that they took the New York Board of 
Education to court in order to win the right to withdraw their children 
from bilingual educational programs.
  In some ways, these children are the lucky ones. They had parents who 
had the strength and courage to stand up to the system. How many 
children are not so lucky? Mr. Speaker, I have heard horror stories of 
Haitian Creole-speaking children placed in Spanish classes because 
there are not enough of them to warrant their own instructor.
  In other cases, desperate school superintendents struggling to meet 
State and Federal bilingual education guidelines are forced to recruit 
uncredentialed, unqualified, instructors from abroad, many of whom do 
not speak English. The result, Mr. Speaker, is that we have teachers 
who cannot speak English teaching children who do not speak English. It 
does not take an Ivy League-educated Education Department bureaucrat to 
conclude that under these conditions, children do not learn English 
quickly or effectively.
  An entire generation of children has been forced to suffer through 
these public policies gone awry. The high school dropout rate in these 
areas is exceedingly high; higher than any other rate. That is why, Mr. 
Speaker, I have taken this time to focus Congress' attention on what 
bilingual education is doing to our students.
  Mr. Speaker, the high school dropout rate for Hispanic students, one 
of the telling indicators bilingual education was supposed to change, 
has not budged since the programs began. Tellingly, it remains the 
highest of any ethnic group--four times higher than that of most other 
groups and another example from U.S. News, three times higher than that 
of Afro-Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, for most of our Nation's history, America gave the 
children of immigrants a precious gift--an education in the English 
language. As each new wave of immigrants arrived on these shores, our 
public school system taught their sons and daughters English so they 
could claim their piece of the American dream.

  What are we doing for these new Americans today? Instead of a first-
rate education in English, our bilingual education programs are 
consigning an entire generation of new Americans--unable to speak, 
understand, and use English effectively--to a second-class future.
  This tragedy has human faces. Let me tell you about two people's 
experiences which will illustrate the impact of our failed bilingual 
education programs. I have never heard the problems with bilingual 
education more poignantly put than in the words of Ernesto Ortiz, a 
foreman on a south Texas ranch who said: ``My children learn Spanish in 
school so they can become busboys and waiters. I teach them English at 
home so they can become doctors and lawyers.'' Ernesto understands that 
English is the language of opportunity in this country. He understands 
that denying his children a good education in English will doom them to 
a limited--as opposed to limitless--future.
  Bilga Abramova also understands this simple truth. Bilga is a 35-
year-old Russian refugee who has entered a church lottery 3 times in an 
attempt to win 1 of 50 coveted spaces in a free, intensive English 
class offered by her local parish. Her pleas in Russian speak volumes 
about the plight of all too many immigrants: ``I need to win,'' she 
said. ``Without English, I cannot begin a new life.''
  The ultimate paradox about our commitment to bilingual education in 
this country is that Bilga and others like her all across the country 
sit on waiting lists for intensive English classes while we spend $8 
billion a year teaching children in their native language.
  You have heard from parents like Ernesto Ortiz and how they feel 
about bilingual education. Even teachers oppose these programs. A 
recent survey of 1,000 elementary and secondary teachers found that 64 
percent of them disapproved of bilingual education programs and favored 
intensive English instruction instead.

  Even longtime defenders of these programs are starting to change 
their tune. The California Board of Education approved a new policy 
recently in which they abandoned their preference for bilingual 
education programs.
  This year marks the 28th year of bilingual education programs. For 
more and more people, that is 28 years too long. It is time to take a 
fresh look at this problem. Bilingual education has had 28 years and 
billions of dollars to prove that it accomplished what it said it would 
do in 1968: teach children English 

[[Page H927]]
quickly and effectively. Too many people lose sight of the fact that 
the real issue here is how to help children and newcomers who do not 
know English and who need to assimilate.
  Let us not forget Ernesto Ortiz and his children, Bilga Abramova and 
other new Americans like them. Mr. Speaker, this is not just an 
abstract public policy issue; bilingual education and our national 
language policies have real world consequences. When our policies fail, 
the failures have names and faces attached to them. When our policies 
serve to divide rather than unite us, the rips appear in the very 
fabric of the American Nation.
  The following description of bilingual education comes from US News 
and World Report: ``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. Today, the program 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.''
  Mr. Speaker, this should be bilingual education's epitaph. I urge all 
of my colleagues to see the writing on the wall. Bilingual education 
has had its time to prove its effectiveness; 28 years is long enough to 
see if this approach works. These programs were created with good 
intentions, I am sure. However, after almost three decades and billions 
of dollars, we must recognize the painful truth that bilingual 
education does not work.

                          ____________________