[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 50 (Thursday, April 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H3585]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
  COSPONSOR H.R. 739, THE ONLY BILL THAT WILL DISMANTLE THE BILINGUAL 
                               EDUCATION

  (Mr. ROTH asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you about a young boy named 
David. He lives in New York City and goes to public school in Brooklyn. 
David is like millions of other school age children across this 
country, except for one thing: He is being robbed, his grandmother 
says, of his opportunity to learn.
  How can this be, you ask? Well, because David has been trapped in a 
bilingual education classroom for the past 6 years.
  I first learned about David through a story his grandmother Ada wrote 
in the New York Times. Her account of the problems David encountered in 
his bilingual class is a cautionary tale of public policy failure and 
bureaucratic excess.
  David and his mother speak English at home, and he grew up speaking 
English with his friends. Yet when he entered grade school, he was 
placed into a bilingual program. You see, David's last name is Jimenez, 
and the Brooklyn school bureaucrats reflexively place every child with 
Hispanic surnames into bilingual education classrooms. Six years later, 
David's parents had to sue the Bushwick School District in order to win 
the right to take him out of his bilingual classroom. You see, after 6 
years David still couldn't read English.
  Help me stop these tragedies from occurring. Cosponsor H.R. 739, the 
only bill that will dismantle the bilingual education bureaucracy. 
David and his grandmother shouldn't have to move heaven and Earth to 
give David an opportunity to learn English.

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