What happens when “bilingual education” backfires
File under “Public Schools Know Best And Don’t You Dare Argue Otherwise:”
For more than a year, a Latino boy who speaks only English sat in his classroom confused by what his Spanish-speaking classmates were saying and falling behind in his work.
His mother complained to school officials, but they insisted he belonged in the English as a Second Language program. Complicating things, the boy was considered to be developmentally delayed.
Now the family has sued the Hillsboro School District, accusing educators at Orenco Elementary School of putting Alek Villaraldo in the English as a Second Language program during kindergarten and a portion of first grade solely because he was Latino. In the family’s federal lawsuit, his parents, Indhira and Rene Villaraldo, say they were never notified or asked for consent to place their son in the program.
“Those were his first years of school, and they have gone down the drain,” Indhira Villaraldo said, adding that parent-teacher meetings, homework and other notices gave no sure sign to them that the 5-year-old spent part of school time learning alongside Spanish speakers with limited English proficiency.
National ESL experts say the federal- and state-regulated learning program contains checks and balances to keep misplacements from happening. But errors still occur, especially among children with disabilities because educators are not fully trained in distinguishing learning disabilities from limited English speaking skills.
“Bilingual eduation” is a crock and a racket. The educrats have known it for decades. Parents are getting a rude awakening, too.
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Can English be our official language please?
Just another example of how incompetent the government is at running things. It doesn’t matter if its education, FEMA, social security, or you name it. Bigger Gov’t is never the answer.
Exit Question: Can anyone convince me why socialized health care would be any different?
Another giant leap forward into the chasm for Oregon schools: starting slow and then cooling off. Perhaps they just need a teensy bit more money…..
Press “1″ for English…then the recording begins speaking Spanish, if you haven’t already pressed 1.
Unbelievable.
Any other reasons necessary to home-school the children?
This is off subject but Rush just gave Michelle big kudos for being the first to out the Frost family for what they are,sounds like another great job for MM,can I have an autograph.
#2, No, watershed can’t but he has given it his best shot…
ESL is a huge racket. ESL teachers have it in their own interest to maximize the number of students in their classes to keep funding for their jobs. You see elementary students with good English solely put into ESL because of their last names under the excuse that their written skills are not up to par.
The craziest part: ESL programs now believe that ESL students cannot identify with your average teacher who is not an immigrant, e.g. white female. Therefore, they encourage teachers with strong accents who are not native English speakers to become ESL teachers. You see this all the time here in Fairfax County in the Washington suburbs. You often have ESL teachers with such thick accents you can barely understand them. In Virginia, you have a “multicultural” requirement for all ESL teachers in order to be certified. This is where they learn such “research.”
I had a coworker from Iran whose daughter was born in the U.S. They placed her daughter in ESL classes solely on her last name. Her daughter complained and she went to the school to meet an administrator and the ESL teacher who was from India. She demanded her child out of the classes and told them her daughter spoke better English than the teacher. They then informed her that ESL students learn better with teachers they can identify with, non native speakers of English. She told them point blank to get her daughter out of the class.
The education establishment is so out of touch. Linda Chavez has an organization dedicated to fighting bilingual education: http://www.ceousa.org/content/blogcategory/62/92/
Every immigrant up until recently had a strong desire to assimilate and become an integral part of the US. The road to assimilation begins with speaking the common language.
There should be NO bilingual programs; NONE. Those that do not know English can learn to speak it via classes offered by a community resource outside of school hours.
Bilingual education only encourages a continued separation of of a culture from that of the United States. We are wasting precious fiscal resources for something, that in the end, has a negative impact on the future of this country. It encourages the old “Jim Crow”-like environment by setting up a separate-but-equal dynamic that forms a barrier to equal protection.
Equal opportunity means just that - equality in the opportunities available. It does not mean nor does it justify any practice that, by its very nature, provides more resources to one group than another.
We need to get off of this track that is starting to treat US citizenship as an entitlement to the rest of the world. And the irony here is, right now, illegals in the US have greater rights than do US citizens. They receive financial benefits at both the federal and state level. They receive a free education in the public schoold that are primarily funded through the property taxes of US citizens. They receive in-state tuition breaks that Citizens of other states, who should be enjoying the same benefit under the full faith and credit standards of the Constitution, are denied. They receive free health care, the cost of which is borne by other patients or the state. They are appointed free interpreters in criminal cases, the cost of which are borne by each state. They are rarely prosecuted for social security fraud or identity theft. And, if Bush has his way, they would receive additional rights in serious felony cases.
Time to say ENOUGH!
By the way, do people who support these programs believe that spanish speaking children are not intelligent anough to master the English language?
How about “English as a First Language” class so they can learn it?
Bi-lingual education has been a failure from day one. What company could continue to throw money down a rat hole year after year with failure and stay in business. Only government can do that. It costs the government an average of $1,200 per month per student in public school. Contrast that with $600-$800 per month in a good private school. It is worth the sacrifice for your children to keep them away from the mess in public school.
Jim M,
Thank you for a well put take on this subject. I am with you 100%.
Jim M:
Correct.
Funny how my mother, the daughter of immigrants, was able to go to college, and then to teach English (when that actually meant something) for ~30 years, isn’t it?
… and should be abandoned as quickly as possible.
I should add, back in the dark ages, in the days before bilingual “education”.
Need a Spanish-Speaking Kindergarten Class - here’s a tip:
Go to Mexico - I hear they’re in abundance down there.
Jim M.
Perfect.
Can anyone say, “Racial Profiling?”
1. Legal immigrants still want to learn English and assimilate.
2. English shuld become “officially”, as in by law, our National language.
3. These kids should be learning English outside of and in addition to the regular school hours where classes should be conducted in English only.
4. Press “1″ for anything other than English … followed by “Have a nice day” and a dial tone.
Well, gee… Errors in placement would not occur if there was only one place to put the students… English-speaking classes.
Although some people now argue otherwise, children seem to have the greatest capacity for learning languages. It gets more difficult as we get older to pick up such things, we are set in our language patterns, pronunciations, etc.
I don’t understand why this wouldn’t be the most critical period to try to teach children English. And since these Latino children are perfectly capable of picking up the language now, why make them face the struggles of not be able to communicate in it later in life?
Come one people. Don’t you realize that the instant you receive any degree in education and become a certified teacher your knowledge and expertise become second only to the supreme deity of your choice.
Just ask any member of the NEA [Narcissistic Egos Association]
¿Dónde está el cuarto de baño?
As a one-year teacher in public school (after 9/11) I maintain that TOTAL IMMERSION is the only way to go. Kids’ brains are sponges for language.
My Swedish immigrant grandfather insisted that only English be spoken in the home - my mother went to adult school at age 50 to learn Swedish for her own enjoyment.
To put it in technical phraseology - ESL is bullcrap.
El cuarto de baño está afuera
Vote school vouchers! Vote school choice!
Obviously, Indhira and Rene Villaraldo should have pulled their young son from the tragically dangerous & inept government school, and ponied up thousands of dollars per year (just like the Frost’s!) for tuition at a private school. Or maybe enrolled the boy in the other government school system.
Oh, wait. There is no other govt. school system. Government schools are a MONOPOLY! And the parents couldn’t afford tuition at a private school because they, like millions of other tax payers, are required to fund government schools with NO RECOURSE if educational services are deficient or funds are mismanaged or if alternative schooling is desired.
There’s only one way to kill this goverment school monstrosity - STARVE IT TO DEATH. Remove the money to remove the academic fascists propping up this inept & dangerous system of deficient education & random violence. OUR KIDS DESERVE BETTER!
Vote school vouchers! Vote school choice!
Coming from a bi-lingual/tri-lingual family, I can tell you, this would be unacceptable in my family’s opinion.
Our family believed it was “rude” to speak any other language but English in #1 public or #2 in front of anyone else that did not speak the same language. Period.
At home was the only place we were allowed to speak spanish/italian. And when we had guests over that did not speak those languages, they were forbidden to be used. My mother simply would not respond to us if we did.
In public, my mother spoke English to us always(unless of course she was angry and didn’t want passers by to know she was telling us she was going to rip our arms off if we grabbed anymore candy and put it in the grocery cart at the store) tee hee.
I had absolutely no problems assimilating or understanding both languages when learning one at school and the other in the home. English is the primary language in the United States. We are doing a major disservice to these kids by giving them this crutch and deliberately separating /dividing them up and creating a scenario where they are viewed by themselves and the other children as “outsiders”. There will be devastating consequences if this is not put to an end.
feebiebabe
I totally agree with that approach … proud of the family history and proud to be American … the way it should be
Bingo. Personally, I find it pretty insulting coming from the background I do.
Walk slow and talk dumb, you have a DISABILITY and you are DIFFERENT…..(sarcasim off) It is complete Garbage!
feebiebabe -
I love your family’s policy. Kudos to your mother for her very wise parenting.
You’re right feebiebabe. But if we made them self-sufficient, where would that leave the Democratic party? They need an underclass and will literally spare no expense to create one. I think it galls me more than many things they waste money on, because handicapping a child is vile.
One generation up, our family was the same.
BTW, when you walk past the mom in the grocery store going off at her kids - no matter what the language - don’t you know exactly what she’s saying?
VERY proud to be an American. (A Californian…uh, I’d have t think about it!)
#31 - Ha, ha. Their faces are even scarier, those seem to transend all cultural and language barriers!
Where was the personal responsibility of the parents? Why weren’t they more involved in the education of their child? How was it possible that for nearly two years they had no idea that their child was in a class that was partially taught in Spanish?
My wife is an immigrant and English is her second language. She is attending an ESL class. There is a difference between the adult versions and the ones in the publix skules.
The adults who take these classes are rather militant about learning English and won’t put up with the manure that parents have to.
On a humorous note, a year ago my wife came in to class and saw a sign with what appeared to be Chinese writing on it. The teacher was standing there with a big smile. My wife couldn’t make hide nor hair out of it at first. Then the light came on, she went to the sign, and …wait for it…Turned it right side up!
The sign said Happy Chinese New Year, but her teacher had the sign up side down. My wife told me there was much mirth and merriment at her teachers expense that day in the class.
JohnFLob~
Don’t paint all teachers with that very broad, NEA brush. I am a newly certified teacher. Thankfully, I’m in a state in which teacher unions are not allowed by law (e.g. - it is unlawful for teachers to go on strike). There are professional organizations, at least one of which is “affiliated with” the NEA. I refuse to join that professional organization, because I don’t want any of my money going to fund the NEA, or teacher strikes in other states. One of the reasons I became a teacher is because I refuse to abandon public education to the left. Too many families are unable to either send their kids to private schools or to homeschool. Not every school/district does idiotic things like this.
On a side note, if I were to earn an ESL endorsement on my certification, most all districts would pay me an additional stipend, once I have a regular teaching job. In some schools, letters home to parents are printed in both English & Spanish (when I was student teaching, English on one side, Spanish on the other). Each child would get the same letters home from the school - if it is the same with the school in this article. There are those who would indoctricate you into the Multi-culti Utopia the left envisions - you just have to put up with that. I attended a couple of district training sessions this past weekend. One was on “diversity”. The facilitator was an African-American female. She preached that there is institutional racism in America. As an example, she pointed out how you’ll see billboards for things like Mad Dog 20/20 and malt liquor in “minority” neighborhoods, but not presumably non-minority neighborhoods. She said it’s disguised as “marketing”. I think she ignores that it’s more related to income level than race. People who live in wealthier areas aren’t typically the ones buying Mad Dog and malt liquor. People in poorer areas aren’t going out there buying Crown Royal and Grey Goose. You can’t adverise hard liquor on network TV. So, you try to reach your target market however you can. Billboards work in poor neighborhoods, or they wouldn’t be there. Billboards don’t work in wealthy ones (so marketers find other ways - like magazine advertising - to reach their target markets). Seems people on the left can make just about anything out to be racist, bigoted and prejudice…Us white folks just need to fix ourselves so we can all live in a kumbaya world of perfect harmony…
I have a friend who’se Cambodian. Because her school district needed to make sure that racial quotas she went to a different school every year. Now, as an adult, she has some difficulty establishing long-term relationships, like she was an Army brat. But she lived in the same town since her family escaped from Cambodia.
In American school systems children exist for the purpose of justifying funding for, politically empowering and acting as lab rats for the system.
The kids needs are irrelevant.
Resistance if futile.
They will be administrated.
@Miss Ladybug
Your refusal to join the NEA is irrelevant.
Resistance is futile.
You will all be administrated.
(Michelle needs to add a Borg emoticon)
The concept of ESL was co-opted by the bilingual education crowd. ESL has been around for decades as both adult education for non-English speakers and a branch of education that did NOT mean bilingual education. Now (at least in schools) it is a touchy-feely politically correct ideology that is rammed down the throats of unsuspecting students and parents even though it has been proven over and over again not to work. Immersion works … period.
The proponents and true believers of bilingual education can be complete idiots. I knew a bilingual ed teacher who married a Mexican and the last time I saw her she was getting ready to have her second kid. She told me she was going to speak only Spanish (as would the father) to her kids until they entered elementary school where they would learn English. I told her (nicely) that she was an idiot because all the research shows that among the various methods for raising bilingual children (e.g. one parent, one language – the method used in my home), her method was not going to do anything other than put her kids at a disadvantage since regardless of her ideology we did live in an English speaking country. Thankfully the people of our state voted out bilingual education a few years back and she wouldn’t be able to screw up other people’s children like she was doing to her own.
Miss Ladybug
I was trying to be sarcastic.
I know that teachers on the front line, so to speak, are dedicated and conscientious and perform to the best of their abilities with the available resources.
My dissatisfaction is with the national organization(s) and administrators.
JohnFLob~
Que cosa!
JohnFLob~
I can’t argue with you, there. At the beginning of my student teaching semester, we were required to attend several seminars - some very relevant to student teaching - but some were recruitment spiels for the professional organizations (you need to join one so you have the professional liability insurance). The one here affiliated with NEA bragged about its affiliation. It was just a huge turn-off for me. I’m pretty much anti-union all around. In my previous life in tech/software support, when training a new customer’s employees, I would sometimes come across the attitude of “well, that’s not MY job…” I’m like “well, SOMEBODY needs to do it”, but more often than not, if an employee did something that wasn’t EXPLICITLY part of their job, they could be disciplined (by who, I’m not sure) for doing it. I’m sorry, I have a problem with that. Also, when my best friend and her husband were living near KC, I went up to visit. Their next door neighbors were also a married couple, but with kids. The husband is an electrician and worked for a non-union shop. He worked regularly because his employer would win contracts. Union-shop electricians would very often be sitting at home because they were unbid, and as a result were bringing home less money than someone not part of the union. I don’t need anyone else deciding when and where and how I can go to work besides me and my employer.
Gracia par no hablar espanol.
I love the irony of that. And I get lots of interesting looks at the restaurants.
(Thank you for not speaking spanish).
Last year in Dallas a Federal judge heard a case where Preston Hollow Elementary School and its principal were found to be segregating classes by race to appease the white parents in the area. So just looking hispanic gets you in ESL. Judge ruled against the school and administrator. Something about Brown v. Board and the 14th. Hummmm……
Yeah, just like the teachers think kids have attention deficit disorder. My friend’s eight-year old daughter got caught up in that. The teacher wanted her to take pills, and so they took her to a counselor who said nothing was wrong with her. But, I guess an undergraduate degree in education makes you a know-it-all,
I really couldn’t believe this article, but you know, most Hispanics want English as the official language of the US.
SCooter56:
I don’t believe Brown v. Board was ever overturned.. It is just presumed to be a faulty decision and not used.
Now you’ve lost me, we are talking about this planet!
IMHO - the time spent by non-English speaking youngsters in Headstart and pre-school could be utilized to totally submerge them in learning enough English language skills to place them in regular classes starting in 1st grade. The need to feel part of the group will encourage those same children to learn and excel. We’ve thrown billions away trying to teach as many as 70 different languages in our publicly funded institutions. Any parent that speaks English and refuses to pass on those skills before their children start school should have to pay an additional fee/tax for their lack of insight. It’s a form of child abuse.
See how the socialist educrats are playing CYA? They’re saying Alek has a learning disability, so they couldn’t tell he spoke only english.
The only learning disability any student has is having to go to a public school.
“educators are not fully trained in distinquishing learning disabilitiesfrom limited English speaking skills”.Kind of says it all to me.
Does Mexico have bilingual education in their school system? I think not and of course university students can take English classes as an elective. I am bilingual but do not speak Spanish in front of non-Spanish speakers but most illegals seem not to want to learn English. They must feel that English won’t be used in a few years anyway.
Yes, but are the looks because your Spanish is so bad?
You think that’s bad…did ya here about the Maine school giving out birth control to middle school children???? Do you get the feeling that the world is spinning OUT OF CONTROL!!!
ESL experts are, clearly, shipdits.
Don Miguel said:
My bad espanol esta mucho better than their non-Ingles.
But that ‘par’ was a typo. I’ll wear my T-shirt anyway, and admit that my Spanish really sucks.
feebiebabe-
Nice family policy that you had, and I remember getting in trouble with the military because of a situation where a Sailors that didn’t understand English were having problems following basic directions in medical in taking their medications. When an HM would speak in their language they understood it fine.
Sadly thats dangerous when it at anytime a person could be put on a hose team to fight a fire, and if a person can’t understand English-then the teams in trouble if we had to evacuate a space quickly.
As an American working in a Spanish speaking country (Ecuador), I can tell you that surprisingly the tables are turning. In my daughters’ school and in most public and private schools here, English is the primary language taught starting in kindergarten.
I think an appropriate strategy for legal immigrants is a short term (1 semester) English immersion program but not years of ESL
This is disgusting, I went through a similar situation.
Billingual Education Half Empty
parent-teacher meetings, homework and other notices gave no sure sign to them that the 5-year-old spent part of school time learning alongside Spanish speakers with limited English proficiency.
It is unacceptable that the parents allowed this to take place. All that time without any interaction with their child about what happens during the school day??? That points to the biggest problem this country faces with our schools. Lack of parental involvement is killing us.
Yes, bilingual education is a mistake. Classes should only be titled and run as Road to English classes, with as little Spanish spoken as possible. But this example runs much like the recent SChip child shields; the example is part of the problem.
Here in Canada, parents can choose to put their children into French immersion classes. It’s believed that immersion is better than “Core French” for becoming bilingual.
Bizarrely, the school system seems to believe that the same is not true for immigrants. Immigrant children are removed from their classes for up to half of each school day and sent to another school (by taxi!) for ESL classes.