New immigrants, same old confounding issue
I’m fortunate to have Peter Schrag subbing for me today as an Educated Guest. Peter is the former editorial page editor and columnist of the Sacramento Bee. He is the author of “Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future” and “California: America’s High Stakes Experiment.” His new book, just out, is “Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism, Eugenics, Immigration.“
By Peter SchragGuest columnist
Last month’s report charging California schools with failing to educate English language learners is hardly the first such indictment. And given all the other crises confronting the schools and the state, it won’t get nearly the official attention it deserves.
But in its condemnation of the system for its fumbling, its lack of data, its inconsistency and confusion in pedagogical strategies and its outright neglect of immigrant children – and often the U.S.-born children of immigrants as well – it evokes eerie echoes of a long history of battles about the education of immigrants from colonial days to the current gubernatorial campaign of California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.
Does bilingual education work and if so, under what circumstances? Does English immersion? What other means are available? Are children from certain cultures or “races” simply less able to keep up? Or, as Poizner urged, and as a majority of Californians believed when they voted for Proposition 187 in 1994, should we just exclude illegal immigrants from the schools altogether? (Read more and comment on this post)
Let the common-core debate begin
Posted in Common Core standardsThe drafters of the common-core state standards released their final versionWednesday with fanfare and the endorsement of a slew of educators and political leaders in Atlanta. The debate now shifts to state capitals, including Sacramento, where the question that must be answered in two months can be reframed: Is what’s good for the nation – K-12 academic standards in math and English language arts that are more demanding than most states now have – also good for California?
