The Debate Over Bilingual Education In California
Alice Callaghan has spent decades working with mostly Mexican and Guatemalan families out of a tiny office near Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. It doubles as a school for a few dozen 4- and 5-year-olds.
After the Pledge of Allegiance, children scamper to their seats to work on phonics exercises, blended words, vocabulary and reciting classroom rules. Not a word in Spanish is spoken, heard or written on the posters and word puzzles hanging on the walls, and many of the children's names have been anglicized.
It's been nearly two decades since California imposed significant restrictions on bilingual education and mandated English-only instruction for the state's 1.4 million English-language learners (ELLs). But on this year's ballot, Proposition 58 will give voters a chance to lift those restrictions and make it easier for parents to choose.
Proponents of bilingual instruction say the change is long overdue, but opponents are convinced it will be a huge mistake.
Here in downtown Los Angeles, Callaghan — a former nun and self-described liberal — is proud to call this an English-only school.
Morgan Walker for NPR
"Almost all of our children are at the beginning level," she says. "When they leave first grade, they're at the advanced level."
Callaghan and critics of bilingual instruction say it delays kids' ability to read, write and speak proper English.
"Think about it," she says. "Our children live in Spanish-speaking families, Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, and listen to Spanish television when they're home. If school refuses to teach them English, where are they going to learn it? They're not going to go to college if they don't have academic English down well."
This criticism was widespread in 1998, the year that 61 percent of voters passed Proposition 227, which required parents to sign a waiver if they wanted to keep their children in a bilingual classroom. Without a waiver, ELLs were automatically placed in English-only classes.
Morgan Walker for NPR
Callaghan was a key figure in that campaign against bilingual education in 1996. Now she worries that if Proposition 58 passes, schools in California will return to Spanish as the language of instruction for children who desperately need to master English first.
Ricardo Lara says this is an absolute distortion. He's a state senator from the Los Angeles area and the author of Proposition 58.
"I believe the English-only approach has failed a large portion of our students," Lara says. "In California, one of The Debate Over Bilingual Education In California : NPR Ed : NPR:
