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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (23344)	7/8/1998 2:22:00 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

Penni, my understanding is that the only reason bilingual programs are any more expensive than non-bilingual programs is that there is such a large percentage of California students--one quarter--who need them that the school districts have had to pay some additional premium to recruit the large number of teachers quickly. I would doubt that this group of teachers, many of whom are not even credentialed and are teaching on something of an emergency basis, are highly politically organized. When you consider cost, certainly English immersion programs for four-year-olds are going to add another entire school year for a quarter of our students, and that would be much more expensive. So I don't think we have all of the facts about cost, or a complete understanding of what special interests would be advocating this. I agree that statistics can be slanted in almost any direction. Regarding these particular ones, all I can say is that they surprised almost everyone. On background, the state of California has ordered every school district to give standardized achievement tests to all students, including the ones who do not speak English, even though the tests are only given in English. The San Francisco school district, which is fairly rebellious, has refused to do that, and is being sued by the state, as I understand it. That is the underlying controversy, and why some districts are publishing test scores and some are not. The results which were published in the paper definitely do not represent any particular group of high achievers--for example college bound students taking the SAT tests. They represent all students in all classrooms in a particular school district. So while you would expect the students who were still in bilingual programs and do not have good English skills to do poorly on the test, most people would expect native English speaking children to do better than students who had completed bilingual programs and now speak English in addition to their native language. Instead, they scored higher than native English speaking children. Certainly, most of the criticism about bilingual education is that it lacks quality. If bilingual graduates are doing that well, that argument is weakened somewhat. Perhaps some explanation will be forthcoming explaining these strange and unexpected results. I will keep you posted!