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Inclusion or Exclusion? The ESL Education Debate

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Inclusion or Exclusion? The ESL Education Debate

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This article emphasizes the well-known debate of ESL Education. Are English-Only classrooms actually considered inclusive or exclusive?

This article speaks about how ESL students need additional resources and support to adjust to the various linguistic complications of learning a new language. California is one of the many states implementing the “full inclusion” classroom approach, requiring that all public schools instruct classes solely in English or Proposition 227.

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Learn about the current debate facing ESL education. Specifically, should ESL students be completly immersed in full-English classrooms, or should they receive targeted support in learning the English language?

With classrooms become more diverse, public schools are experimenting with new language programs to enhance ESL student learning.

ESL students, standing for English as a Second Language, typically need additional resources and support to adjust to the various linguistic complications of learning a new language. As a result, ESL students typically require additional funding.

However, as public schools are coping with reduced funding due to the economic recession, educational experts are debating the best approach to balancing school budgets while caring for each child's language development. In an effort to save costs, some schools and states have created mandatory full inclusion programs, where ESL students are immersed in a regular paced English class, with students who are fluent in English. This strategy will reduce the costs of ESL specialists while still engaging ESL students in an atmosphere for learning.

While this approach certainly helps balance school budgets, many educators and parents argue that the full inclusion classroom is ineffective for both fluent and ESL children.

Public Schools and ESL Programs

As The Multicultural Education Journal explains, the 2001 national mandate, No Child Left Behind, required that all public schools help ESL students become English proficient, as both fluent and ESL students are mandated to meet State and National achievement standards. While public schools are legally required to provide educational support for ESL kids, many experts assert that the current approach is both ineffective and flawed. As the number of minority students is rising each year in the United States, experts predict that by the year 2020, at least 50 percent of school-age children will be of non-English speaking backgrounds. With the current and rising statistic of non-English speaking students in public schools, leaders assert that all schools must take a more active approach to protecting the instructional support for these non-English speaking students.

Furthermore, as Inside Higher Education supports, "'During turbulent economic times, educational programs that serve culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse student populations may be at a disadvantage when competing for reduced funding with programs that serve conventional, mainstream student populations.'" As many schools are forced to lay off teachers, enlarge class sizes, and distribute more responsibilities among the current school staff, many educators fear that the ESL students will be left behind.

For example, California is one of the many states implementing the "full inclusion" classroom approach, requiring that all public schools instruct classes solely in English. This approach, titled Proposition 227, provides ESL kids with $50 million each year for additional English tutoring support; however, these students are forced to engage in fluent English classes, even if they have never been exposed to the language before. This proposition, like many full inclusion programs, is not solely designed to save school budgets; moreover, all of the propositions for full inclusion have the backing of experts who assert that the best way to attain language fluency is through inclusion instructional methods. While full inclusion has research and studies to support its incentives, many leaders still argue that there are better ways to teach both ESL and English speaking students through non-inclusion practices.

Is Inclusion the Best Approach?

One of the biggest arguments against full English inclusion classrooms is revealed through the studies that assert ESL students adopt fluency more rapidly when engaging in specialized language support programs.

In addition to the argument that specialized support helps to increase ESL student learning, many educators and parents argue that the additional ESL support helps to maintain the challenging environment of a fluent classroom. Specifically, as a regular paced English class is designed to instruct students who are of an "average" English speaking proficiency, immersing non-English speaking students in such classes often forces teachers to slow down the pace of instruction, making the overall challenge of the classless rigorous for English speaking students.

For example, when a teacher in a regular paced history class assigns a research essay on a specific topic, that teacher must strive to accommodate his or her instruction and support to all students with needs-including language, learning, and cognition needs of both ESL and fluent students. Subsequently, as students work through their research papers, a single teacher's ability to support each child becomes more challenging. The more children and special needs there are in each class, the less specialized support a single teacher is able to offer each of the individual students.

While various experts fear that inclusion programs diminish the educational opportunities for both fluent and ESL students, many leaders and parents disagree. According to Education Week, while support programs are in many ways essential for ESL children and families, many believe that separate setting instructional methods, which involve separating ESL children from fully fluent classrooms for the entire or partial class period, inappropriately create an environment of segregation.

In fact, as Education Week reveals, many new ESL programs are currently being evaluated by protestors who assert that the separate setting methods are a violation of the federal civil right's laws. As public schools are required to provide equal educational opportunities for all students, some believe that these programs only stimulate increased cultural bias as they do not provide opportunities for students of various and diverse backgrounds to interact. Some protest, "Special-education and E.S.L. programs have undoubtedly made substantial progress... But it is time now to move beyond unequal separate systems to integrated ones where all students have access to all the services necessary for their success."

Overall, while the debate wages on, schools will be forced to make serious budgetary and educationally driven questions regarding how to protect the needs of all students to ensure that neither ESL nor fluent students are left behind.

Questions? Contact us on Facebook @publiccollegereviews.

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Inclusion or Exclusion? The ESL Education Debate | PublicSchoolReview.com

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Learn about the current debate facing ESL education. Specifically, should ESL students be completly immersed in full-English classrooms, or should they receive targeted support in learning the English language? With classrooms become more diverse, public schools are experimenting with new language programs to enhance ESL student learning.

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English-Only Instruction in Public Schools

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English-Only Instruction in Public Schools

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Should public schools in the U.S. teach only in English? This source highlights the English-Only instruction debate. In particular, the source magnifies the English-Only education laws in various states in the Untied States.

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It's a debate that touches on cultural, economic, and educational issues. Should public schools in the U.S. teach only in English? Does such a requirement improve English learning and help children from different backgrounds intermingle? Does English-only instruction help students who are recent immigrants to be better prepared for college or employment? Or, might such policies slow the rate of English learning or even erode a student's sense of heritage?

These are complex questions that have no easy answers. This article provides a short overview of the English-only public school debate and focuses on current laws and policies. Information for consulting a lawyer is also provided below.

Visit FindLaw's School Curriculum Basics section for additional articles and resources.
The Debate over English-Only Instruction
Supporters of English-only laws argue that by allowing English-learning students to study in bilingual education programs, well-meaning schools actually do these students a disservice. The reasoning is that bilingual education programs inhibit their students' ability to learn English by allowing them to rely on their native languages in class. Proponents of English-only laws also argue that by requiring all students to learn and speak in one language, children are more likely to intermingle with each other, leading to well-rounded perspectives.

Opponents argue that it's inconclusive whether English-only instruction helps students to learn English more effectively than bilingual education programs. Supporters of bilingual programs believe that the programs meet the critical need of immigrant students for basic English instruction, and supporters further argue that putting students who speak little to no English into classes with native speakers only leads to mutual frustration. Some people question whether English-only instruction may lead some immigrant students to feel a loss of heritage.
English as the Official Language
While the federal government does not recognize an official language, roughly 30 states have passed laws designating English as the official language. A few states have gone further by requiring their public schools to teach only in English.
English-only Education Laws
The federal government sets education standards and goals through laws such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and it occasionally uses the threat of reduced funding to compel states to comply. However, education policy and curriculum is set at the state and local level.

Only a few states have passed English-only education laws, although there have been failed efforts in other states. For example, in 1998, California voters enacted a proposition that requires the state's schools to teach only in English and to stop providing bilingual education programs, subject to certain exceptions. Although test scores of English-learning students rose after the proposition was passed, a report submitted to the California Department of Education after five years of review stated that there was no conclusive proof that English-only instruction was the cause of the rising scores. In 2014, California's legislature passed a law to end the state's experiment with English-only instruction (schedule to take effect in 2017).

Other states that have also passed English-only education laws include Arizona in 2000 and Massachusetts in 2002. However, Colorado voters rejected an English-instruction initiative in 2006, as did Oregon voters in 2008.

Note that while English-only laws have similar purposes, there are important differences in their scope and exceptions. For example, California's law (as mentioned, amendments will take effect in 2017 that end the English-only requirement) contains vague wording that some school districts interpreted as providing wide leeway to continue bilingual education classes. California's law also provides various waivers for parents who want their child to learn in a bilingual environment. On the other hand, Arizona's law is much tighter, stating that English is the language for public school instruction and containing a provision that allows school districts to deny waiver requests for bilingual instruction, without explanation.
Consulting With an Attorney
If you live in a state that has passed or is considering passing an English-only instruction law, an attorney can help you to understand the law or bill's application and how it may affect your child. For example, an attorney can explain your options if you want your child to receive instruction in a second language, and he or she can help you to prepare a waiver petition. You can consult with an attorney who specializes in education law through FindLaw.

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English-Only Instruction in Public Schools - FindLaw

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It's a debate that touches on cultural, economic, and educational issues. Should public schools in the U.S. teach only in English? Does such a requirement improve English learning and help children from different backgrounds intermingle? Does English-only instruction help students who are recent immigrants to be better prepared for college or employment?

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This resource expresses the efforts to teach ELL students in their native languages are gaining attention. If there’s a disconnect between students’ home identities and what’s promoted by the school, students are more likely to disconnect, disinvest, and experience educational failure.

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Today, more California students are learning the three Rs in their native languages, aided by a provision that allows public schools to bypass Proposition 227 if parents sign a waiver. According to the state Department of Education, some 50,000 California children are receiving dual instruction in English and another language, including Armenian, German, Mandarin, French, and Korean. This is a small but growing segment of California's 1.4 million English learners. The National Association for Bilingual Education estimated in 2011 there were 2,000 dual-language programs in U.S. schools, a tenfold increase over the prior decade.

Beyond the politics are parents seeking a quality education for their children and the real-life costs of English-only education. The goals of dual-language are closely related and intertwined-better teaching models for non-English speakers, fostering cross-cultural understanding, and in special settings reclaiming disappearing Native American languages-and the approach is earning praise.

With this growing momentum, schools like Camino Nuevo Charter Academy in Los Angeles are embracing the cultural and cognitive value of dual-language courses. As a charter school, Camino Nuevo is exempt from California's requirement for exclusive English education, allowing it to offer dual-language instruction in Spanish and English from kindergarten through fifth grade. The curriculum, which emphasizes culturally relevant literature, is showing signs of success. Rachel Hazlehurst, the academy's literacy and language specialist, sees an obvious link between celebrating children's ethnic roots and school performance.

"Students need to see themselves in the school in order to excel academically," she says. "If there's a disconnect between students' home identities ... and what's promoted by the school, students are more likely to disconnect, disinvest, and experience educational failure." The situation is worsened, Hazlehurst stresses, when the first language isn't taught, hindering a child's ability to communicate. "[When] children lose their home language skills, we as educators have a serious problem ... fractured communities are created when families can no longer [talk] on a deep level about issues that matter."

While underscoring the importance of bilingual programs, Hazlehurst also acknowledges a perennial challenge: the shortage of qualified bilingual teachers. Teachers certified to lead a bilingual classroom are scarce and those with experience teaching in a bilingual program are rarer. With bilingualism's rising popularity and myriad gains-from stronger critical thinking skills to higher lifetime earnings-many school districts around the country are finding it hard to keep pace with rising demand.

New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., looked at communities that are revamping how they serve language learners and found that even well-designed, well-resourced efforts can suffer from hiring woes. In San Antonio, Texas, one of the cities profiled, planning and executing a dual-language effort is complicated by the supply of available teachers, with the analysis concluding, "Districts seeking to shift to a dual immersion model need to begin with a human capital strategy."

These challenges take on a special twist with Native American language-immersion programs, which blend the language, culture, and traditions of indigenous peoples in dual instruction. Decades of research show documented results for indigenous-language immersion-including significant gains in achievement, family involvement, and community pride-for a population of students with dismal education outcomes. America's assimilation policy of educating Native American children which was enforced through oppressive boarding schools that stripped them of their tribal languages, cultures, and beliefs means many Native languages are now lost or endangered. Last month, the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education published a report calling on states and communities to "help ensure the preservation and revitalization of Native languages," emphasizing the "healing for students [that] can begin to address a history of exclusion that began with mission and boarding schools and continues today." A Native American youth's excerpt is profound:

"I would like to bring languages into our schools-our Native languages and many more; it spreads our language around. Our languages are dying. One Native language just died away because the last man who spoke it died."

Charitie Ropati (Yup'ik), Student Anchorage Listening Session

Teresa L. McCarty, a professor of education and anthropology at UCLA and prominent scholar on Indigenous language planning and policy, says the centuries-long history of punishment in government schools for speaking tribal languages continues to pose fundamental challenges, such as the lack of Native-speaking teachers for Native-language immersion. "Often the teachers in these programs are second-language learners themselves, so not only does a novice teacher need to learn a unique pedagogy and curriculum, she also must master the language to a high level such that she can teach math, science, social studies, language arts [and other subjects] through the Indigenous language," McCarty explained. "If you have ever seen English taught in Navajo, or Japanese taught in Hawaiian, you gain a profound appreciation for the level of knowledge and skill possessed by these teachers."

Additionally, Native teachers must scramble for appropriate learning tools: "There is nothing ... in the way of books and other teaching materials comparable to what is available for mainstream English programs, or even Spanish-English bilingual education programs. This means that teachers spend a lot of time adapting and creating their own materials, including language and content-area assessments. All of this takes an enormous commitment of time (as in many years), dedication to program goals, and human and material resources," McCarty said.

Federal legislation now working its way through Congress would provide $5 million in grants annually for five years to tribes, tribal organizations, public schools, and other entities to establish Native-language immersion classes from preschool through college-a much-needed infusion of funds to educate Native learners. "Cultural knowledge and pride are important in all children's cognitive and social development," McCarty said, adding that self-esteem and self-efficacy are "key factors long known to support academic engagement and success in school and life."

This fact helps explain why some of the strongest proponents of dual-language programs are youth themselves, whether current or former students who grasp the urgent need to reclaim their identity, culture, and history as part of their education.

"We Native people are not trying to go back to 'old ways,'" the musician Tonya Hill Yapavi, a native of Yuma, Arizona, and member of the O'dam Nation, recently tweeted. "We went backwards when we assimilated. We are trying to go forward in our ways again."

This article is part of our Next America: Higher Education project, which is supported by grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Melinda D. Anderson is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and is based in Washington, D.C.

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Today, more California students are learning the three Rs in their native languages, aided by a provision that allows public schools to bypass Proposition 227 if parents sign a waiver. According to the state Department of Education, some 50,000 California children are receiving dual instruction in English and another language, including Armenian, German, Mandarin, French, and Korean.

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The Dangers of "English-Only" Policies in School

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The Dangers of "English-Only" Policies in School

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This blog speaks of how the English-Only policies are often insisted upon in class, especially in Inner Circle countries where immigrant and migrant families and students are often relocated. This blog post talks about English-Only policies in these contexts.

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English-only policies are often insisted upon in class, especially in Inner Circle countries (the USA, Canada, Australia, the U.K.) where immigrant and migrant families and students are often relocated. This blog post talks about English-only policies in these contexts (i.e. not in Japan or Korea, where the exposure to English speakers is minimal).
If you want a quick intro to Inner Circle countries, check out this post.

A Bit of Background
The history of English-only policies in schools
has, you guessed it, a racist origin:

"In 1998, Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley millionaire set out to abolish bilingual education in California. Fueled by an anti-immigrant climate , Unz spearheaded a statewide campaign for Proposition 227, a highly controversial state initiative that required schools to teach language-minority students almost entirely in English. The ballot measure passed with 61 percent of the vote and made California the first state to prohibit bilingual programs in schools, radically altering the education of hundreds of thousands of children. Now almost 17 years later, while the political tensions remain, a reversal is underway, powered largely by findings that bilingual instruction is what's best for English language learners " (Anderson, 2015).

The ''monolingual tenet'' (Danping, 2015) describes the discriminatory practice of English only in the classroom. Many teachers, missionaries, and administrators have overtly and unconsciously reinforced this approach. For example, some teachers ban students' mother tongues, some extremely problematic English classes ''rename'' students, some teachers even enact penalty systems.

In fact, an ESL teacher was reported as saying to a class that, ''This is an English-only classroom. If you speak Spanish or Cantonese or Mandarin or Vietnamese or Russian or Farsi, you will have to pay me 25 cents. I can get rich'' (Weinberg, 1990). Gross.

This seems unconscionable for many of us, but penalty systems, mockery, warnings, and regulations are often (and up until recently occurred ubiquitously) used in language policies, teaching guides, and actual classrooms.

Not only are English-only policies wrong for a number of ethical reasons that impede learning and wellbeing, which we will address in a moment, but they are also incompatible with learning from a cognitive standpoint. We know- from neurocognitive, social constructivist, constructivist, etc., teaching models- that curriculum content should be drawn from participants' lives, a process that invites reflection on one's lived experiences. Redesigning curricula using students' full linguistic repertoire (or translanguaging) is one way to do this. A monolingual approach denies students' their human right to draw on language resources. It also excludes deep reflection and forces students to use a childlike level of speaking (and subsequently thinking).

The truth is that students are constantly making cross-cultural and cross-linguistic connections between languages, so why not support them in that endeavor and help strength their understanding of language and the world?

How will students practice English if they are allowed to speak their L1s in class?

I get this question a lot when I bring up this issue. Some teachers (myself included at first) conflate English-only policies with immersion learning. However, true immersion learning doesn't negate or erase one's first language, as immersion programs are "planned forms of bilingual education" (Cummins, 2009).

In contrast, English-only policies in places like the States are often used to promote English as an ideal (colonization) and to force assimilation (another major issue with language education. Check out more about the issue in tis post).

Contemporary supporters of English-only laws argue that students won't learn English if they are allowed to speak their native languages in class (Education.FindLaw.com) and that students are more likely to intermingle with one another if they speak the same language.

There are numerous flaws in this approach though.

1. Bilingualism is the norm globally, with 2 out of 3 people speaking more than one language. As the majority of people in the world presumably have amicable relationships, speaking more than one language does not impede social lives.

2.) Learning in one's native tongue has been proven to be more effective for the student.

3.) Intermingling is important to social, academic and emotional learning! We learn socially, why would we want to hinder students' abilities to work together?

These flaws still do not address the real danger that English-only policies pose, namely that:

English-only policies linguistically, ethically , and psychologically undermine the language learning process for ESL students.

Psychologically,

identity is supported by one's culture and language (Edwards, 2012). And social stigmas that denigrate these affect how students develop socially and emotionally. Sadly, refugees and immigrants often experience culture shock during and after migration. Not only is culture shock psychologically damaging, but it can also lead to segregation, deculturation, alienation, loss of cultural identity, and eventually, ethnocide:

"Contact between the immigrant, or minority, community with the dominant or host community may lead to assimilation, rejection, integration or deculturation. Rejection, in which the individual or minority group withdraws from the majority group, can lead to apartheid or segregation... Deculturation, in which the individual or minority group experiences a loss of cultural identity, alienation and acculturative stress, can lead to ethnocide"
(Bhugra & Becker, 2005, paragraph 19).

Linguistically,

there is overwhelming evidence that shows that "students who learn to read in their mother tongue also learn to read in a second / foreign language more quickly than do those who initially are taught to read in a second / foreign language" (King & Benson, pp. 345). This is echoed in UNESCO's mandate for linguistic human rights, which avers that every student has a right to learn in their native language and in the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (EEOA). We can clearly see how ethically, English-only policies violate linguistic human rights.

"I would like to bring languages into our schools-our Native languages and many more; it spreads our language around. Our languages are dying. One Native language just died away because the last man who spoke it died. "

- Charitie Ropati (Yup'ik), Student Anchorage Listening Session

To look at just one of the many minoritized groups that have been impacted by unethical English practices (in addition to genocide and egregious human rights violations), Anderson (2015) writes about the ways that English-only policies have denigrated Indigenous peoples in the States, and why dual language / true immersion programs is so important:

Decades of research show documented results for indigenous-language immersion-including significant gains in achievement, family involvement, and community pride-for a population of students with dismal education outcomes . America's assimilation policy of educating Native American children which was enforced through oppressive boarding schools that stripped them of their tribal languages, cultures, and beliefs means many Native languages are now lost or endangered. Last month, the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education calling on states and communities to "help ensure the preservation and revitalization of Native languages," emphasizing the "healing for students [that] can begin to address a history of exclusion that began with mission and boarding schools and continues today." ...
Teresa L. McCarty, a professor of education and anthropology at UCLA ... says the centuries-long history of punishment in government schools for speaking tribal languages continues to pose fundamental challenges, such as the lack of Native-speaking teachers for Native-language immersion.
(Anderson, 2015)

Even beyond the unethics at work where English-only polices are concerned, English-only policies in Inner Circle countries have not even been successful.

"It's been 12 years since the passage of Proposition 227 in California, which severely restricted bilingual instruction in the state's public schools, 10 years in Arizona, and 8 in Massachusetts, where similar initiatives were passed. This is now enough time to judge these policies on their merits, with longitudinal data on students who have been the recipients of the instruction they legislated. The jury is now in and the verdict is that these policies have failed to deliver on their promise"(Gándara cited in Wyer, n.d.).

Instead, dual-language programs have been shown to have numerous positive, long-term benefits for both monolingual and ESL students. Dual language instruction has been linked to stronger literacy skills , narrowing of achievement gaps , and higher graduation rates . (Anderson, 2015). For monolingual children, "a Michigan State University study of Texas elementary students in 2013 found "a substantial spillover effect"-higher math and reading scores-for children from English-only homes who were enrolled in schools with bilingual education programs" (Anderson, par. 2, 2015).

Likewise, the 1991 Immersion Study found that "there was sufficient evidence to conclude that the transitional bilingual program offered in the kindergarten to first grade had resulted in superior reading outcomes over the English-immersion program." ( Gándara , 2012)

It is not often possible for speakers of students' first languages to be students' teachers in every public school, nor is it currently feasible to expect all ESL teachers to be bilingual. While globally, we can't fully meet UNESCO's policy,

we can teach ESL/efl ethically to students.

This doesn't mean that we can't encourage students to speak English in class- that's why they're here! But the methodology and meaning behind why and how we teach ESL is the fulcrum for change. Understanding and applying elements of students' cultures to lesson content can help students feel comfortable and supported in the classroom, which can help them feel more willing to express themselves.

For example: bringing in community members who are minority language speakers and centering them as teachers can show students that their cultures and languages are valued in the dominate society.

Respecting students' first languages is also important. A "word of the day" board, where different words in all of the students' languages are cycled and featured can have a tremendous impact on student moral and encouraging cross-cultural communication.

Implementing bilingual programs will also help all students, not only ESL students. Read more about these programs . Using bilingualism as advocacy is a great way to help students learn English. By showing students that they can use their language tools to write about and talk about their families and first languages / cultures, we can help empower them.

If you are monolingual and don't speak your students' languages or know any greetings, asking your students in private to teach you some of their language, if they are comfortable doing so, is another great way to help bridge language and cultural gaps. Watching YouTube readings of bilingual books in class, featuring bilingual books and walls in your library, and encouraging students to help one another in their first languages also help promote bilingualism and discourages the negative and harmful effects of English-only policies.

Being aware of your own culture is necessary, too. How does your culture view second language speakers? How does your culture center students? Are there conflicts between your students' cultures and the dominate one's? If so, how can they be alleviated? Read this amazing paper for suggestions on how to answer these questions, or download the Ethical ESOL Bias Checklist to help you identify your own areas of improvement.

These small yet easy-to-implement methods for practicing sociolingustic knowledge of our students' first cultures and languages can help combat English-only policies that are in place in the U.S. and elsewhere, as well as English-only ideals prevalent in Inner Circle countries. Ending restrictive language policies is critical, but as Daniel Losen, a senior education law and policy associate with the Civil Rights Project at UCLA , points out, it is "just one of several needed steps to improve educational outcomes for English learners.''

Edwards, J. (2012). Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity. London: Continuum.

Gándara, P. (2018, July 23). The Impact of English-Only Instructional Policies on English Learners. Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/impact-english-only-instructional-policies-english-learners Greenfield, P. M., Trumbull, E., Rothstein-Fisch, C. (n.d.). Bridging Cultures in Our Schools: New Approaches That Work: Knowledge Brief [Scholarly project]. In WestEd.org. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https://www.wested.org/resources/bridging-cultures-in-our-schools-new-approaches-that-work-knowledge-brief/

McKay, S., Rubdy, R. (2009). The Social and Sociolinguistic Contexts of Language Learning and Teaching. Doughty, C., Long, M. (2009). The Handbook of Language Teaching (pp. 9-25). Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell.

The Civil Rights Project at UCLA. (n.d.). English-Only Policies in Public Schools Found to Fail Legal Experts and Scholars Examine English Language Education in CA, AZ, and MA[Press release]. Retrieved May 7, 2019, from https://sudikoff.gseis.ucla.edu/archive/pdfs/language/PR_Gandara_ForbiddenLanguage.pdf#search='english only policies in school'

Shvidko, E. (2017). Learners' Attitudes Toward "English-Only" Institutional Policies: Language Use Outside the Classroom. The Canada Journal,34(2), 25-48. Retrieved May 7, 2019, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1170951.pdf#search='english only policies in school'.

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The Dangers of "English-Only" Policies (for ESL students) in School - Ethical ESOL

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English-only policies are often insisted upon in class, especially in Inner Circle countries (the USA, Canada, Australia, the U.K.) where immigrant and migrant families and students are often relocated. This blog post talks about English-only policies in these contexts (i.e. not

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English-Only Movement: Its Consequences on the Education of Language Minority Children

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English-Only Movement: Its Consequences on the Education of Language Minority Children

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This Digest examines the dramatical influences that English-Only instruction impacts the life of language minority children, their families, and educators working with them.

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ERIC Identifier: Publication Date: Author: Source:

English-Only Movement: Its Consequences on the Education of Language Minority Children. ERIC Digest.

The education of children from disadvantaged groups has been frequently a topic of political debate. The current English-Only movement, which advocates that English be the official and only language used in the United States, dramatically influences the life of language minority children, their families, and educators working with them. In this Digest, we will first examine the ideologies undergirding the English-Only movement, then review the consequences of imposing this legislation on the language minority population. A summary of research findings on the importance of mother tongue maintenance among language minority children will then be presented, and we conclude by exploring the implications of the movement on equality and equity education for all children.

IDEOLOGY UNDERLYING THE ENGLISH-ONLY MOVEMENT

The advisability of legislation mandating an official language policy is hardly a new issue, but one that has been debated throughout the history of this country. Crawford (1992) in his book, Language Loyalties, summarizes the opposing views on this topic, as follows:

"For supporters, the case is obvious: English has always been our common language, a means of resolving conflicts in a nation of diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Reaffirming the preeminence of English means reaffirming a unifying force in American life. Moreover, English is an essential tool of social mobility and economic advancement. The English Language Amendment would "send a message" to immigrants, encouraging them to join in rather than remain apart, and to government, cautioning against policies which could retard English acquisition.

"For opponents, Official English is synonymous with English Only: a mean-spirited attempt to coerce Anglo-conformity by terminating essential services in other languages. The amendment poses a threat to civil rights, educational opportunities and free speech, even in the private sector. It is an insult to the heritage of cultural minorities, including groups whose roots in this country go deeper than English speakers--Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and American Indians. Worst of all, the English-Only movement serves to justify racist and nativist biases under the cover of American patriotism (Crawford, 1992, p. 2-3).

IMPACT OF ENGLISH ONLY ON ACADEMIC AND SOCIAL LEARNING

The opportunity to use their mother tongue affects the educational and cognitive development of language minority children. Like native English speakers, language minority children go to school with many well-developed skills in their first language (L1). These children are also able to use their L1 for culturally appropriate activities in various contexts with different participants and topics. These skills constitute the bridge which connects L1 with the learning of English (Ollia & Mayfield, 1992). Edelsky (1986) maintains that once a firm base has been founded in language minority children's native languages, they are willing to explore and find out how a new language works. These children can also apply their background knowledge in their L1 to make sense of the unfamiliar, to create their own English written text, and to read English materials written by others. Even when the written form of the L1 and English - such as the Chinese characters and the English alphabet - are distinctly different, the children are still able to apply the visual, linguistic, and cognitive strategies used in their L1 to reading and writing in English (Freeman & Freeman, 1992). These essential resources are made unavailable, however, when children are thrown into an English-Only situation where they are expected to learn unfamiliar content in an unfamiliar language. Without the bridge provided by their L1, their chances of achieving academic success may be severely reduced.

The enactment of English-Only legislation in many states not only threatens to inhibit the academic advancement of many language minority children, but also deprives these children of the many social advantages resulting from using their mother tongue. Researchers (Wong-Fillmore, 1991b; Gibson, 1998) have maintained that the consequences of losing a mother tongue for language minority children are often extensive and severe. Wong-Fillmore explains that in homes where parents do not communicate with children in the mother tongue, family communication may deteriorate. Where parents and children do not share a common language, communication is often limited to the basic necessities, preventing parents from transmitting to their children the complex set of values, beliefs, wisdom, and understanding which provide the foundation for their children's learning and development (Wong-Fillmore, 1991a).

Wong-Fillmore also noted a quick shift in language use in home and at school among language minority children, especially the younger ones, in the United States. She argues that children lose their mother tongue at a far higher rate than they learn their second language (Wong-Fillmore, 1998); this phenomenon, she further explains, is one in which "learning a second language means losing the first one" (Wong-Fillmore, 1991b). In an immersion program, where English is the only instructional language, the children are at a greater risk of losing their mother tongue before they have fully mastered their second language. As education in the United States has traditionally been verbocentric (Leland & Harste, 1994), with language as the dominant way of learning and teaching, the limited language skills these children possess, either in their mother tongue or a second language, are unable to support their learning.

IMPACT OF ENGLISH ONLY ON EQUALITY IN EDUCATION

Recent political debates, such as that over Proposition 227 in California, have highlighted the issue of equality in education. Equal education, which pertains to the provision of the same educational opportunities for all children regardless of their backgrounds, would make English the sole instructional language for every child. Proponents of an equal education agenda, however, often overlook its ramifications on language minority children. While the federal government has never imposed legislation mandating an official language, many states have adopted various forms of Official English legislation (for more information, please visit the website at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jwcrawford/langleg.htm#Stat e) and have mandated that English be the only instructional language used in public schools. Ironically, this type of instruction not only makes it difficult for language minority children to receive meaningful education, but may also be detrimental to their familial and social integration. Consequently, in the 1974 case of Lau v. Nichols, the Supreme Court ruled that: "there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education" (U.S. Supreme Court, 414 U.S. 563). Although state-imposed standards have never been declared unconstitutional, since the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling, public school systems have had a legal responsibility to provide appropriate instructional programs - either bilingual or English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) - to meet the needs of language minority children. However, the effectiveness of such efforts remains to be seen.

THE CHALLENGE

When a school reinforces an English-Only policy, it sends a message to all children that minority languages have less value than English as tools of learning. And because the school is a microcosm of society, this message also suggests that those languages are not an integral part of the American society. This message equally deprives mainstream children of the opportunity to experience the cultural diversity in this country, and robs every child of the chance to learn the full potential of human possibilities (Heath, 1986). For these reasons, the English-Only movement should be carefully and critically reviewed in order to accord language diversity its due respect.

REFERENCES

Crawford, J. (1992). Language Loyalties: A source book on the Official English controversy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Edelsky, C. (1986). Writing in a bilingual program: Haba una vez. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. [ED 305 192]

Freeman, Y. S., & Freeman, D. (1992). Whole language for second language learners. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Gibson, M. A. (1998). Promoting academic success among immigrant students: Is acculturation the issue? Educational Policy, 12 (6), 615-633.

Heath, S. B. (1986). Sociocultural contexts of language development. In Beyond language: Social and cultural factors in schooling language minority students (pp. 143-186). Sacramento, CA: California State Department of Education, Sacramento, Bilingual Education Office. [ED 304 241]

Leland, C. H. & Harste, J. C. (1994). Multiple ways of knowing: Curriculum in a new key. Language Arts, 71 (5), 337-345. [EJ 489 247]

Ollia, L. O. & Mayfield, M. L. (1992). Emergent literacy: Preschool, kindergarten, & primary grades. Needham Height, MA: Allen & Bacon.

Wong-Fillmore, L. (1991a). Language and cultural issues in the early education of language minority children. In S. Kagan (Ed.) The care and education of American young children: Obstacles and opportunities, The 90th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wong-Fillmore, L. (1991b). When learning a second language means losing the first. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 6(3), 323-346. [EJ 436 369]

Wong-Fillmore, L. (1992). Learning a language from learners. In C. Kramsch & S. McConnell-Ginet (Eds.). Text and Context: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on language studies. Lexington, MA: Heath.

Wong-Fillmore, L. (1998, October). Keeping Pedagogy in and Politics Out Of Our ESL Classrooms. Paper presented at the meeting of Indiana Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Indianapolis, IN.

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English-Only Movement: Its Consequences on the Education of Language Minority Children. ERIC Digest.

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Noting that the English-Only movement (which advocates that English be the official and only language used in the United States) dramatically influences the lives of language minority children, this Digest first examines the ideologies undergirding the English-Only movement. It then reviews the consequences of imposing this legislation on the language minority population.

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"Why is that English language learner sitting in the back of the classroom and not speaking up? Maybe she just needs a friend." - Carrie Kilman
This website talks about how pulling English Language Learner students out of class for separate instruction, the school is robbing the children of important contact time with potential friends. This school culture can influence a lonely learning environment for ELL.

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The Impact of English-Only Instructional Policies on English Learners

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The Impact of English-Only Instructional Policies on English Learners

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This article discusses the emergence and outcomes of the English-Only movement, as well as ideas for refocusing the debate around bilingual education in the future. Proposition 227 claimed that the poor academic performance of Spanish speakers was due to their placement in bilingual programs, and promised that these students would have superior academic outcomes if placed in English-only programs. We later find out the achievement outcomes as well as lessons learned of this assumption.

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The Impact of English-Only Instructional Policies on English Learners

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Patricia Gándara discusses the emergence and outcomes of the English-only movement, as well as ideas for refocusing the debate around bilingual education in the future. In the aftermath of the Bilingual Education Act (1968), and the Lau v.

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'English-Only' Laws in Education on Verge of Extinction

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'English-Only' Laws in Education on Verge of Extinction

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Just 15 years ago, bilingual education was banned in three states which altogether educated 40% of the nation’s English-Language Learners. Because of the Dual-Language Education, those statewide English-Only laws are close to extinction. Dual Language Education focuses on mixing native English speakers with English-Learners in Dual-Language classrooms in which students learn English and a second language.

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Just 15 years ago, bilingual education was banned in three states-Arizona, California, and Massachusetts-which altogether educated 40 percent of the nation's English-language learners.

Now, amid the national embrace of biliteracy and dual-language education, those statewide English-only laws are on the brink of extinction.

In the past three years, voters and lawmakers in California and Massachusetts repealed anti-bilingual education laws, leaving Arizona's as the last one standing.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman intends to push for a full repeal of the state's "English for Children" law, during the 2020 legislative session that begins in January and she has support from both Democratic and Republican legislators.

Lawmakers in Arizona already dealt a blow to the bilingual education ban this year, cutting the amount of time English-learners have to spend in mandatory English-only immersion classes from four hours a day to two.

"We should be using evidence-based best practices and giving flexibility to school communities, so our [English-learner] students can more quickly pick up their new language and succeed in the long-term," Hoffman said in a statement provided to Education Week.

Bilingual activists and the state tangled for decades over the legality of the requirement that ELLs take four hours of English instruction a day-a move that opponents said restricted ELLs' access to other coursework and minimized their exposure to native English-speaking peers. In 2015, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the state in Flores v. Arizona, rejecting the plaintiffs' argument that the state's approach to teaching English-learners violated the federal Equal Educational Opportunities Act, a law that requires states and districts to provide students with appropriate aid to overcome language barriers.

Research-backed bilingual education models often take a different approach, such as mixing native English speakers with English-learners in dual-language classrooms in which students learn English and a second language.

'Unz Initiatives'

Software developer Ronald Unz, who financed the campaigns to ban bilingual education in Arizona and California, isn't convinced that a return to bilingual education will benefit English-learners.

Approved in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the laws known as "Unz initiatives" replaced bilingual education with structured- or sheltered-English-immersion programs.

In the early 2000s, Unz and other proponents of California's English-only law felt vindicated when ELLs' test scores in English proficiency and reading rose in the first few years after the law passed.

"All the research is done by bilingual activists and bilingual academics and bilingual professors," Unz said.

"They all predicted getting rid of bilingual education would be a gigantic disaster."

But evidence began to emerge more than decade ago that the English-only approach was not producing the intended results.

See Also: Teaching America's English-Language Learners: A Special Report

A U.S. Department of Education-funded study released in 2008 found that states with bilingual education had smaller achievement gaps on the National Assessment of Educational Progress than states with the "Unz initiatives."

Fifteen years after the law passed, Arizona has one of the nation's lowest graduation rates for English-learners; roughly 40 percent of English-learners in the class of 2017 earned a high school diploma in four years. That's 25 percentage points below the national average.

"With the passage of time and the outcomes we were getting, we could see, anybody could see, that it wasn't working," said Delia Pompa, a senior fellow for education policy at the Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigration Policy.

Pompa was the head of the U.S. Department of Education's bilingual education office and then the National Association of Bilingual Education during the years that voters passed the "Unz initiatives."

The accountability movement in K-12 education ushered in by the No Child Left Behind Act led to the undoing of the English-only laws because districts had to closely monitor the progress of all students, including English-learners, she said.

"There was a mistaken notion that if you just expected these kids to speak English and work harder at it, they would do it. It was clear that these kids weren't doing well," Pompa said. "I don't think it's an accident that you kind of saw a domino effect with these [laws]."

Turning Tide

Despite the mounting evidence, the tide against the English-only education laws did not begin to turn until 2016.

That's when California voters passed Proposition 58, which effectively repealed that state's Unz initiative: Parents there no longer have to sign waivers if they want their children to participate in bilingual education or dual-language immersion.

A year later, Massachusetts lawmakers passed the LOOK Act, an acronym for "language opportunity for our kids."

As in California, Massachusetts districts can now select their own method for teaching English to English-learners.

The push to repeal Proposition 227 in California, also led to the creation of the seal of biliteracy, which grants special recognition to high school graduates who demonstrate fluency in two or more languages. Less than a decade after California introduced the honor, students in nearly 40 states and the District of Columbia can earn recognition for their ability to read, speak, and write in more than one language.

"We are much more enlightened and realize what bilingual students bring to the classroom," said Santiago Wood, executive director of the National Association of Bilingual Education.

The law has restricted teachers of English-learners, as well as students.

Patricia Sandoval-Taylor, the director of the language acquisition department in the Tucson, Ariz., district, taught in a structured English-immersion classroom after the state's English-only law passed.

When helping her students define a vocabulary word such as elegant, Sandoval-Taylor said she was prohibited from using the Spanish equivalent, elegante, to help her students make the connection.

"Even though I knew their primary language and could help them with that tool, I instead had to use English only," Sandoval-Taylor said.

In Tucson, English-learners must prove their proficiency in English before they're allowed to enroll in dual-language programs. But native English-speaking students don't have to prove their proficiency in another language in order to enroll in dual-language.

Lisa Graham Keegan, who served as Arizona's state schools superintendent when the English-only law passed and neither supported nor opposed it at the time, said some of the state's highest performing schools, especially those with significant English-learner populations, simply ignored the law.

"The nonsense that occurs when we deny children the opportunity to use and develop their native language can be both demoralizing and counterproductive," Keegan said.

"Our best examples of teaching English well do so with great respect to, and use of, the native language."

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'English-Only' Laws in Education on Verge of Extinction

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Just 15 years ago, bilingual education was banned in three states-Arizona, California, and Massachusetts-which altogether educated 40 percent of the nation's English-language learners. Now, amid the national embrace of biliteracy and dual-language education, those statewide English-only laws are on the brink of extinction.

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California Ballot Revives Debate on Expanding Bilingual Education

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California Ballot Revives Debate on Expanding Bilingual Education

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According to this YouTube video, critics say English-Only instruction is crucial to assimilation, while supporters argue that it would be an opportunity to embrace the state’s multiculturalism and linguistic richness.

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California ballot revives debate on expanding bilingual education

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California Voters Overturn English-Only Instruction Law

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California Voters Overturn English-Only Instruction Law

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In 2016, Californians voted "yes" on that state’s Proposition 58, known as the Multilingual Education Act, or Dual Language Model. The vote signals a major shift in thinking for a state that effectively outlawed bilingual education in 1998.

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox Californians voted yes on that state's Proposition 58, known as the Multilingual Education Act. Based on a measure proposed by State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D), the new law largely eliminates the red tape involved in creating a bilingual education program. The vote signals a major shift in thinking for a state that effectively outlawed bilingual education in 1998. The evolution in thinking on the value of bilingual education and the specifics of the voter proposition was covered in depth by The Hechinger Report in this story from our archives.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - Last spring, Derrick Fields, 9, sat in his social studies classroom at Sherman Elementary School, learning about the creation of the telegraph. The machine was invented so that "someone can connect to someone who is far away," he said.

This was pretty normal stuff for a fourth grade history lesson, except for one thing: The entire lesson - from the textbooks to the teacher's instructions to the students' short essays - was in Spanish.

In fact, half of Derrick's time is spent learning in Spanish and the other half in English in what's known as a dual language immersion program.

Teaching academic subjects in Spanish, or any foreign language, has been widely understood to be illegal in California since 1998. Proposition 227 appeared on the June ballot that year, offering voters a chance to weigh in on whether or not students should be taught primarily in English in public schools. While opponents saw the measure as racist, it was loudly championed by Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley millionaire with political aspirations, as the best way to integrate the state's booming immigrant population.

Unz's argument won the day. Proposition 227 was voted into law with 61 percent of the vote. Now part of California's extensive education code, the law holds that "all children in California public schools shall be taught English by being taught in English."

For the most part, that has been interpreted as: Don't teach in Spanish.

"I am in the camp that says it's just a terrible waste," said Patricia Gandara, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. "There are all kinds of social, cognitive and tangible benefits that accrue to those with more than one language. It's a terrible loss."

Most schools did away with their long-term bilingual programs, even though Prop 227 didn't actually outlaw learning in a foreign language. It just made it much harder. But the parents at Derrick's school were willing to sign annual parental waivers and school leaders were willing to pull together documentation that a dual language program would meet the "special needs" of their students and submit an application for such a program to the state.

"I cried the first time I took a test. But it makes you smarter if you challenge yourself."

It's "kinda weird" and "kinda" hard, to learn in two languages, said Derrick, who speaks English and some Spanish at home. But his parents wanted him to try the dual language program and he likes it "fine." While other students were more enthusiastic about the dual language set-up at Sherman, they were all too young to understand exactly what their school represents.

Programs like Sherman's will be far easier to justify and create if voters decide to support Senate Bill 1174, known as the Multilingual Education Act, which will appear on the ballot this fall and would substantially revise Prop. 227. If the bill passes, kids like Derrick and his classmates - who are a mix of native Spanish speakers and native English speakers with family backgrounds ranging from African American to Hispanic to Middle Eastern - could be the new faces of bilingual education in the state.

That prospect does not please everyone. On March 21, Unz announced his entry into the California senate race. The sole plank in his platform: Overturn the bill that could revise Prop 227.

"The primary factor behind this sudden decision on my part was the current effort by the California Democrats and their (totally worthless) Republican allies to repeal my 1998 Prop. 227 'English for the Children' initiative," Unz wrote in the announcement published on his website, the Unz Review.
Related: English one day, Español the next: Dual language learning expands with a South Bronx school as a model
Statewide however, experts say public opinion has begun to shift towards the idea that being multilingual could be an advantage. And though official numbers are hard to come by - California stopped tracking dual language programs in 2011 - the growing popularity of dual language immersion programs like the one at Derrick's school indicates multilingualism is an advantage more and more parents wish their children to possess.

693 - Number of newly certified bilingual teachers in 2014-15.

Moreover, a growing body of research now shows that high-quality dual language immersion programs benefit both native English speakers and English language learners. Since 22 percent of California's students are English language learners and since they're some of the lowest performing students in the state, such programs could provide a possible solution to an urgent problem.

And yet, the state faces a major obstacle to significantly increasing the number of such programs available to students: a severe lack of teachers qualified for the work.

While nearly 1.4 million children are classified as English Language Learners, only 693 new bilingual teachers were certified in the 2014-15 school year. That's fewer than any year since 1994-95, when the state certified 835 bilingual teachers.

Given the numbers, even if every teacher who has received a bilingual certification since 1994-95 was leading a bilingual classroom today (many are not), the state would have only one bilingual teacher for every 52 English language learners, or one for every 232 California students. That math isn't perfect. Neither the California Department of Education nor the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing has a record of how many bilingually certified teachers are currently employed in the public schools. Nor is there a reliable record of bilingual certification rates prior to 1994-95. Still, the ratios provide a rough idea of how far away California is from having a robust supply of bilingual teachers.

"If we're going to commit to bilingualism and biliteracy in our state, we need to invest in new teachers for those programs," said Pamela Spycher, a senior research associate at the California-based think tank WestEd.

And such programs are becoming more common, even without legislative support. The Glendale Unified School District, just outside Los Angeles, now offers seven dual language immersion programs in languages as disparate as Vietnamese, Armenian and French. In Lakeside Union School District, inland of San Diego, the Riverview and Winter Garden elementary schools offer a trilingual program in English, Spanish and Mandarin. And the San Francisco Unified School District offers dual language education at 15 of its elementary and K-8 schools (nine in Spanish, three in Cantonese, two in Mandarin and one in Korean), nine of its middle schools and three of its high schools. Several of these programs are actively growing.
Related: In a conservative corner of Arkansas, schools welcome immigrants
Research that was not available when Prop 227 first passed now shows that the effort involved in offering such programs could have a big payoff. One study, out of Stanford University, found that it took children learning English in dual language programs longer to master the language than those who learned English in an English immersion program. However, by the end of middle school, the students from the dual language immersion programs were doing better in English and earning higher grades in other subjects, while graduates of English immersion programs often reached a plateau in English and performed consistently worse in other subject areas.

But the public school system in California has not caught up with such findings. English language learners as a group continue to perform worse than their English-fluent peers on every measure of academic success. On the 2015 state assessments only 5 percent of eighth grade English language learners met English standards for their grade level and none exceeded those standards. Statewide, 45 percent of students met or exceeded the eighth grade English standards. In math, merely 6 percent of English learner eighth graders met or exceed standards compared with 33 percent statewide.

"It's just a terrible waste. There are all kinds of social, cognitive and tangible benefits that accrue to those with more than one language. It's a terrible loss."

Scores for California fourth graders were similarly poor. Twelve percent of English language learners met or exceeded standards in English and 11 percent did so in math.

Back in San Diego, Sherman students blew those numbers out of the water. Forty-nine percent of English language learner fourth graders at Sherman met or exceeded the English standards as measured on the 2015 Common Core-aligned tests.

Overall, Sherman students, who are 84 percent low-income and 74 percent English learners, performed on par with their peers in the San Diego district, including English-fluent children. English language learners in third, fourth and fifth grade at Sherman did as well as (third grade) or better than (fourth and fifth grade) English language learners in the rest of the city on the English portion of the exam.

In Sherman's front office, there is a sign that reads, "To have a second language, is to have a second soul."

But speaking a second language is not enough to make a strong bilingual teacher, said Edward Caballero, the school's principal. Caballero remembers being certified to teach Spanish in the late 1990s after a "two-minute conversation" with the Spanish department head at the University of San Diego. (There are bilingual certification tests now, and several prescribed courses teachers must take.)

"I grew up speaking Spanish from birth, but I didn't learn how to read and write [in Spanish] until high school and college," he said. "For the whole grammar piece that I was supposed to teach, I was behind."

That's a common situation. Many bilingual teachers today grew up speaking Spanish, or another native language, at home, but spent the vast majority of their school years reading, speaking and writing in English. For most, earning their teaching degrees was no different. Nearly every teaching course offered in the Cal State system is taught in English. And early literacy courses focus on teaching children to read English. That can be a bit of a disaster when translated to a class on how to read in another language.

"They try to teach Spanish with English strategies," said Francisco Perez-Duque, the language coordinator at Sherman, who is from Spain. "It's like if you wanted to teach Chinese with English strategies. It's not the same. It doesn't work."

Caballero and Perez-Duque met when Caballero was a fifth grade teacher at a bilingual charter school just outside San Diego called Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School. At the time, the staff was teaching reading using sight words, patterns, and other English-based strategies. When Perez-Duque arrived, he convinced the school's leadership to shift to teaching Spanish using phonetics, the same way it's taught in Spain. He also started teaching the teachers Spanish grammar.

1.4 million - Number of English language learner students in California in 2014-15 (22 percent of total student population).

"The success came in the first year after the change," Caballero said. The experience convinced him that teaching Spanish the Spanish way was the only way to ensure his students would the develop the strong early literacy skills he knew would benefit them - in both Spanish and English - later on. When he started Sherman's program, in the face of some skepticism from the district, Caballero knew there was no room for failure. So he didn't waste any time. He hired Perez-Duque and after school Spanish grammar sessions for teachers started immediately.

WestEd's Spycher said Caballero was right to invest in Spanish-language training for teachers and to use teaching methods proven to work for Spanish. In the 1990s, she said, "there was a myth that bilingual education failed. It's not that bilingual education failed. It's just that what people implemented failed."

In many cases, poorly trained teachers ended up with groups of English language learners who weren't taught academic Spanish, weren't taught math, history, or other subjects in Spanish and who never transitioned into the English classes in which such subjects were taught. Unz pointed to this state of affairs, which he said was unfair to the Spanish-speaking students, repeatedly during his 1998 campaign to eliminate bilingual education in the state.
Related: For teachers of English learners, Common Core means double the work
And despite the new requirements for bilingual certification, there is still some concern about whether California's current certification standards are high enough to prepare teachers for success in the classroom. Though most aspiring bilingual teachers do take courses on how to teach English language learners, only a few schools offer such classes in Spanish. In part, that's because it's very difficult to find qualified university faculty.

When Cristina Alfaro, chair of the San Diego State University Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education, conducted a faculty search a few years back, she had 20 applicants, only six of whom she felt met the basic job requirements. Of those, only two had both the language skills and the content knowledge she felt her prospective teachers needed.

San Diego State University has one of the most productive and highly regarded bilingual teacher programs in the state. "Right now, in the state of California, I don't think there's another program that credentials as many teachers as we do," Alfaro said. "I want our program to be nationally recognized."

61 percent - Portion of votes in favor of Prop 227, which made it very difficult to teach in a language other than English in California schools.

It has been a fight to keep the program open, though. With budget cuts constantly threatening the California State University system, which prepares the majority of the state's new bilingual teachers, and bilingual teaching rendered a risky field under Prop 227, such programs aren't exactly university darlings, Alfaro said.

Plus, the quality of bilingual prep programs varies greatly.

"There are pockets of excellence-places that are doing a beautiful job in some aspects of preparing teachers," said Spycher, who taught bilingual education in the 1990s and later served on the education school faculty at University of California Davis. "But systemically, there needs to be a major shift."

The state has taken some steps towards creating policies that better address the needs of English language learners. Funding aimed at improving services for these students increased in 2013 for the first time in years under the state's Local Control Funding Formula, which allocates districts extra money per English learner student. The California Department of Education also adopted new standards for English language development and wrote guidebooks for teachers, describing best practices for teaching English language learners.
Related: Communities come together to increase college-going from the ground up
However, little has been done to attract young, new teachers to the field

"We're wasting a whole generation of potential there," she said.

Even without widespread support, many California students do graduate in full command of two languages. In 2015, 31,816 graduating seniors earned the State Seal of Biliteracy, which was adopted in 2011 and requires students to prove a thorough command of writing, speaking and understanding a second language at a 12th grade academic level. Spycher and others think there should be incentives offered to such students to convince them to pursue a career in teaching.

California faces a statewide teacher shortage, not just a bilingual teacher shortage. And many of the challenges to hiring and keeping great people in these jobs are the same: low pay, high turnover, large classes and needy students from struggling families. But bilingual teaching is a particularly demanding version of the job. Bilingual teachers often end up with the (usually unpaid) extra duty of translator when other teachers or school administrators want to meet with students' families. And for those teaching in a foreign language as part of a dual language program, the extra work that comes with planning lessons for a wide range of language abilities can be significant.

"A lot of people did it because they were committed," Gandara said. "A lot of other people said, 'Hey, this is too much.'"
This story was written by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about California schools.
On top of the extra responsibilities, bilingual teachers also have to overcome decades of prejudice against foreign language speakers, said Alfaro, who remembers being made to wear donkey ears at age five when she came to kindergarten speaking only Spanish. As an adult, Alfaro sought out her former teacher to ask why she'd been put through such a humiliating experience. "I really believed the only way children in this community could be successful was if they learned their English and forgot their Spanish," Alfaro said the teacher told her.

At Chula Vista Learning Community Charter, a dual language K-12 school near the Mexican border, that idea is anathema to both teachers and students. Here, speaking multiple languages is prized. In addition to Spanish and English, students can also take classes in Mandarin. Jazmin Rodriguez, a junior, said learning multiple languages allows her to read literature from other cultures. Victor Gomez, a senior, said speaking three languages (Spanish, English and now Mandarin) makes him feel he's going to have a real advantage in the job market. And several students pointed out, proudly, that it is far harder to learn two languages well than to just learn one.

"When you take a class in Spanish, it makes you learn a whole lot more Spanish," said Cherish Miranda, a junior who spoke only a little Spanish at home before starting classes at the Chula Vista charter school. "It makes the homework harder. I cried the first time I took a test. But it makes you smarter if you challenge yourself."

To achieve any of these benefits for more of its students, California educators must first find a way to better train far more bilingual teachers. And if the ballot measure revising Prop 227 passes in November, they'd better do it fast.

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California voters overturn English-only instruction law

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox Californians voted yes on that state's Proposition 58, known as the Multilingual Education Act. Based on a measure proposed by State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D), the new law largely eliminates the red tape involved in creating a bilingual education program.