Ending the Double-talk
BY John P. Avlon, NY SUN, September 22, 2004

Critics are accusing Mayor Bloomberg of moving to take the bold step of ending bilingual education, the Daily News reports. I hope the critics are right. As the failures in bilingual education classes compound, some students have been quietly exercising their right to join English as a Second Language programs, which are more English-intensive. Now would be a good time for the administration to take the next step and allow our city to fully join the ranks of reform when it comes to teaching students whose first language is not English.

Mr. Bloomberg's administration still seems bogged in mid-debate about the issue. But there has been enough hesitation already.

We have decades of data and analysis showing that despite the best intentions, bilingual education has functioned as an unaccountable, counterproductive, publicly subsidized, segregated entitlement program.

No mayor before Mr. Bloomberg has had the power to end the failed program. Fewer possessed the political independence from special interest groups. With his successful effort to disband the Board of Education and his unprecedented degree of political freedom, Mr. Bloomberg has both. A clear order to his Department of Education plus a court challenge to the Aspira consent decree that mandates bilingual education could get the ball rolling.

It was always Mr. Bloomberg's instinct to act on this issue, beginning with the early days of his mayoral campaign. One of his first unscripted policy stands was a commonsense appeal to end the failure of bilingual education. One month after assuming office, Mayor Bloomberg sounded the call again and struck fear into the hearts of educrats, saying: "The thing we've got to focus on is understanding that children need to learn to read and speak good English...This is an English-speaking country, like it or not. Parents want their children to speak English. Unfortunately there is a bureaucracy that does not want that to happen."

Then, ironically, the bureaucracy that did not want anything to happen reared its head inside the Bloomberg administration in the form of Diana Lam, the deputy chancellor in charge of instruction. Against the mayor's wishes, this self-styled bilingual advocate took the program even deeper into the morass. The results were as tragic as they were predictable. The share of students transitioning from bilingual education into mainstream English-speaking classrooms plummeted to 3.7%, down more than 75% in a single year. This was a cruel betrayal of students in the name of failed ideology: It should have been a firing offense, and it contributed to Ms. Lam's ultimate dismissal.

During the same time that New York City's bilingual numbers have been going in the wrong direction, states such as California - which took the step to end bilingual education by ballot referendum, because legislators would not respond - have seen a recovery in student scores and transition rates.

Now New York has the same opportunity. We need to seize it, and Mr. Bloomberg is the man to do it. There will be advocates who argue for more study and delay. These are the inheritors of Ms. Lam's creative noncompliance. There has been more than enough study, across the nation and in New York City. The studies all show the same thing: students transition faster and more effectively from the diverse English-intensive ESL classes than the homogenous and linguistically segregated bilingual classes where students can remain for up to nine years.

The 1994 Cortines Report stated: "Students in ESL-only programs consistently tested out of entitlement faster than students served in bilingual programs, even when baseline differences in English were taken into effect."

Likewise, the 2000 Mayor's Task Force on Bilingual Education - on which I served as part of the staff - used the largest cohort study of bilingual students in New York City history to determine that "children in ESL programs generally transition to mainstream English speaking classes more rapidly than their counterparts in Bilingual programs."

For years, parents and students have complained about the separate and unequal status of bilingual education classes. More than 80% of the students in bilingual education are Spanish speaking - including an increasingly high percentage of students who are second or third generation. In contrast, immigrants representing the full diversity of the world's languages tend to be placed alongside each other in ESL classes and transition out faster. To prop up the numbers, Spanish-surnamed children were often automatically placed in bilingual classes regardless of need in the name of cultural enrichment. Parents fought to have their child reassigned and met stiff resistance within the schools. Lawsuits ensued.

During my time on the Mayor's Task Force, we discovered a 1975 Board of Education circular defining board policy at the outset of bilingual education that stated, in part: "[Parents] are to be notified of their child's entitlement and of the nature of the program to be provided. Every effort is to be made to inform parents of the educational value of the [Bilingual] program and no attempt is to be made to invite parents to withdraw from the program." This was a smoking gun in the widely reported institutional bias in the Board of Education toward bilingual education.

The trends are shifting as parents get more honest information and react to the results of the past decades, but the problem Mr. Bloomberg must face is that the rank and file of the educational culture has not changed to meet the times. As a result, he will get intentionally confused and conflicting information in a semi-organized attempt to get him to back off his instincts toward bilingual education reform.

Another argument that will be deployed against the mayor will be purely political. In the face of a likely mayoral race between Mr. Bloomberg and the former president of the Bronx, Fernando Ferrer, the mayor will be told that he should wait to take on this issue in the name of political expediency. Nothing should be further from the truth. Mayor Bloomberg would actually strengthen his hand by taking a stand.

The Latino community as a whole recognizes the travesty that bilingual education has become. Only a relatively small number of activist elites defend the existing system. The nonpartisan group Public Agenda conducted a poll that showed that two out of three immigrant parents believe that "it is more important for public schools to teach English as quickly as possible, even if they fall behind in other subjects." A Zogby Poll in 1998 measured support for "all public school instruction to be conducted in English, and for students not fluent in English to be placed in an intensive one-year English immersion program." Seventy-nine percent of all voters surveyed supported this proposal - 72% of Democrats and 87% of Republicans - including 62% of Latino voters.

Mr. Bloomberg should stake out this territory because it's the right thing to do and because only he can do it. It will reinforce his reputation as a reformer with the courage to take on all special interests.