ELPAC Report January 2002

The ELPAC Report January 2002

Last-Minute Detour for Bi-Ed Reform?
Pay More for Teachers to Speak English?

Late last year, Congress finally passed an education reform bill, including some substantial reform for bilingual education. President Bush signed the bill into law on January 8.

After many years of trying, reformers were changing bilingual education to require children to actually learn English in three years or less, and to strip funding from programs which had failed to teach children at all. Then, literally in the last moments before final passage of the bill, a "trigger" was added to the reforms, prohibiting them from taking effect until federal funding triples from prior levels. In other words, we had to pay more to get teachers to speak English.

The bilingual education reforms were the result of year-long negotiations and horse-trading. The Bush Administration, in one of its few pro-English positions, promoted the concept of teaching English as part of its emphasis on testing and demonstrable results.

Congressional education committees finally woke up to the failure of bilingual education (sparked in large part by the third year of startlingly-high test scores from California and Arizona, where voter initiatives eliminated traditional bilingual education in favor of teaching English).

So the education reform bill contained some very good provisions on bilingual education. According to the House Education and Workforce Committee, the reforms "would bring dramatic changes" to bilingual education. The proposal would:

Eliminate the current requirement that 75 percent of funding be used to support programs using a child's native language in instruction.
Require that parents be notified that their limited English proficient child is in need of English language instruction.
Require LEP children be tested for reading and language arts in English after they have attended school in the U.S. for three consecutive years.
Require that all teachers in a language instruction class for LEP students be fluent in English, including written and oral communication skills.
Require states to monitor the student progress in attaining English proficiency and be held accountable for failure to meet such objectives."
These reforms were passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives.

Then, without warning, in late December, a new provision was added to H.R. 1, the education reform bill. The provision (Section 3001 of the bill) said that none of the bilingual education reforms in the bill would go into effect until Congress actually provided $650,000,000 in funding for bilingual education. The effect of this "condition" is to put a "floor" under bilingual education spending. To get teachers to speak English to children, Congress would have to almost triple the former level of spending on bilingual education.

Fortunately, this year's funding level exceeds this "trigger" level, so the bilingual education reforms will go into effect. There is no guarantee, however, that Congress will continue to spend enough money to get teachers to speak English.