From Primary Language Instruction to English Immersion:
by Kevin Clark
Introduction
By Jorge Amselle
Executive Director, READ Institute
June 1999
The Institute for Research in English Acquisition and Development (READ) collects, analyzes and distributes a variety of data directly affecting the education of language minority children-those 3 million plus (1998) students in U.S. public schools who cannot do regular work in English. READ funds its own research projects on effective learning programs for limited-English students as well as reprinting valuable information prepared by other agencies.
The following READ Abstract, on the effects of Proposition 227 for five California school districts, is of particular importance at this time. Later this month, California will release the results of its Stanford-9 achievement test, which all students took in English. This will provide us with a solid foundation for evaluating the level of progress language-minority students have made in the first year of Structured English Immersion.
The five school districts examined in this report took the concept of immersion language teaching and turned it into a practical educational model for teaching today's Limited-English Proficient students. Readers will benefit from Mr. Clark's evaluation of the districts and his data on student achievement.
Mr. Clark is a consultant and teacher educator specializing in instructional strategies for language minority students. He has advised more than one hundred school districts across the United States on the design, implementation, and evaluation of effective educational programs for second language learners. The READ Institute is pleased to make this information available to educators, and parents of limited-English students as well as the education media.
Executive Summary
On its face, it seems simple enough: Teach immigrant students English through English. Put another way, stop teaching Limited-English Proficient (LEP) students through their primary language and use English. In its most absurd form, it was interpreted as 51 percent of the school day in English, 49 percent in Spanish. But no matter how the message was phrased, twisted, spindled or spun, it all boiled down to this: The day after California's voters passed the much-discussed Proposition 227, the loud, clear message was "teach English and do it quickly."
What followed after the passage of California's bellwether legislation requiring that immigrant school children be taught English in specially designed English immersion classrooms ranged from incredulity to celebration. During the months leading up to the vote, California was at the center of a national policy debate centered on how best to teach English to non-English speaking students. After 22 years of dubious results with state-imposed bilingual programs, educators, parents, and policymakers were asking why the state's 1.4 million LEP students were not learning English well or rapidly. A fractured and contentious debate had as its varied venues the local barbershop, the editorial page, and the school staff lounge. Everybody, it seemed, knew a little something about teaching English.
It is perhaps not surprising then that in the weeks and months after its passage those most immediately affected by the law's mandate¾teachers, schools, districts, county offices, and the California Department of Education itself¾quickly adopted one of four attitudes:
1. The law passed but will surely be overturned by the courts, the legislature, the "feds," the new governor, by someone or some agency-so we'll wait.
2. Yes, it passed, but we will act as if it did not pass and do things as we always have.
3. It passed, so let's get on with implementing a legally compliant program.
4. This is what we have always wanted, so let's get to work.
Headlines, radio shows, local demonstrations, and staff lounge chat could all be easily slotted into one of the four response patterns. From San Francisco Superintendent Bill Rojas' public proclamation that he would go to jail before implementing the new law (Asimov, 1998), to organized attempts by Los Angeles Unified School District teachers and others to defy the law's requirement for English instruction (Elias, 1998; Moore, 1998) to silent, less publicized celebrations of common sense prevailing over ideology, the responses covered the spectrum. But in those weeks following the proposition's passage, the actions of California schools and districts that moved rapidly to implement structured English immersion programs would tell an even more dramatic story.
This article recounts the events and experiences of five California school districts from populous urban settings to small, isolated rural communities that took a previously little understood concept of immersion language teaching and turned it into a successful reality. In their respective journeys to implementation, each was forced to confront many of the same issues, challenges, snags, and criticism. But in the end they all agreed that the transformation from bilingual approaches to English immersion education required a complete and sometimes difficult and emotional re-thinking and re-conceptualization of how to educate today's Limited-English Proficient students.
The first part of this article describes the five districts profiled throughout. The second part sets forth three significant issues that made planning for English immersion difficult. The third part sets forth some program implementation issues that surfaced in all of the districts and how they were resolved. The article concludes with a description of the common evaluation design used in all of the districts and presents some preliminary student achievement data.
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