Online NewsHour: English as the official language -- January 30, 1996

FEDERAL BILINGUAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS MUST BE REEVALUATED (House of Representatives - January 30, 1996)

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The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Young of Florida). Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Roth] is recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.

Mr. ROTH. Mr. Speaker, actions have consequences. it is about time that we as a Congress analyze how our congressional actions impact on America's future.

Mr. Speaker, in September, U.S. News & World Report put on its cover the issue of making English our official language. It was an absolutely eye-opening investigation into bilingual education, and I recommend it to every Member of Congress to read this portion of the magazine.

Mr. Speaker, the billion-dollar program of bilingual education reasons that children taught in their native language will somehow learn English more quickly. I would like to share some of the article's conclusions, as I found their analysis to be right on target.

Mr. Speaker, the first point and criticism that can be made of transitional bilingual education programs is that they are not really transitional. Too many students are held in these language maintenance programs, never acquiring enough English fluency to regain mainstream classroom capabilities. U.S. News pointed out a woman in New York who had a ninth grade daughter in the classroom of bilingual education for 9 years and this family had a very poor experience in that the youngster never did get into transitional English.

Mr. Speaker, all kinds of examples in the magazine, in U.S. News and World Report, point out that the family's experiences are all too common. For example, Ray Domanico, of the New York Public Education Association, says that bilingual education, 'is becoming an institutionalized ghetto.' Arthur Schlesinger in his book, "The Disuniting of America," points out that 'bilingual education promotes segregation, nourishes racial antagonism, and shuts the door to students,' all things that we do not want to happen in America.

Bilingual education also is all too often not actually bilingual, as the report points out. The word 'bilingual' implies that students in these programs receive equal amounts of instruction in two languages. This could not be further from the truth. Many students in bilingual education get as many as 30 minutes a day in English.

Mr. Speaker, how can anyone expect to pick up English quickly under these conditions? How can we expect the students to pick up English under these conditions? The answer is that they cannot.

Bilingual education does not help children learn English quickly and effectively, as Congress intended it to do, yet the program has flourished for at least three decades, going from a small pilot program 28 years ago to a $10 billion business, spawning a bureaucracy bent on self-preservation. Some of the Government's worst bureaucratic excesses can be found in the administration of these programs.

The inertia of billion-dollar budgets drives bilingual education expansion. In many areas across the country, children are misplaced into these programs. In some cases they are put into bilingual education classrooms not because they do not understand English well, but because they cannot read English well. These children need remedial English classes; not history in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese.

Worst still, Mr. Speaker, some children are placed

in these programs simply because they have ethnic surnames. In a complete perversion of the so-called multiculturalism, children with names like Ming or Martinez are red-flagged on school rolls and are placed, without their parents' consent or permission, into these programs.

In New York City recently, a number of families became so frustrated with the bilingual bureaucracy that they took the New York Board of Education to court in order to win the right to withdraw their children from bilingual educational programs.

In some ways, these children are the lucky ones. They had parents who had the strength and courage to stand up to the system. How many children are not so lucky? Mr. Speaker, I have heard horror stories of Haitian Creole-speaking children placed in Spanish classes because there are not enough of them to warrant their own instructor.

In other cases, desperate school superintendents struggling to meet State and Federal bilingual education guidelines are forced to recruit uncredentialed, unqualified, instructors from abroad, many of whom do not speak English. The result, Mr. Speaker, is that we have teachers who cannot speak English teaching children who do not speak English. It does not take an Ivy League-educated Education Department bureaucrat to conclude that under these conditions, children do not learn English quickly or effectively.

An entire generation of children has been forced to suffer through these public policies gone awry. The high school dropout rate in these areas is exceedingly high; higher than any other rate. That is why, Mr. Speaker, I have taken this time to focus Congress' attention on what bilingual education is doing to our students.

Mr. Speaker, the high school dropout rate for Hispanic students, one of the telling indicators bilingual education was supposed to change, has not budged since the programs began. Tellingly, it remains the highest of any ethnic group--four times higher than that of most other groups and another example from U.S. News, three times higher than that of Afro-Americans.

Mr. Speaker, for most of our Nation's history, America gave the children of immigrants a precious gift--an education in the English language. As each new wave of immigrants arrived on these shores, our public school system taught their sons and daughters English

so they could claim their piece of the American dream.

What are we doing for these new Americans today? Instead of a first-rate education in English, our bilingual education programs are consigning an entire generation of new Americans--unable to speak, understand, and use English effectively--to a second-class future.

This tragedy has human faces. Let me tell you about two people's experiences which will illustrate the impact of our failed bilingual education programs. I have never heard the problems with bilingual education more poignantly put than in the words of Ernesto Ortiz, a foreman on a south Texas ranch who said: 'My children learn Spanish in school so they can become busboys and waiters. I teach them English at home so they can become doctors and lawyers.' Ernesto understands that English is the language of opportunity in this country. He understands that denying his children a good education in English will doom them to a limited--as opposed to limitless--future.

Bilga Abramova also understands this simple truth. Bilga is a 35-year-old Russian refugee who has entered a church lottery 3 times in an attempt to win 1 of 50 coveted spaces in a free, intensive English class offered by her local parish. Her pleas in Russian speak volumes about the plight of all too many immigrants: 'I need to win,' she said. 'Without English, I cannot begin a new life.'

The ultimate paradox about our commitment to bilingual education in this country is that Bilga and others like her all across the country sit on waiting lists for intensive English classes while we spend $8 billion a year teaching children in their native language.

You have heard from parents like Ernesto Ortiz and how they feel about bilingual education. Even teachers oppose these programs. A recent survey of 1,000 elementary and secondary

teachers found that 64 percent of them disapproved of bilingual education programs and favored intensive English instruction instead.

Even longtime defenders of these programs are starting to change their tune. The California Board of Education approved a new policy recently in which they abandoned their preference for bilingual education programs.

This year marks the 28th year of bilingual education programs. For more and more people, that is 28 years too long. It is time to take a fresh look at this problem. Bilingual education has had 28 years and billions of dollars to prove that it accomplished what it said it would do in 1968: teach children English quickly and effectively. Too many people lose sight of the fact that the real issue here is how to help children and newcomers who do not know English and who need to assimilate.

Let us not forget Ernesto Ortiz and his children, Bilga Abramova and other new Americans like them. Mr. Speaker, this is not just an abstract public policy issue; bilingual education and our national language policies have real world consequences. When our policies fail, the failures have names and faces attached to them. When our policies serve to divide rather than unite us, the rips appear in the very fabric of the American Nation.

The following description of bilingual education comes from U.S. News and World Report: 'along with crumbling classrooms and violence in the hallways, bilingual education has emerged as one of the dark spots on the grim tableau of American public education. Today, the program has mushroomed into a $10 billion-a-year bureaucracy that not only cannot promise that students will learn English but may actually do some children more harm than good.'

Mr. Speaker, this should be bilingual education's epitaph. I urge all of my colleagues to see the writing on the wall. Bilingual education has had its time to prove its effectiveness; 28 years is long enough to see if this approach works. These programs were created with good intentions, I am sure. However, after almost three decades and billions of dollars, we must recognize the painful truth that bilingual education does not work.

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