(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to Horizonte, a show that takes a look at current issues through a Hispanic lens.

I'm your host, Catherine Anaya.

Tonight we discuss dual language programs in Arizona.

The topic has been the subject of conflict between Arizona superintendent and public instruction and our attorney general.

The programs teach students who are not proficient in English half of the time in English and half of the time in their native language.

Superintendent Horne is against bilingual education and wants to defund those programs.

Attorney General Kris Mayes says he does not have that authority.

Tonight we discuss how dual language programs work with Marisol Garcia.

She is the president of the Arizona Education Association.

It is great to have you here.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- So we've recently learned that school's Chief Tom Horne has filed a lawsuit to block the schools from offering dual language programs that include English learners.

Before we get into what all of that means can you break down how the programs actually work?

- Yeah.

Dual language programs are extremely successful.

Not just the United States, but throughout the entire world as a way of students becoming multilingual learners.

And I think what's really important is the day is a really creative day, students move back and forth between Spanish and English, they learn science in Spanish and English, social studies, history, math, both of them.

And so the students are interweaving not just their language, but content in two languages.

- So how many of those English learners are enrolled in those programs in Arizona?

- Yeah, we're talking about less than almost 5% of all the students even have access to these programs.

So we're talking about less than a thousand children in the state.

- So Superintendent Horne is saying that these programs violate Prop 203.

- [Marisol] Right.

Can you explain how Prop 203 works and why he says it's a violation?

- Yeah.

Prop 203 passed almost 20 years ago which said that we can only instruct in English which spurred a task force that tried to find ways that we could actually handle this in our classrooms.

I was a brand new teacher when these programs came out and what we had to do is have structured English classrooms, meaning students at the same language level had to be in the same classroom with the same language level.

It became very complicated as you can imagine because students of different ages coming in at different language levels sometimes caused students to be segregated including having own recesses away from other students.

And it also became a bureaucratic nightmare of tracing these kids, finding where should we put them, how do we, and the qualifications of teachers was also an issue.

And quite frankly, it wasn't based in research.

And the folks that decided upon this decided to ignore research and follow this program.

- When you're talking about a small number of students in Arizona that are actually involved in these programs, what percentage fall into the category that the superintendent is against?

- Yeah, and the percentage is a little bit hard 'cause it changes from year to year.

But last year there was about 70 programs in the entire state and those were open to every single student.

So there are very limited programs in, for instance in communities that are already have a fluent language, so a Latino language and Spanish.

Most of these communities where I teach and live they don't even have dual language programs.

So we're talking about 2% of all of Arizona students are in dual language, but are also English language learners.

- So we're talking about a small number of students but it's become such a big issue.

And part of I think the confusion for a lot of people is what happened in 2019.

That's when the state legislature unanimously passed a law directing the Board of education to come up with these four models of these dual language programs so that they can be a little more flexible in teaching English learners.

What did the research show that prompted the legislature to vote unanimously for this?

- Yeah, we brought in scientists and we had educators who were working with these students come in and share with the legislators that this was probably the worst thing that we could do for English language learners.

Nowhere in the country do programs like this limit students entering these programs.

Our students were not becoming proficient in English and they were losing their home language as well.

And so what we were able to do is show national data from the National Academy of Sciences that actually showed these kids were not only becoming proficient in English and in Spanish and were scoring academically higher than their counterparts in other countries and other states that actually allowed students to do this.

- So you have the evidence and you have the unanimous opinion that it works.

Yes.

Bipartisan very key to that.

Three of the four models that the Board of Education came up with are English immersive.

But that fourth one is the one that Superintendent Horne has a problem with and that's because half the day the students learn in English and then the other half is in another language which is typically Spanish.

That's the one he's suing to end, correct?

- Right.

Correct.

And I'm not an attorney, so I don't know how that lawsuit's gonna go, but I'm an educator who's worked with these students who are learning a second language and I'm gonna tell you that we have done a disservice to these students not allowing them to have it prior to 2019 and this would be, again, detrimental to those students to lose their home language, to learn a second language and struggle learning that second language without their first language.

- And when you're talking about the split day, 50/50 day of learning, can you tell me a little bit about the research and what that shows about the effectiveness of splitting it that way?

- Yeah, I think what's really important is to remember that our students, these students are coming in with a language.

They already are literate in a language whether it was from home that they learned it from their friends or from media, social media like a lot of our children do, and so they already have a set of understanding of language.

So the linguistic ability to go to a second language is super easy.

And so what we do on a day when you see a dual language program is students may go from one teacher in math who's teaching them in English and then go over and they're learning about science in Spanish.

So they're leveraging the language that they just learned with another one.

It's the same way I think if you or I moved to Japan and wanted to be able to learn Japanese, we wouldn't wanna learn it in a classroom with only Americans who spoke English and learn Japanese in Japan.

So we wanna be able to be out with language models on how this language can be learned in context.

- And a lot of the students in that particular model program are actually proficient in English, but their parents want them to learn another language, right?

- Yes.

I mean, this is what's so great is that parents have to choose to be part of this program.

A teacher, a school cannot automatically put kids into this program.

A parent signs off on it as acknowledging they may not be proficient in English or Spanish but we want 'em to be able to go together and they sign off on it every single year.

- Okay.

I'm glad you mentioned they sign off on it because Superintendent Horne is suing the state and the Creighton Elementary School District because it's offering dual language programs to English learners without waivers.

Can you explain the waiver part of this situation?

- Yeah.

Every single student has to sign a waiver for us to enter them into even a structured emergent class or a ELL class.

Parents have to have a knowledge of what's going on.

So he, in part of the lawsuit, he's saying that the district didn't ask for the waiver but the parents every year have to sign a waiver.

And what he did last year is he didn't make that waiver available to the schools and so they were using last year's waivers but they're still getting waivers.

The law hasn't changed since 2019.

- Well, interestingly, Arizona right now is the only state in the country with a law requiring English learners be taught only in English.

Do you foresee a repeal of Prop 203 'cause that's what we're talking about here happening anytime soon?

- I'm super hopeful.

Clearly this is a bipartisan thing that people want to reverse.

It's gonna take the will of the people and we're gonna have to go back out to the voters.

And we all know, just even from our experience it's very expensive and campaigns are very political and we're hopeful that we can spend more time like today educating people about the programs.

- And now that this issue has reached the lawsuit stage, how is this impacting students?

How is this impacting teachers and parents involved in these dual language programs?

- Yeah, I think immediately you start thinking of enforcement, am I gonna get in trouble?

could I lose my credential?

Parents may not wanna put themselves in the middle of a lawsuit and it's unfortunate 'cause we are already in a teacher retention issue.

Schools should be places where students feel like they can be themselves and speak their own language.

Just from my experience teaching in a very Latino community where most of my students spoke Spanish, I, under this current law am not allowed to say anything to them in their home language.

Something that could connect me to them and make them wanna come to my class and feel comfortable in my class, I legally am not able to do.

- So, what is the best case scenario in this situation and what is going to be the most challenging moving forward?

- Yeah.

I think the best case scenario is that we trust the parents and the educators that are in the classrooms to make the best decisions for their kids and not politicians.

I think the hardest thing that will be is to help more people understand the value in having multilingual students.

Businesses understand that, universities understand that, we just need to make sure parents understand the value of that to make sure that the superintendent stops doing this kind of political game around this issue.

- Well, and it sounds like a lot of parents understand the benefit of that too, because you have so many kids who are English proficient in these programs.

So we haven't heard the last of this I know, but thank you so much for coming on and just kind of breaking it down for people because I think it does tend to get a little confusing at times.

- It does.

We always have to do what's best for kids and these programs are what are best for kids.

- Well, thank you so much.

It's good to see you Marisol.

- Good to see you too.

I appreciate it.

And that's our show for tonight.

For Horizonte and Arizona PBS, I'm Catherine Anaya.

Have a great evening.

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