Column: Bilingual education

In all the hype following last November's mid-term elections about a new mandate for George W. Bush, it would've been easy to miss two less-publicized returns from two ballot initiatives in Massachusetts and Colorado. The propositions drove to the core of one of the most divisive issues in the politics of American education, one that will only get more pressing as the nation's public schools see rapidly rising numbers of students with little or no proficiency in English.

Bilingual education, the subject of the two initiatives, has fallen on tough times in recent years, with studies questioning its effectiveness and a string of political defeats beginning in California with Proposition 227, followed by a ban in Arizona and now a resounding loss in Massachusetts. Last year's Colorado measure, which had been showing strong early support, failed only after a $3 million ad campaign that inaccurately suggested a ban would cost millions in higher taxes.

I've seen the debate play out with real students and parents, and the success of the opposition is hardly surprising. My high school in Virginia is among the most diverse in the nation, boasting a student body that is about one-third Latino, one-third white and one-third every other race, ethnicity and nationality imaginable. Washington-Lee had a sizable bilingual program. The kids seemed satisfied, but to really get an idea of the situation you almost had to talk to someone who had already made it out.

I met Veronica when I was in a play freshman year - she fit in so well that at first I didn't notice that in a school with hundreds of Latino students she was the only one to try out for the play. As I got to know her better, meeting her parents who spoke Spanish in their home, I realized what a rarity she was. And when the issue of bilingual education came up, Veronica didn't hesitate to make her feelings clear.

"I escaped from ESOL," she angrily told me. "They said I wasn't ready. If I'd listened to them, I'd still be struggling to learn English today." But she did escape and went on to direct a Neil Simon play in her senior year, earn an International Baccalaureate diploma and enroll at William and Mary. It's hard to imagine that she would have had such success had she been backpedaling in a bilingual program. Bilingual education is too often backpedaling. Anti-progress. Precocious students like Veronica are held up learning the plural of "child" when they could be studying organic chemistry.

And what about the kids who aren't as bright and might not adapt so easily to English? Chances are they would fare no better with anything else - research has shown that many immigrant children entering schools in the United States, especially from countries with poor educational systems, are so under-educated that they are not even fluent in their own language. And contrary to what many bilingual education proponents argue, the scaling back of bilingual education does not mean the scaling back of immigrants' culture. Half of Latino voters in California recognized this when they voted for Proposition 227 in 1998.

Bilingual education doesn't have to be regressive, and there are many examples of progressive, useful programs. In the same school system where Veronica was held back from her potential, hundreds of kids at another school went through a truly bilingual program - English half the day, Spanish the other half - for all students, not just non-English speakers. But the vast majority of bilingual programs are in fact bilingual only by name and baby students by teaching them in their native language literally for years.

Faced with a choice between moving backward with a policy that is refused by the very people it is supposed to help or moving forward to give immigrant students a chance to succeed, the right path seems clear. Rather than condemning non-English-speaking kids to a life of missed opportunities, we ought to teach them the skills they need to succeed in an unfamiliar world, starting with the world's language.