California’s Bilingual-Ed Mistake

In 1998, California voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative designating English Immersion as the primary method of teaching English Language Learners. Since then, millions of immigrant children have used English Immersion to learn to speak, read and write English proficiently.

Unfortunately, well-funded interest groups successfully waged a statewide campaign in 2016 to pass Proposition 58, a measure that would bring back Bilingual Education to California Public Schools. ProEnglish believes this measure will set California schools back 20 years and have a devastating effect on immigrant students’ ability to learn English and succeed academically.

The National Review’s John Miller, recently wrote about this issue:

California’s Bilingual-Ed Mistake

Voters replaced a program that was working with one that didn’t.

Kenneth Noonan speaks with the zeal of a convert. “I’m convinced,” he says, “that there’s a best way to teach English to kids who don’t know it: all day, every day, from their first day in school.” The founder of the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE) isn’t supposed to talk like this — and back when he still served as a public-school superintendent, he didn’t: “We believed that students needed to become fluent in their native language before they could learn English.”

Read more at the National Review