"Official English" again

[peterson]

We've been through all this before, at least twice, on this list.  The reports
that discredit bilingual education are usually based, as the Lexington report
is, on administrative reports by schools, not on studies of outcomes or
teaching techniques.

It is true, as the Lexington Report alleges, that underfunded schools often
use their bilingual funds for purposes other than bilingual education.  When I
taught at Berendo Jr. High School in LA years ago, nearly every class had a
low-paid Spanish-speaking aide, and we had weekly visits from Korean, Chinese
and other speakers from UCLA.  That was "personnel" charges.

The rest of the money went to pay for paper, mimeograph supplies, overhead
projector sheets, staples and so forth (what I presume the Lexington report is
calling "fringe."  I had friends at neighboring Virgil Jr. High (where most
students spoke AAVE and so did not get bilingual funds) and I used to smuggle
them supplies, which otherwise they would have had to pay for out of pocket!
But to go from "funds for bilingual education are often mis-spent" to
"bilingual education has been a disaster" assumes that spending and teaching
can be neatly equated.

Besides, those funds made Berendo such a pleasant place that we had almost no
absenteeism.  Kids could come to the school and be warm, feel safe, be fed,
and interact with peers who spoke any of a dozen different languages.  An
ethnographic study of the school might be able to consider how that atmosphere
allowed us to be the only junior high school in the LA unified school district
whose test scores were holding steady rather than declining.

Bottom line: I'd attack the report on its data.  Would we attempt to
understand how democracy works or does not work by reading annual budgets?

Mark

Mark Allen Peterson
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Studies
Miami University
Oxford, OH  45056


>===== Original Message From "P. Kerim Friedman" <kerim.list at oxus.net> =====
>Found Something!!!
>
>This letter to the editor contains a URL linking to a report which
>supposedly discredits the Lexington Institute report.
>
>Here is the link to the letter:
>
>http://www.azusausd.k12.ca.us/bilingual/pdf%5CKrashen123.pdf
>
>And here is the link to the Report:
>
>http://www.prldef.org/policy.htm
>
>Here is the letter and the Daily News story it referred to:
>
>From: "Stephen Krashen" <krashen at usc.edu>
>To: <Recipient List Suppressed:;>
>Subject: bilingual education: the real story
>Date: Friday, November 29, 2002 12:06 PM
>Sent to the New York Daily News, November 29
>
>If anybody ever suspected bias in the Daily News against bilingual
>education, "Report slams bilingual ed," Nov 29, should confirm it.
>The Daily News accepted the claims of the Lexington Institute as
>valid, an organization with a history of anti-bilingual education
>bias. The Daily News gave little space to the Puerto Rican Legal
>Defense and Education Fund report, written by Shelley Rappaport. The
>Daily News failed to mention that the Rappaport report is thoroughly
>researched and that it includes evidence from two New York City Board
>of Education reports showing that bilingual education has been
>effective. And the Daily News missed the real story: Rappaport
>provides hard data showing that recent reforms have done nothing to
>improve the ESL and bilingual programs that serve most English
>learners in New York City, and have done little to halt practices
>known to be ineffective. The Rappaport report contains clear
>recommendations for reform and is available on the internet
>(http://www.prldef.org/policy.htm). The Lexington report is not
>currently available on the internet.
>
>Stephen Krashen
>
>
>New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
>
>Report slams bilingual ed
>
>By JOE WILLIAMS
>DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
>
>Friday, November 29th, 2002
>Non-English-speaking students in the city's bilingual education
>programs are being exposed to Broadway shows and dance classes - but
>not enough English, a new report charges.
>
>"English learners in New York City public schools face increasingly
>desperate odds," said Don Soifer, executive vice president of the
>Washington-based Lexington Foundation.
>
>The study of 58 bilingual programs found administrators consistently
>waste time and money on planning and extracurricular activities.
>The report was based on federal grant applications from 1999 to the
>present.
>One Brooklyn school, Intermediate School 171, didn't use any of its
>first-year $175,000 bilingual education grant on teaching. Instead,
>the Cypress Hills school said in its 2000-01 application that it
>planned to spend $72,000 on personnel, $4,500 on travel and $26,000
>on unspecified "fringe."
>
>Meanwhile, most programs don't give out enough information to
>determine whether they are successes or failures, the conservative
>think-tank determined.