"Official English" again

[P. Kerim Friedman]

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.