SCHOOL MATTERS: Texas Lesson – Educators Embrace Bilingualism
New America Media, Commentary, Bruce Fuller, Posted: May 01, 2007
Editor’s Note: As Washington lawmakers debate the revision of the federal No Child Left Behind policy, California could stand to take some notes from tough-talking Texas. The state has defied partisan politics and embraced early-childhood education and bilingual education. Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley professor of education and public policy, is author of the new book, Standardized Childhood (Stanford University Press).
AUSTIN – They grow up inside a fort named Bliss, set on the brown flatlands of El Paso, but few children from its blue-collar families will reach educational nirvana.
Still, four-year-old Sydney Walters has much to teach congressional leaders back in Washington, as they begin to dissect what’s gone so terribly wrong with the implementation of No Child Left Behind.
Reading scores have drifted lower across the nation since President Bush approved the ‘No Child’ reforms in 2002, containing the most bewildering set of school rules ever pressed by the Congress. In some states, including California and Texas, gaps in achievement among ethnic groups remain unchanged or have grown wider. Ten Democratic senators announced last month that staying the course on federal school reforms, as President Bush is urging, is plainly unacceptable.
But back in Texas school reform begins with young children and scaffolds-up from preschoolers’ own home language.
In El Paso, Sydney is joined by an equal count of Spanish-speaking youngsters who attend a fully bilingual classroom at Logan Elementary School.
El Paso educators have supported bilingual preschool and kindergarten classrooms for over two decades. State law in Texas requires that if a community demands bilingual education, the district must provide it. In recent years, bilingual programs expanded throughout the state. “The main core is taught in the native language,” said teacher Elizabeth Hout, “their letters, shapes, and colors.”
Sydney timidly reports that she likes the “toys and my friends” at preschool. She’s especially proud of completing a 58-piece dinosaur puzzle.
Children don’t even feel Bush’s No Child policies until they reach third grade – long after children’s gaps in learning are deeply carved. In vivid contrast to No Child, Austin lawmakers and Gov. Rick Perry have embraced this strategy of starting early to narrow early gaps in learning. New incentive grants to school districts are boosting preschool spaces for working-class families, building from a generation of evidence that the early-appearing chasm in children’s school readiness can be effectively narrowed with preschool.
Republican moderates are backing Democrats here in Austin in a cooperative push to equalize access to early education, independent of all the Byzantine rules handed down from Washington under the No Child law. This isn’t spurred simply by altruism or a sudden alliance with Latino voters. Almost one-third of the state’s children now grow up in homes where Spanish or another non-English language is spoken.
“In Texas it’s a business argument,” says Sandy Kress, Austin lawyer and former Bush education advisor. “If we don’t get these kids up to snuff, we’re gonna be dead in the water.”
Instead of focusing on the youngest students, Bush prefers to mete out tough love to teenagers by simply testing them more often. How this will motivate teens being left behind, or transform high school into more invigorating places, remains a mystery under the White House plan. It’s like reforming health care by taking the patients’ temperatures more frequently.
Nor are Texas politicians obsessed with looking tough on schools, eager to extract something from the hide of teachers, as with the tenor of rhetoric back in Washington. Instead, Texas is investing mightily in upgrading the skills of preschool teachers. It’s rigor with resources.
Teachers are not stigmatized and pummeled by far-away politicians. Rather, teachers are pulled together by Susan Landry, a determined pediatrician at the University of Texas, Houston. To win preschool expansion grants, schools must agree to work with Landry’s classroom mentors, who offer fresh ways for sparking the imaginations and pre-literacy skills of young children.
Austin reforms are nurturing a mixed market of preschools, including a colorful blend run by churches, community groups, and the public schools. This resembles the feisty diversity of charter schools. But this comes with grassroots accountability – as university teams steadily collect data from inside classrooms to assess how teaching innovations, staff training levels, and public or private rendition of preschool variably boost children’s learning curves.
Oddly, in Texas, where cowboys still reign, Republican and Democratic leaders are working to nurture stronger teachers, with respect and resources.
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User Comments
Prof on May 03, 2007 at 19:04:01 said:
You fail to recognize that there is an equal amount of literature and studies that validate the success of bilingual education. So-called \\\"Bilingual Education\\\" has failed in the USA for decades because, in fact, the majority of school districts fail to implement a true bilingual program. Rather, districts promote transitional bilingualism. A program that almost always results in failure for both the students and the disctricts in the long run.
Will on May 01, 2007 at 19:04:12 said:
This article fails to address years of research and real world examples that prove bilingual education has failed. 1/3 the population of D.C. and over 50% of the population of LA is illiterate. Teaching children two languages when they are not proficient in one language only adds to the problems we already face.
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