Washington
Seeking to promote alternatives to transitional bilingual education, the Reagan Administration has asked the Congress to lift the current limit on funding for English-only methods of instructing language-minority children.
The legislative proposal is part of an initiative launched five months ago by Secretary of Education William J. Bennett to expand school districts’ options in teaching such children, The Secretary cited high dropout rates among limited-English-proficient students as evidence that bilingual programs have been ineffectual, despite a 17-year, $1.7-billion federal investment.
The 1984 Bilingual Education Act for the first time allowed the Education Department to fund “special alternative-instructional programs,” such as “structured immersion” in English.
But support was restricted to 4 percent of total grants provided under Title VII of the law. Lawmakers reserved the remainder for “transitional bilingual education,” which relies on native-language instruction, normally combined with an English-as-a-second-language component.
The Administration’s legislative proposal would eliminate the 4 percent “cap” and “make the Title VII programs available, within the limits of the law, for any type of instructional approach which a local educational agency considers appropriate,” explained Secretary Bennett in a letter to Congressional leaders.
“The overriding purpose of bilingual education must be to enable children of limited English proficiency to become fluent in English as quickly as possible,” Mr. Bennett said.
“An array of research studies and local program experiences indicate that no one instructional approach is most effective in meeting this objective in all situations,” he added. “Without clear evidence that the transitional method is more effective, we believe that the restriction on availability of funds for alternative methods ... is unwarranted.”
Congressional Skeptics
This argument was greeted with skepticism, however, by Representative Augustus F. Hawkins, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. The California Democrat challenged Mr Bennett to disclose the results of more than 60 studies the department has commissioned since 1979 to gauge the effectiveness of bilingual instructional methods
In a letter sent last week, Mr. Hawkins told the Secretary: “You have stated several times publicly that no evidence exists for the effectiveness of bilingual educational programs, while at the same time you have offered no proof that English-immersion programs, your preferred method of instruction, work so well that the requirement for transitional bilingual education under P.L. 98-511 is not needed.”
“If you have any such proof,” the chairman wrote, “we would welcome that for our committee’s deliberations.
The department has declined to make public much of its research on bilingual education, and that has created the suspicion that the findings may contradict Administration policy, according to an aide to Mr. Hawkins.
So far, the Administration’s plan has generated little enthusiasm on the committee among either Democrats or Republicans, the aide said.
The Education Department, which was still seeking sponsors for its proposal last week, has found “a lot of people interested,” said James C. Pirius, its director of legislative-policy services.
He predicted that the bill would “definitely” be introduced this week in both the House and the Senate.
Immersion ‘Relatively Untested’
Lori S. Orum, an education analyst for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group, criticized the Administration’s proposal as “a move to de-fund bilingual education” in favor of “a relatively untested method.”
“Very little is known about structured immersion for language-minority children,” she said, adding that researchers have cautioned against extrapolating from the method’s success in teaching foreign languages to English-speaking students.
“Immersion is preferable to sink-or-swim,” Ms. Orum acknowledged, in situations where the diversity of language groups and a lack of qualified instructors rules out bilingual education.
“But most children are in a situation where bilingual program are possible,” she argued, because Hispanics, who make up about three-quarters of the L.E.P. population, are generally concentrated sufficiently. to make the transitional method practical.
“If we’re talking about new money, I have no problem with” Secretary Bennett’s proposal, she said, but few observers expect a funding increase in this year’s climate of fiscal austerity.
n his letter, Representative Hawkins congratulated the Administration for proposing to maintain bilingual-education appropriations next year at the 1986 level of $143 million. But he noted a Congression Research Service finding that previous cuts have resulted in the termination of services to 125,000 I.E.P. students.
Competition for Grants
Mr. Bennett said current law “allows school districts considerable flexibility in determining the extent and duration of native-language instruction to be used. This flexibility is not sufficient, however, as demonstrated by the demand ... for funding of special alternative-instructional programs.”
“Even with the 4 percent cap in effect, the department has received over 100 [such] applications ... in the current year,” he said.
According to Rudy Cordova of the office of bilingual education and minority-language affairs, the department has awarded $5.4 million in grants in fiscal 1986 for 35 alternative programs, selected from a pool of 104 candidates.
At the same time, OBEMLA funded 82 new transitional-bilingual-education programs chosen from 345 applicants, for a total of $22.8 million. Also, 173 second-year and 227 third-year T.B.E. grants were funded, totaling $54.7 million, Mr. Cordova said.
