Thread: Program Would Force English, Spanish

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UISD seeks new answers: Daring program would force English, Spanish

By TRICIA CORTEZ, LAREDO MORNING TIMES
01/24/2007
Email to a friendPost a CommentPrinter-friendlyDue to a large number of parental concerns, UISD officials expect to table an item at tonight’s board meeting that would radically alter how children are taught in school.Starting this fall, all kinder students would be required to take science and health in English, and math and social studies in Spanish.

This would affect all United Independent School District students, regardless of what they speak at home.

“I’m going to ask that this be tabled until we go to all the schools and have meetings and talk to parents and explain this program to them,” Board Trustee Pat Campos said Tuesday.

The program, known as Dual Language, would be implemented at all 26 UISD elementary schools. It would begin with kindergarten and progress to the next grade level, each year thereafter until 12th grade.

Language arts would be taught in the student’s primary language, as required by state law.

By the time students reach second grade, UISD hopes to have 50 percent of all classroom instruction in English and 50 percent in Spanish, said Pamela R. Juarez, UISD associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction.

All students would likely take the math and social studies portions of the TAKS in Spanish, UISD officials explained this week.

Some parents have expressed fear and concern over the proposal.

“This should raise a red flag for parents because I’m not sure parents are fully aware of all the details involving this drastic change,” said one parent who asked to not be identified since she is a local science educator.

Juarez replied that parents would have the option to decide whether or not to have their students participate in Dual Language.

“That’s a choice parents are going to have to make,” Juarez said Tuesday. “If parents want to deny their kids this benefit, then of course, we’re going to have to service their child in a traditional way and we will have a plan as to how we will do that.”

But Juarez expressed deep frustration with the public’s lack of understanding of Dual Language and its benefits.

“How can we change the limited, subtractive mentality of our community?” Juarez said.

“This program will help every student master English and Spanish, and our goal, is to hopefully, years from now, go multilingual and add a third language to our district,” she added.

Most UISD elementary students — nearly 65 percent, or more than three out of every five — are Spanish dominant, according to district data, and the district receives a significant amount of revenue for bilingual education.

UISD gets roughly $18.5 million each year from the state and federal governments to educate its limited English proficient, or LEP, students, according to district data.

Some researchers and bilingual education experts, such as Wayne P. Thomas and Virginia P. Collier, say Dual Language is the model that school districts with large numbers of Spanish dominant students should adopt.

For the past 10 years, the effectiveness of Dual Language has been tracked at several school districts on the Texas-Mexico border, namely Ysleta ISD near El Paso and Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD in the Rio Grande Valley.

Juarez, who has taken teams of elementary school principals to visit these two school districts, strongly believes Dual Language is the way to go.

“We truly believe it’s the best thing for all students,” she said. “We must graduate bilingual, biliterate and bicultural students to compete in the global economy. We have been hit with this message for a long time from members of the community and the business community.”

It’s “a shame when we can’t bring industry to Laredo because we don’t have students who are ready to take these jobs,” Juarez added. “Right now, our kids don’t have English or Spanish, they have Spanglish and can’t community well in either language.”

For years, UISD has primarily used a traditional bilingual education model in which LEP students are taught in Spanish with English as a Second Language, or ESL, as an added component.

By third grade, these students are supposed to transition into English, but some parents already complain that too much Spanish is taught during the school day, preventing their children from mastering English.

The Dual Language bilingual model is not alien to UISD.

For the past few years, it has been piloted at Col. Santos Benavides, Kazen and Zaffirini elementary schools with small strands of students who are expected to continue with Dual Language at their respective middle schools next year.

At nearby LISD, two elementary schools — Bruni and Macdonell — have incorporated Dual Language into their campus-wide curriculum for nearly five years.

Juarez said she believes parents will embrace Dual Language once they hear about its benefits, citing higher student test scores on the TAKS and college entrance exams, such as the SAT and ACT.

(Tricia Cortez may be reached at 728-2568 or by e-mail at tricia@lmtonline.com)

I am sorry... but screw that!

This is outrageous. We are not a bi-lingual country. Never have and never will be one.

Earth to Ms. Jaurez. Apply for a job in Mexico. The parents of this District should be screaming.

It's scary as heck for me. My children's school, one of the last mono-lingual schools in Waukegan is now becoming bilingual. This year they added a kindergarten, next year a first and maybe second. Some other classrooms are gong to be kicked out?!

Worse the principal said that she wants us to be a dual language program school. We are currently a fabulous fine arts school. The superintendent called us the 'jewel in his crown.'

I'm going to post this article on my town's site -this is the last thing I want. Can you imagine this -I have to move out of my own home town because there is no mono-lingual school left?!

Did'nt the President STRESS that ASSIMILATION in his speech last night.


Speak English, your in AMERICA!

Fedupin wrote

I'm going to post this article on my town's site -this is the last thing I want. Can you imagine this -I have to move out of my own home town because there is no mono-lingual school left?!

I left Miami years ago, it was hard, but I'm not saying what I did was right.