The Education Outlaws

As confusion reigns in California’s public schools, the state’s English-only movement is spreading across the nation.

Now teachers and administrators on both sides of the bilingual debate may be stepping outside the law to back up their beliefs.

by Rachel Barron
photography by Janjaap Dekker
infographics by Johan De Meulenaere

Olga Alvarez, a teacher at Oceanside, says she struggles against her district’s strict implementation of California’s English-only initiative to provide her students the education they need.

"The school year began with nobody really knowing that such a heavy hand was going to be put into effect,” says Olga Álvarez, a teacher at Ditmar Elementary School in Oceanside, California. “And then when we were told under no conditions at all, absolutely none, are you to be speaking Spanish in the classroom,” Álvarez explains, it created “a climate of fright, of paranoia; a complete lack of leadership.”

That was three years ago, when Oceanside School District dismantled all of its bilingual classes and implemented one of the strictest interpretations of California’s Proposition 227, a controversial ballot measure that took great strides to provide English-learning students an English-immersion education.

Today, standardized test scores among California’s English-learning students are up. Proponents of 227, such as the measure’s author Ron Unz, are eagerly stepping forward to take credit for the improved scores. Unz and his English-only compadres point to Oceanside School District (where Álvarez teaches) as the poster child of English-immersion success due to phenomenal test score gains that coincide with hard-line implementation of Proposition 227.

Prop 227: The Success Story That Wasn't? Test Score Improvements Between Spring 1999 and Spring 2000

California’s SAT-9 tests show scores have gone up for all students, not just English-learners. Reasons cited are smaller classes and better test preparation and training. “English-only” proponents have claimed 277 pushed scores up, but fluent English-speaking students, as shown here, have improved at essentially the same rate as those affected by English-immersion programs. Source: California Department of Education

Doubling the potency of Oceanside’s role as a model of English immersion is the fact that the district’s superintendent Ken Noonan once opposed Proposition 227. Noonan co-founded the California Association of Bilingual Education thirty years ago, and once warned of catastrophe if bilingual classes were dismantled. He is now a vocal convert to the merits of 227. Since the proposition passed, “I’ve become convinced that English immersion, not traditional bilingual education, is the path to academic success for children who arrive in our classrooms unable to learn in English,” wrote Noonan in the Sacramento Bee in September, 2000.

As the English-only movement spreads to other parts of the country — while boasting Oceanside’s achievements — the movement’s poster child has been exposed as an unlawful delinquent. An investigation by the California Department of Education has found that Oceanside violates the rights of English-learning students.

Despite what English-only proponents want the public to believe, English immersion may not be the factor that led to California’s improved test scores among English-learning students. A recent study of California’s standardized test scores found that a sample of the schools spotlighted by proponents of Proposition 227 did not deliver the promised test score gains over bilingual education.

“In all cases, the average performance of all students at the schools implementing bilingual instruction met or exceeded the performance of all students at the [English-immersion schools] at most grades, and in both reading and mathematics,” says a preliminary review of the Spring 2000 SAT-9 scores, sponsored by the Diane Middleton Foundation.

After a long day of English-immersion instruction, Oceanside teacher Lynn Gonzalez reads “Los Briobones/The Scoundrels.”

Opposing a district that went beyond the law, Oceanside’s concerned parents and some outspoken teachers are striking back, asking people to take a second look at whether measures like Proposition 227 are the answer.

Contrary to popular belief, Proposition 227 did not do away with bilingual education. Parents can sign waivers and place their child in bilingual programs. But in Oceanside, waivers have been systematically denied.

Despite continued promotion of Oceanside’s model status, some of the district’s teachers have stepped forward and charged that the implementation of 227 left the district’s limited-English students without materials — such as books and curriculum — specifically designed for the needs of English learners.

“We were given no new training, we were given no new materials. We were just told we would teach in English,” says N. Lynn González, an educator who works as a team teacher with Álvarez at Ditmar Elementary in Oceanside.

Proposition 227 states that teachers must instruct “overwhelmingly” in English. Since the initiative’s passage, confusion has erupted all over the state as to how teachers should interpret the ambiguous term. Although some districts and schools interpret “overwhelmingly” to mean 49 percent of instruction should be in Spanish and the remaining 51 percent in English, González says her district’s complete omission of Spanish has lead to unreasonable stresses for teachers trying to communicate with Spanish-speaking students.

In response to Oceanside’s zealous interpretation of 227, a discrimination complaint was filed with the California Department of Education (CDE) on August 3, 1999, by the Coalición Unidos por la Educación de Nuestros Niños, a grass-roots organization of Oceanside’s immigrant parents, as well as teachers, and community members.

After a year-long investigation in conjunction with the federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the CDE released the results of its investigation on September 29, 2000. The 39-page report cited Oceanside School District for violating federal and state legal standards for English-learning students.

The CDE found that Oceanside “failed to properly implement district policies and guidelines,” and to provide an education that serves the needs of English learners. The CDE also found that the district consistently denied waivers.

“[The waiver process] was a total joke. It was an insult,” says Álvarez. “They never intended to grant any waivers. They were just going through the motions.”

Unlike many other districts in the state, Oceanside Unified has denied most waivers, which resulted in denying English-learning students access to bilingual programs. Last year, Oceanside rejected all but seven of 144 waiver requests.

In interviews conducted by the CDE, teachers who were involved with the waiver process stated that they had recommended granting waivers for their students, but the waivers were denied. When the CDE selected a random sample of eighteen waiver applications, the investigation reported that the CDE could assess only fifteen of the eighteen waiver applications, because, according to the district, the school did not keep documentation. Furthermore, the CDE found that “school staff often concluded ‘student making progress’ as the basis for denying the waiver.”

This alleged violation of the law was initiated by Oceanside’s Superintendent Noonan in a memorandum to principles and assistant principles dated July 30, 1998, the CDE report said Noonan wrote: “Some school districts appear to be looking at the waiver as a broad approach to maintaining bilingual instruction…. What appears to be clear at this point is that we will offer no bilingual classes in our district come this fall regardless of the age level of the students, based upon current interpretations of the law.”

According to federal and state laws, all English learners, regardless of English proficiency, must receive the same access as all California students to “core curriculum,” which includes math, history, social sciences and the sciences. With English immersion and mainstream classes as the only choices for limited-English students, Oceanside’s pupils found themselves at a loss if the English used to teach long division or the Constitution was beyond their understanding.

The CDE concluded that in Oceanside “students at the lowest levels of English proficiency had limited access to core curriculum.” In most cases the CDE found that these students were placed in two periods of English language development, physical education and mathematics. The report said that these students “did not have access to science or social studies courses required for graduation.”

Oceanside School District was given until the end of November to enter into a compliance agreement with the CDE that would show how Oceanside will comply with the law and provide an equal education to its English-learning students. Compliance requirements for the district include creating parent advisory committees, providing a written description for parents of all educational options for English-learning students, upholding the waiver process, developing core curriculum for English learners, and creating a process of evaluation to determine the effectiveness of programs provided to English learners.

In complete disagreement with the CDE’s findings, Oceanside is challenging the state’s investigation results. The district charges that the CDE’s report does not reflect the English-learner program in place at the time of the departments visit to the district, and accuses the CDE of blatantly excluding the district’s high achievement rates among English learners.

Noonan says that his district took ardent precautions to make sure that Oceanside was following the law. When Proposition 227 passed, Noonan says he called both the State Department of Education and the State Board of Education to assist him in accurately implementing the new law. Upon receiving inconsistent responses “I called our attorneys, to help us analyze the language of Proposition 227 and help me develop a plan to implement it,” says Noonan.

“The team that visited the District at that time had a bias towards bilingual programs and discounted and ignored the District’s responses and data because of their predisposition to bilingual education,” wrote Noonan in the appeal request to the CDE on November 2, 2000.

Noonan wants the CDE to come down and meet with the district. “We’re saying you need come down and take a look again,” he says, “because your review was far too late in coming and doesn’t pertain anymore.”

For Noonan, the proof of Oceanside’s success is in the test scores, and he plans to fight the CDE’s findings all the way. “We don’t agree with them,” he says “We think it’s outrages and we don’t intend to take it.”

The complainants are also displeased with the CDE’s completed investigation. The community Coalición has filled an appeal, citing that the remedies developed by the CDE do not include timelines or ensure remedies for academic deficits that have occurred due to Oceanside’s implementation of 227.

The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has yet to release its findings. OCR’s report is expected to be completed by mid-December, says Rodger Murphey, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education.

More Flexible Districts

Many of California’s public schools have faced confusion and difficulties implementing Proposition 227, but unlike Oceanside, some of the state’s schools give parents options and teachers flexibility to do what they think is best for a student’s education.

Freedom Elementary and Hall Elementary in Watsonville, California, whose student body consists of a large number of English-learning and migrant students, provides mandatory information on all programs available to English learning students (i.e. English immersion, bilingual, and mainstream). Unlike Oceanside, these two schools put the decisions into the hands of the parents. The schools oblige the parents’ choice, whatever it may be.

Bo Pressman teaches third grade bilingual classes at Freedom Elementary, where Proposition 227 didn’t change much because “most of our parents signed the waivers and are strong supporters [of bilingual education] at our school.”

At Hall Elementary waivers are also easily obtainable, says Elvira Cuevas, a migrant education teacher at the school. But in the structured English-immersion classes, she says her school still struggles with how to teach under the proposition’s confusing provisions. Cuevas says that this is not necessarily the school’s fault, especially “when the department of education doesn’t even know what a structured English immersion class looks like,” she says. “Every teacher has a different meaning. It’s too broad.”

With no clear guidelines beyond the measure itself, administrators and teachers around the state have been wrestling with the challenge of creating English-immersion classrooms that comply with 227.

“Since Proposition 227 passed, I think that there is a lot of confusion as to how things are to be implemented,” says Linda Frontz, principal of three rural elementary schools in the Escalon Unified School District. At times Frontz wonders whether her schools are in some way in conflict with the law.

Linda Frontz, principle of three elementary school’s at Escalon School District, sits at her desk with the district’s education codes. The pages in these binders are just the beginning of bureaucracy: not included are the binders for state and federal education codes. Frontz says when propositions like 227 try to implement a blanket-approach policy, it doesn’t work.

When push comes to shove, some teachers have chosen to defy their districts’ interpretation of the law. González says that district officials would regularly visit classrooms to ensure that teachers uphold Oceanside’s English-only mandate. “We laughed among ourselves that it was the language police,” she says. “So we would close our windows and close our doors on the occasion that we would read to the kids in Spanish.”

Despite inconsistent implementation of Proposition 227 across California and the lack of proof that English immersion works better than bilingual education, English-only measures are spreading. Arizona has just voted in an “English for the Children” proposition that differs from California’s proposition in that waivers will be harder to obtain and will not be permitted for children unless they already know English or are age ten or older.

Colorado is also on the hit list for an English-only initiative and has begun collecting signatures. The initiative comes down hard, mandating that English-immersion classes must be taught “all” in English.

Financial backing for the English-only proposition in Arizona has come from outside the state’s borders. Unz, who paid to put 227 on the California ballot, also whipped out his pocketbook to gather signatures in Arizona.

Superintendent Noonan has also been seen on the national front discussing the merits of English-only. Even in the face of Oceanside’s investigation, Noonan served on a panel for Latino Academic Achievement at the White House Summit on Latino Education.

As contention and confusion reign, is there any answer for what does work? “A real individual approach,” says Frontz, is the only approach we can truly count on. Frontz doesn’t believe states can legislate down to the classroom with blanket approaches. “And if you try to legislate that individual approach, no matter how hard you try, when it comes down to the school classroom, the door closes and the teacher is going to teach the way she knows the children will learn best.”

Until there is clarity on how to best teach California’s English-learning students, districts such as Oceanside will force courts to chip away the uncertainties that are innate in 227.

Deborah Escobedo, an attorney for Multicultural Education, Training and Advocacy, Inc. (META) which, along with California Rural Legal Assistance Inc., filed the community coalition’s complaint against Oceanside says, “I want their children to get a quality program that both teaches them academic English and provides them equal access to the curriculum. That’s the ultimate goal.”

“But as far as I’m concerned, until we can see a real difference for these kids in this district I won’t be satisfied and neither will our parents,” says Escobedo. When the Office of Civil Rights releases its investigation report on Oceanside, Escobedo and her clients will evaluate their next steps and decide whether to take the district to court.

“I think that we’ve come a long way. I’m optimistic,” says Escobedo, “in the sense that I know that the law is totally on our side.”

An Oceanside student listens and reads along to “Little Rabbit Foofoo;” a method used in English-immersion classes to help students acquire the English language.

© 2001 El Andar Magazine