The state has a lot at stake in the proposed initiative. Enrollment of limited-English speakers has nearly tripled in the past 15 years and will continue to grow. If they fail to learn English, students will not graduate. They will also have a harder time making a living. But if they master two languages, they have a greater chance of succeeding in the work place, studies show.
Full immersion appears to work in some places.
At the Oceanside Unified School District near San Diego, children have been learning English and raising test scores at a higher rate than they did before Californians voted in favor of English immersion in 1998. We have no such obligation to maintain a child's home language. But years of research and school achievement results are spotty, providing little support for a single approach in every school. Wakefield Middle School educator Alejandra Sotomayor, president of the Tucson Association for Bilingual Education and an active opponent of the initiative. If anything, now is the time to support limited-English proficient children.