Many stay seven years in bilingual classrooms, far too long. Five years, the current target in the Los Angeles Unified School District for moving students to English-only, is also too long. He cites as his motivation last year's Latino parent boycott of the Ninth Street Elementary School in downtown Los Angeles. The remainder speak nearly 100 languages and dialects, including Armenian, Korean, Pilipino, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Russian and Farsi. Zacarias says he wants children who lack English fluency to be tested in a way that would allow more pupils to start out in English-speaking classes while they are young enough to easily absorb a new language.
Research indicates infancy and early childhood are the best time to learn a language.
The majority of Latino children speak little or no English when they enter California public schools, usually because no English is spoken in their homes. To address this deficit, Washington or Sacramento should consider creating a new program, modeled on Head Start, that would concentrate on English language development in the preschool years. Zacarias says parents constantly complain to him that they can't get their children out of bilingual classes. Under current policy, to move into mainstream classes taught in English, students are required to perform at grade level in English on a standardized test. Bilingual education is big business in California.