The program is run by individual school districts and principals with only the slightest supervision from 110 Livingston St. Nearly one in four elementary school pupils couldn't test out of language-support programs eight years after they entered. Students in English as a Second Language classes fared significantly better. These disturbing findings should come as no surprise. Bilingual education treats English as an afterthought.
Regulations governing the program are byzantine.
The state mandates bilingual classes in schools where 20 or more students in the same grade speak the same language. The state Education Department makes this bad situation worse by failing to enforce its requirement that students be mainstreamed within three years. It routinely grants waivers to about 65,000 students, dooming them to a dead-end education. After watching children fail year after year, parents finally are beginning to clamor for change. I was sending her to school to lose one language and never gain the other.