It's now the only method at Taft. Good teachers are important. But the program also works. We all share in the glory. By contrast, only about 4 percent of all Santa Ana students were redesignated as fluent.
Test scores are also higher than in most Santa Ana schools.
Taft students scored in the 63rd percentile nationally on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, while elementary students in most Santa Ana schools scored in the 30th percentile. But immersion cannot claim all the credit for Taft's success. Poverty typically, in research, explains more variations in performance than anything. It's a mistake to say a program with more socio-economically advanced students is better. Critics of immersion say academic progress is retarded when teachers only use English.