A year after the English-only schools initiative passed, there's still a lot to learn about teaching children who don't speak the language. A year after becoming law, the most obvious lesson from the exercise is that one year is not enough time to draw conclusions. To the surprise of many teachers, students adjusted quickly to English immersion.
Teacher training is crucial to student success.
Parents were active in choosing which method of instruction was best for their children. For the past year, Orange County Register reporters have documented the effect in local schools of Prop. 227, which 61 percent of state voters backed in June 1998. At many Orange County schools, change was hard to detect. Even before the initiative, less than 13 percent of Orange County's limited-English students were taught in Spanish. She struggled at first, said her teacher, Shelley Maxwell, but progressed gradually.