High schools throughout Orange County are struggling to teach basic subjects to teenagers who speak little or no English, while teachers weigh whether to flunk bright students who work hard but cannot comprehend the lessons at hand.
"The situation is just awful," said Newport Harbor High School history teacher Angela Newman, burying her face in her hands. "I don't want to fail them, because they work so hard and try much harder than many of my native speakers.
"They don't deserve to fail. But the truth is, they are maybe reading at a third-grade level."
Much of the debate surrounding Proposition 227, which banned bilingual education in most public school situations, has focused on the youngest students and how to get them reading and learning other scholastic skills when they do not speak English.
Less noticed have been the teenagers who are recent arrivals to the United States and land in classes on science, literature and history without understanding most of what the teacher is saying.
The high schools offer English language development classes, but at the same time these students are required to take the same classes and pass the same tests as native speakers.
"Those of us who enter in high school have a much more difficult time because we have six classes and six different teachers," said Ilze Mungia, 16. She moved from Mexico to Costa Mesa three years ago and has been struggling ever since.
"Why do people think that just hearing English makes you understand what the teacher is talking about?" she said. "Because it does not."
Leery of violating Proposition 227, passed by California voters in June, teachers often resort to the type of pantomiming used in elementary schools to explain complexities such as the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, economic theories of supply and demand, or symbolism in ancient Native American ceramics.
Whether students who speak little English will pass regular classes is often a matter of teacher discretion. Whether they actually learn the material is uncertain.
The teaching curriculum for these students varies by district; each is allowed to create its own program.
"I think this is a problem that all of us in education are going to be faced with," said Gloria Roland, coordinator of Saddleback Valley Unified School District's program for limited-English speakers.
