After a one-month stint in English-intensive classes required by a new state law, tens of thousands of California students with limited English skills are heading back into bilingual education this fall at the request of their parents.
Close to 12,000 of those students are in the Los Angeles Unified School District, data provided to The Times on Wednesday show.
Though sizable, that number pales next to the about 107,000 Los Angeles students who were in formal bilingual classes before voters last June approved Proposition 227. Many of the students who are enrolled in English "immersion" classes actually get substantial help in their native languages.
Districts in Oxnard, Pomona, San Jose and elsewhere report far heavier streams of limited-English students--up to 80% and 90% in some cases--flowing back into hastily formed bilingual classrooms. There, stories can once again be read as cuentos and mathematics and science taught as matematica y ciencia.
The initial data show Proposition 227 has hit bilingual education much like a tornado hopscotching through a subdivision, obliterating some programs and leaving others virtually untouched.
The number of students returning to bilingual education statewide--most of them Spanish-speaking--is large enough to belie the assumption of many voters and pundits that Proposition 227 would erase a method of teaching that for decades has attracted fierce critics and stubborn loyalists.
Supporters of the proposition had campaigned on the slogan "Let's teach English to all of California's children and end bilingual education by June 1998."
School administrators, most of whom opposed the ballot measure, say the return to bilingual classrooms is entirely consistent with the new law. While the proposition requires schools to teach students in English, it also allows parents to pull children out of English immersion classrooms after 30 days under certain circumstances.
Complex Aftermath of Prop. 227
As often happens when the broad strokes of politics give way to the ambiguities of law and administration, the aftermath of Proposition 227 has proved complex. Bilingual education has certainly not ended in California, interviews and records show, nor will it any time soon.
"There is room in our schools for bilingual education programs and English language acquisition programs," said Forrest Ross, a Los Angeles school official overseeing implementation of Proposition 227. "And we're seeing this happen. They're side by side in schools."
