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.
Preliminary figures reported last week in Orange County showed that of the roughly 150,000 students who are not fluent in English, about 3,000 have returned to bilingual classrooms. Santa Ana Unified turned up the most requests, with more than 2,000. Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified came in second with roughly 1,000.
And surprisingly, other heavily immigrant areas such as Anaheim and Fullerton received so few inquiries that the schools lack the numbers necessary to form bilingual classes.
The information made public Wednesday showed a larger number of students elsewhere in the state returning to bilingual education.
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.
