Word: california
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Four California school districts had already asked the state to waive its requirement that a student be taught core subjects in his native language while he is learning English. But no request had sparked a protest as vitriolic as the one in Santa Barbara. The city's move last week served as an early warning for the fate of bilingual teaching throughout the state--and for the rise of a potent political issue nationwide...
...opinion surveys, California voters favor, 2 to 1, an initiative on the June ballot that would dismantle bilingual classes and replace them with a year of intensive English before immigrants are absorbed into the mainstream. The measure, called English for Children, is sponsored by Ron Unz, a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former G.O.P. candidate for Governor...
Fully half of the nation's 2.8 million non-English-speaking students in elementary and secondary schools live in California, but bilingual education has also spawned controversy in such states as New York, Michigan and Colorado. And it is a cause celebre among conservatives in Washington. "When we allow children to stay trapped in bilingual programs where they do not learn English, we are destroying their economic future," House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared this month. He and other Republicans call for a return to the traditional expectation that immigrants will quickly learn English as the price of admission to America...
Classroom teachers are sharply divided on the effectiveness of bilingual education. Research on the subject is hampered by the hodgepodge of programs adopted by local school districts, the inconsistent testing of bilingual students and a shortage of bilingual teachers and textbooks. For these reasons, only a third of California's students with limited English get any native-language instruction (mainly because of a shortage of bilingual teachers), making it difficult to blame Latinos' scholastic failures on that approach. Does bilingual education affect the 30% dropout rate of Hispanics nationwide--more than double the rate for blacks or whites...
That is David's account of how he ended up at Tranquility Bay, and it's at the heart of a lawsuit asking a court to order him returned to California over his parents' objections. David's case, on which a superior-court judge in Oakland is expected to rule this week, pits the civil liberties of a teenager against the right of a parent to decide how to raise a child. It also shines a spotlight on the shadowy world of for-profit "attitude adjustment" camps and schools. Some parents who have resorted to such programs say their intensive...