Overhauling Bilingual Education

by Mayor Rudy Giuliani

New York City is the gateway for thousands of immigrants each year, and immigration has long been a source of our city’s greatest strength. Immigrants come here with a dream of freedom and success, but their best chance of being successful in this country is by becoming as proficient as possible in English. Education is the ladder of success for immigrants, it is the fast track to the American dream.

It is essential that we do everything possible to give the children of immigrants every chance to succeed. Recently, the Board of Education took a step in the right direction by adopting reforms that create an English immersion program and empower parents to choose between traditional bilingual instruction and English immersion.

The sad reality is that more than half of our non-English-speaking students do not learn enough English in three years of bilingual education to move into mainstream classes. City schools have historically offered two bilingual models: a traditional program where students are taught in the language they speak, and a limited immersion program where students receive up to three hours of English instruction each day.

The Board of Education reports that English immersion works best for young students. According to their data, 84 percent of those enrolled in kindergarten exit within three years. In contrast, traditional bilingual programs have a far lower success rate.

Therefore, if parents of non-English-speaking children want them to enter mainstream classes as quickly as possible, they should choose English immersion. But until now, they have not had that choice. Instead, such children were automatically enrolled in bilingual programs, from which parents had to take affirmative steps to remove them. Even more incredible was the absence in our system of a true English immersion model, where students learn to speak English as quickly as possible.

The new plan is based largely on a report by the Mayor’s Task Force on Bilingual Education, of which Chancellor Harold Levy was a member. The Board of Education has adopted the following reforms:

In addition to the traditional bilingual instruction, an English immersion program will be created.

Parents will be empowered to make informed choices about which program is best for their child. They will be able to choose whether to place their children in bilingual or English immersion programs.

Students mired in bilingual education will get special instruction to speed them into mainstream classes: The City has budgeted $9 million for Project English, high-intensity English classes after school and on every weekend during the school year.

Children will be expected to meet and beat the state standard of exiting bilingual programs within three years.

More resources will be devoted to recruiting and training bilingual teachers.

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