Helping Immigrant Children Get A Fast Start In Massachusetts

The bilingual education law in Massachusetts will be challenged as being unfair to children on a ballot question next year.

The following question will be on the ballot, “Do Bay State voters want immigrant/migrant/refugee children to be taught English as soon as they enter our public schools?”

One of the chairpersons for the question, called “English for the Children,” is Rosalie Pedalino Porter, Ed.D., a native of Italy . She is a former Springfield public school teacher who taught bilingual education and then wrote about it in her book, Forked Tongue: The Politics of Bilingual Education.

By Izzy Lyman

March 2002

Dr. Porter: For the last fifteen years, I have urged the Massachusetts state legislature to modify the bilingual education law. I did this whenever a relevant bill was introduced. To this date, absolutely nothing has been changed. I believe the law has to be changed, and that is why I’m willing to work on this [ballot] initiative.

MassNews: The Bay State ’s bilingual education law is the oldest one in the nation, correct?

Dr. Porter: In 1971, Massachusetts passed the first bilingual education law in the country.

Dr. Porter: For a good reason. We had many, many children who came to school not speaking English who were given no help at all. Many of them dropped out; they didn’t finish high school. There was really a need to do something for these kids. And somebody got the idea that we’ll teach these kids in Spanish, while they’re learning English, and then they won’t fall behind. Within three years, they’ll know English well.

I believed it was a good idea. I came into the field thinking it was a good idea.

MassNews: In fact, this is what motivated you to get your doctorate at UMass/Amherst) in bilingual education?

Dr. Porter: Exactly. With time, it became more and more evident that the program was not fulfilling its promise. I realized that the whole basic idea of the program was wrong, while I was a Spanish bilingual teacher.

If your goal is to teach these kids English so that they can be in a regular classroom with English-speaking kids, and you teach them in Spanish, five hours a day, for years, and you give them 30- to 45-minutes of English lessons, they’re not going to make the transition.

And the whole idea behind the law was that the kids would make the transition. Another problem was that the kids were segregated, most of the school day, for years, with only Spanish-speaking kids.

Dr. Porter: Yes, for years. It should have been a year to a year and a half and slowly increase the amount of English teaching and decrease the amount of Spanish teaching.

MassNews: The children you taught in Springfield were mostly from Puerto Rico . Did they have much help at home with their studies?

Dr. Porter: They really didn’t. We found it took so long to give them the remedial work in Spanish, before we could teach them to read and write in English.

MassNews: Can immigrant parents say “no thank you” when educators want to place their children in bilingual education programs?

Dr. Porter: They can. But the way the law is written, the choice is that you can have your children in the bilingual education program and they get all the help, or you can have them in no program.

Dr. Porter: This is what I’ve advocated for all these years. Kids would get special help, but it would be in English.

When I saw kids who had been in my kindergarten class coming to me in the fifth grade and they were still in the bilingual program, and they still hadn’t learned very much English, I knew we were not doing the job for them.

I came to believe that the best way to help these children was to help them get English from the first day. Give them special help, and you can make this happen in a year, two years. But I found we could not offer that choice, because it is not in the law.

Even now, thirty years later, when other states are changing their bilingual education programs and having success with English immersion programs, Massachusetts has not been willing to change its law.

Dr. Porter: People are reluctant to give up something they believe in, and it’s easy to find fault – there wasn’t enough money spent, the teachers weren’t trained enough, the textbooks were not good enough.

But, in fact, the program has been tried for thirty years, and there has been a lot of money put into it. We have hired teachers from Puerto Rico who spoke Spanish very well. We hired ESL teachers. There are many books. However, the results are not good enough.

And these children are capable of learning, in spite of the disadvantages in their backgrounds. What we’re doing now is putting up another barrier: we insist on teaching them in their native [Spanish] language. Look at all the kids who come from all the other language backgrounds. What they do is help the children in the native language as much as they can and give them a lot of special English teaching.

MassNews: These other immigrant children get more English instruction than the Latinos?

Dr. Porter: Exactly. And, the parents in most other groups are on record as saying they don’t want native language teaching. They say, “We speak Chinese at home: you speak English in the school.”

Dr. Porter: In fact, that is the law of the land. The whole purpose of bilingual programs is not to preserve the native language; it’s to make the kids competent in English. The phrase is “remove the language barrier to an equal education.” That is the key to everything. If you are not removing the language barrier to an equal education, you’re not doing the job.

MassNews: Would you give the bilingual program in Massachusetts a grade of “F”?

Dr. Porter: At least a “D.” I published a study with my partner from Amherst College , Prof. Ralph Beals. We took all the MCAS test scores for bilingual children for the first two years that the test was given. The first thing we discovered was that, as a group, bilingual children scored the lowest in the state, lower than kids in special education. The overall performance was not good. You have to ask: What are we waiting for to change it?

MassNews: What are some of the benefits to taxpayers with replacing the bilingual education method with the English immersion method?

Dr. Porter: There will be savings, but they are in the category that you will not have to duplicate all the teaching materials (math, social studies, etc.) in another language or in several other languages. Research shows that students in English immersion programs stop needing the special help much sooner than kids in bilingual programs, so there are savings if kids need help for only one or two years, instead of six or seven.

Dr. Porter: We are three chairmen. The chairman is Lincoln Tamayo, who is from the Boston area. I am a co-chairman, and Christine Rossell, a professor at Boston University , is a co-chairman. Christine and I are both often called to be expert witnesses in court. We have a national reputation, both of us. Lincoln Tamayo is originally from Cuba , and he is the principal of the Chelsea High School . He’s on leave this year. He is very much involved with the Hispanic community in Chelsea .

MassNews: Millionaire Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley software entrepreneur, is helping you finance the campaign, right?

Dr. Porter: That’s right. He’s helping with the political advice, because he led the “English for the Children” campaign in California and Arizona . As a businessman, he believes immigrant children should be well prepared for the workplace, for college. He wants them to get into the American economy and do well.

MassNews: Like Mr. Unz, you consider yourself an integrationist, not a segregationist.

Dr. Porter: Integrationist is a good word. And another word that’s used, but it’s supposed to be a bad word – assimilation.

Dr. Porter: We have something we call “multiculturalism,” and that means we’re supposed to take great pride in our culture. Yes, that’s fine, but not to the point where we separate ourselves from each other.

There’s nothing worse than feeling like an outsider when you come to a new country. Of course, things are going to change. If you don’t want anything to change, stay home. Once you cross a border, your family is going to change to some degree.

MassNews: Is there anything else you would like to tell Massachusetts News readers?

Dr. Porter: I have derived a great deal of satisfaction from my work as a teacher, scholar, advocate, and troublemaker. I have had so much positive feedback from people across the country who have called me or written me a note telling me, “I admire you for speaking out. I cannot say anything or I might lose my job or I might be called a racist.”

I also hope this campaign could be carried out on a civilized level. If we assume that all of us care about improving the education of immigrant children, but we see it in different ways, then we can argue the facts, the research. But not impugn each other’s motives; call each other names. I hope it will be a civilized debate and it will educate the public. Then let the public vote.

By Izzy Lyman March 2002

By Izzy Lyman

March 2002