Bilingual education as we know it today came from The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 ("History "). This is also known as Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. "Title VII was the first federal recognition that limited English speaking ability students have special education needs"[and that] bilingual programs that address those needs should be federally funded" (Stewner-Manzanares 154). When this bill was created, many people were pushing for change because they saw civil rights violations in how the current school system worked. After the bill was passed, school boards and theorist devised ways to teach limited-English speaking students how to read and write in English.

In Keith Baker's book, Bilingual Education in Massachusetts: The Emperor Has No Clothes, he lists four basic types of bilingual education. They are as follows; Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE), Submersion, English as a Second Language (ESL), and Immersion (Baker 19). This paper was written to show that parents should have the freedom to choose how bilingual education is taught to their children.

Failed Theories:

Proposition 227 was passed in 1998, it "requires that all limited-English children be provided and English-immersion program" (Porter "the benefits" 4). This law threw out the old standard of bilingual education, which was transitional bilingual education. Before proposition 227 came up to a vote In 1998, many people were angry because they saw schools not reaching their education goals. Kids were going through 5 years of school without even learning English. Because of this, they were not able to grasp the core concepts their fellow English-speaking classmates were being taught, such as math and science.

It is dangerous for a school system to limit how bilingual education is taught. Some school systems have one policy that is standard for everybody; parents are not involved in this choice. In July 2, 1996, nationally syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin wrote about an event where 150 families in New York City sued their school system because "tens of thousands of immigrant children . . . have been permitted to languish for up to six years in bilingual classes, learning neither English nor other subjects particularly well" (Malkin 1). How can this happen? New York City, one of the major hubs for immigrant movement into America, currently has a bilingual education policy that relies on transitional bilingual education for a model on how to teach limited-English-proficient students to read and write in English.

Jim Cummins of University of Toronto theorized a way to teach limited-English-speaking children how to read and write in English. Transitional bilingual education TBE is based on some of the theories that Jim Cummins published. The theories state that "reading in one's native language facilitates reading in a second language . . . . [And] that children's achievement in a second language depends on their mastery of their native language" (Porter "Twisted Tongues" 3). In other words, this theory is based on the assumption that for a student to master a second language, he has to have his native language mastered.

Transitional bilingual education sounds like a good theory, but it has proven to fail in its goal to teach children how to read and write in English. A book written by Keith Baker and Christine Rossell, Bilingual Education in Massachusetts, looks thoroughly at TBE in Massachusetts. They summarized their findings after looking through a multitude of studies on transitional bilingual education. "After reviewing the results of these studies, we find no consistent research support for transitional bilingual education as a superior instructional practice for improving the English" for limited-English-proficient children (Baker 146). They found for example, in 60 studies, TBE vs. doing nothing, TBE was better for reading level, 22% of the time, 45% of the time it made no difference, and in 33% of the studies showed that doing nothing was better for the students. In contrast in TBE vs. Structured Immersion; 0% of the studies showed that TBE was better, 17% showed that there was no difference, where an astounding 83% shows that transitional bilingual education is worse for the children than structured immersion (Richman 10-11). These statistics show how dangerous it is to let 'the few' manage thousands of schools through their policies. It is sad when a school system like the one in Massachusetts, does not give schools the bilingual freedom that is needed in the best interest of the children.

There are groups who believe that an individual cannot make a reasonable choice. Therefore, those people believe that they are the ones that can make that choice. These people believe that they are the only ones intelligent and concerned enough to decide polices that affect the children they have no direct concern over. Only the parents and local school community has direct concern over individual children. It is very difficult for the few to direct many. It would be much more efficient and better for the children if parents have direct control over the education.

Parental Choice:

Before proposition 227, many people were against the way bilingual education was taught. In the Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1998, Bettina Boxall quotes people who, after not being able to learn English, "[y]ou really think you're dumb" (Boxall 4). With failed programs such as transitional bilingual education, schools must always be looking for success in bilingual programs across the country. Once they find something that is successful, they should have parents decide what to do. There have been successful bilingual programs.

For example, Dual Immersion is a program that proves to work better than transitional bilingual education with children in Helms Elementary in Houston, TX. In the Houston Chronicle, Heather Saucier wrote an article titled Dos Languages; Program encourages Bilingualism. She gives a story that supports two-way immersion, which is a form of bilingual education where students learn to write in both English and Spanish within the same time frame. She writes:

'I was scared to death,' admitted Dawn Wilburn, who struggled with last-minute jitters after choosing to have her daughter educated in a foreign language.But, the mother's fears have since subsided. [Her daughter] is now in second grade, and . . . rolls Spanish words off her tongue as quickly as English ones (Saucier 1).

With that story, Heather Saucier illustrates that two-way immersion (dual language) encourages bilingualism, while transitional bilingualism is harmful to the children (Saucier 2). She goes on to quote Patrica Flores, who is a dual language coordinator for Helms elementary. Patricia Flores says, "[t]ransitional bilingual education is harmful. It takes away a language. . . . Dual language (education) adds a language. Everybody wins" (Saucier 2). She later tells another story about Sergio Sandoval's daughter, "Sandoval said his children were kept in Spanish-speaking class too long and not introduced to English until the fifth-grade. He said he planned to put Karina, his youngest daughter into an all English-speaking classes. [That was his plan] until he learned about dual-language programs, he says 'at first, I saw it as an experiment. I didn't know if it would work or not . . . But for [my daughter] the main thing is to be able to read and write in both languages." Karina is now literate in both Spanish and English thanks to the Dual language program at Helms Elementary (Saucier 3-4).

The push for parental choice has recently been successful in changing a school board. The New York City Board of Education chancellor, Harold Levy, has proposed changing the current bilingual education policy. New York City currently has transitional bilingual education; he wants to bring parental choice into the school. New York City has a lot of limited-English speaking students. Levy says that there are "almost 160,000 students [that] are English language learners" (Levy 1). With this many students, it really hurts the school system when they use a failed program like TBE. Levy wants to clearly inform parents of the choices they have for bilingual programs. This includes a "Transitional bilingual program, Dual language bilingual program, Free-standing English as a Second Language program, and the Accelerated Academic English Language Program" (Levy 1).

It is wonderful that New Yorkers will have a choice to what school they want to go to. In December 19, 2000, the New York Times had a column that covered some of the failings of the bilingual education program in the New York City school system. Grim statistics were published that pointed out "that nearly a fifth of the students who enter in [the] kindergarten (bilingual education program) are still in [it] nine years later" (Tierney 1). It was reasons like that, which influenced the newly appointed chancellor Levy to take action. Without parental choice, the reasons for a child being in bilingual education may not be in the best interest of the child.

Politics behind inept programs:

We need to take the politics out of our education policy. One factor is the power that the federal grants give to schools. Sometimes, this may corrupt some individuals. For example, in a New York City school; Mrs. Perez, an immigrant mother, said:

"When I ask to take my son out of the [bilingual education] program, the principal refused," she recalled . . . "The principal said, 'Your son is Mexican. He must study in his own language. It's his culture.'" Mrs. Perez said it took her a year, and an appeal to the district office, to get her son into mainstream classes.

She does not want her son to speak Spanish. She is thinking in her child's best interest, she wants her son to be a successful man when he grows up. The choice of bilingual education should be up to her, not the principal. The principal was not thinking in the best interest of the child, but the best interest of the school. For every child in bilingual education, his school gets more funding.

Conclusion:

Unfortunately, there are people involved with policy making behind bilingual education that are solely there to push their political agendas and to gain political power. The focus of bilingual education should be on the children and what is best for them. It should not be on what schools get federal grants, or what some Professor in a remote university says is best for your child. The parent should have a direct role in choosing how their child is taught English.