Lesson 4: Bilingual education

Before reading Rosalie Porter's article "Twisted Tongues: The Failure of Bilingual Education," I knew there was a lot of controversy about bilingual education, but was still surprised at Porter's avid stance against it. She talks about the history of bilingual education legislation and how over time, due to lack of accountability and scientific proof supporting the program, it has stayed around far too long with little flexibility for schools to make changes that specifically suit their needs. Porter says that this program is ineffective and students are suffering for it. She says that limited-English students need to be taught English right from the beginning in order to be successful later on in their career and life in general as a United States citizen. Literacy in the native language should be a secondary goal, taught outside of school, if that is what a community wants.
I definitely agree with Porter that schools need to specifically address this issue with a program that is suited to their situation. Blanket legislation for one program for all schools does not work and instead of helping students, in many cases can be a huge drain on time and money. I do have some questions about her stance, though. She does not really specify the root of the problem of students not even learning subject matter taught in their native language. Is it possibly that the native speaking teachers are not certified in those subject areas? If that is the case, perhaps the program would work better if those teaching in the native language were also well versed in the subject matter. However, this could be a difficult requirement to fulfill for many schools. I also believe that lack of accountability is probably less of a problem now than it was 10 years ago when this article was written thanks to No Child Left Behind, who is now closely checking up on everyone almost to a fault. On another note, I have read articles before that support bilingual education with research based on things like higher math scores for Latino/as thanks to students being taught in their native language and lower self-esteem for those students who were in a full on English immersion program. Both of these findings seriously differ from Porter's findings. I am not really sure what to make of all the conflicting research. I guess I would just have to speak with many different teachers, parents, and students who have had a lot of experience with bilingual education.