Bilingual Education vs. English Immersion

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Bilingual Education Vs. English Immersion 1). Summary: There are more than 5 million public school students who have limited English proficiency, and the number keeps growing. According to CQ Researcher, majority of English learners enter school behind fluent English speakers, and most of them never catch up either in language or academic area. Even though the federal government supported bilingual education back in the 1960s and 70s, most critics in the 90s attacked bilingual education as being ineffective and politically divisive. Instead, they favored a form called “English Immersion”. On CQ Researcher, a mother named Miriam Flores tells a story about her daughter who goes to school in the border town of Nogales, Ariz. Her daughter speaks fluent Spanish and went to school where she had to learn English. Miriam said her daughter was doing very well in her first two years in school. However, she began having difficulties in her third grade. The is a reason for that she explains, “In the early 1990s, Nogales provided bilingual education — teaching English learners in both their native language and English — but only through the first two grades.“ Miriam also added that the teacher was the reason her daughter facing difficulties, the teacher did not speak Spanish and only taught in English and wasn’t interested in helping. Flores also mentioned that her daughter is very quite child even though the teacher said that her daughter talks a lot. She explained that her daughter talked a lot because she kept asking her classmate’s questions because she didn’t understand. This issue resulted in Miriam joining other Spanish-speaking Nogales families in 1992 in filing a federal suit to improve educational opportunity for non-English speakers. 17 years later, the case was still in federal court. The case was approved in 2001 and required Arizona to boost funding for English
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