Silence from Oceanside and the Future of Bilingual Education

by Kenji Hakuta

August 18, 2001

A year ago when state education test results were released in California, we heard a lot about the miracle at Oceanside. Ron K. Unz, the author of Proposition 227 that banned bilingual education in favor of English immersion, crowed about results that showed dramatic gains in reading and math scores – for example a 9 percentile point gain in reading for second grade English Learner (EL) students over a two-year period. The national media listened -- including major venues such as the New York Times and the Washington Post -- and published prominent articles and op-ed pieces about Oceanside.

What made Oceanside so special for critics of bilingual education was its superintendent, Ken Noonan, who gave eloquent testimony to the salvation bestowed upon his troubled district by Proposition 227. And he carried impeccable credentials. For one, he had Latino roots, and thus hailed from a group that is the widely recognized benficiary of bilingual education programs. He also had began his career as an advocate for bilingual education, then reluctantly went along with the dismantling of bilingual education following the passage of Proposition 227. The fact that his district test scores improved caused in him an experience he likens to a religious conversion. He has since been going around the country as a spokesperson for similar initiatives in Arizona (which passed last year), New York, Texas, Massachusetts, and Colorado.

The test results for 2001 have just been released. Unfortunately for Mr. Noonan and his allies, the news from Oceanside for EL students is not good. The scores have stalled, and in some grade levels, they have even dropped. Third grade reading scores for EL students at Oceanside comes in at a national percentile score of 22, even below the statewide EL percentile score of 23. In 7 out of 12 schools, the reading scores dropped from 2000 to 2001, going against a statewide trend of rising scores.

• Click here for a Excel spreadsheet summary of some key results from Oceanside.
• Click here for a Powerpoint display of the key data comparing Oceanside with statewide scores.

Not surprisingly, there is silence on the website of Mr. Unz (www.onenation.org). From his perspective, it is embarassing news, and comes at a critical time in his campaign in several states, as well as at a key moment in the House-Senate conference committee on the education bill that includes bilingual education.

What went wrong at Oceanside? Actually, in my opinion, nothing. What was wrong to begin with was calling last year’s Oceanside test results a miracle. Oceanside’s test scores in 1998, the baseline year when California started testing its students using standardized tests, were far below statewide averages to start. For example in reading, Oceanside was at the 12^th percentile compared to a statewide 19^th percentile in 2^nd grade, 9^th percentile compared to 14^th percentile statewide in 3^rd grade. The remarkable gains in 1999 were accountable due to the old well-known statistical artifact, regression to the mean, in addition to the fact that the school system was getting accustomed to the test. Then the additional increase last year likely came about from something like an accounting trick. Oceanside kept a disproportionate number of high-scoring students in their pool of EL students, thereby increasing the average EL score. The real story of interest is that after three years, Oceanside finally managed to drag its test scores from rock bottom up to the statewide average for EL students. This is not a story about excellence, hardly a miracle.

The lesson to be learned from Oceanside is that successfully educating EL students is hard and frustrating work, as Mr. Noonan must well know. Educators and researchers have been struggling with this for well over 30 years. Contrary to popular wisdom, systematic evaluations show bilingual education to be superior to English-only approaches in promoting English reading. But that advantage is fairly small if it is not combined with other costly efforts to improve the school conditions, including better facilities, visionary and sensitive school leadership, and instructional approaches that go far beyond the tired refrain of the language of instruction. The challenge is all the more daunting because all of this reform must take place in schools in highly stressed conditions – high poverty, low parent literacy and linguistically segregated. Such is the reality of why it is so difficult to mount effective programs to address the needs of EL students.

Unlike many of my friends from the advocacy community who believe that Mr. Unz has done nothing more than stir racist and xenophobic sentiment, I am of the opinion that his efforts have actually provided some valuable service to the plight of English Learners. By putting an initiative on the books, he has sharply focused public attention on the failure of existing school programs to bring them to high academic standards. This year’s results from Oceanside furthermore demonstrate the difficulty and complexity of the job. The real damage that Mr. Unz has done is to offer a highly restrictive and ineffective alternative to the status quo, namely severe limits on bilingual education in spite of the evidence demonstrating its effectiveness.

What are the alternatives now for states facing Mr. Unz’s initiatives, and for the nation contemplating the future of the federal role in bilingual education? Clearly, the lesson from Oceanside is the rejection of a Proposition 227-like rigid prescription for English immersion to the exclusion of bilingual education. But far more important is the encouragement of experimenting with a combination of systemic efforts that go far beyond the debate about the language of instruction. One should look seriously at the implications of a widely respected decision in 1981 by the US 5^th Circuit Court in a decision, Castañeda v. Pickard, that laid down principles for what would be considered appropriate instructional practices for EL students. Such practices would be (1) based on sound educational research and theory; (2) implemented with adequate commitment and resources; (3) evaluated for effectiveness after a period of time; and (4) if it is not effective, the theory or implementation needs to be revisited. Regardless of whether a program is bilingual or English immersion, it would be prudent to use the principles of Castañeda to see how the program could be developed and modified in the service of effectiveness. Proposition 227 was never based on sound research, and while it gained national attention for why we should pay attention to the potential of immigrant students, it has not worked and should not be become a national model. The Castañeda guidelines may sound like common sense, but offer a way of guiding rigorous evaluation of thoughtful programs within a legal framework, and furthermore show a way out of the conundrum of political advocacy endemic to the bilingual versus English-only debate.

Kenji Hakuta is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University.

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