Posted on 04/18/2006 10:26:16 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
The state Board of Education on Monday approved options for textbooks to be used in classrooms through 2014, but rejected pleas from bilingual education advocates who wanted to include textbooks that address the needs of English learners while teaching California's curriculum.
Critics of the current options for schools - including Assemblywomen Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park, and Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles - wanted the board to also let schools use textbooks they said would help non-English speakers with vocabulary while learning basic subject matter.
Instead, the board voted 6-4 to adopt the recommendations of its curriculum committee, leaving English-as-a-second-language instruction separate from other academic subjects. The board's vote starts the process of telling textbook publishers what options the state wants when they develop the next set of textbooks, to be used in classrooms starting in the 2008-09 school year. Schools and districts then can choose from the state-approved options.
The vote signified a loss for newer board members who advocated reforming the existing teaching options. Education Secretary Alan Bersin, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's appointee to the board, had urged members to put off a vote until July so they could look at options he said the committee had failed to study.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
ping
I've been noticing this new "English learners" newspeak showing up in news stories lately. Somebody somewhere must have focus-grouped "Spanish speakers" and found out that it didn't play well. "English learners" implies that they're on their way to assimilation, which is the furthest thing from the goals of the radicals who think it's suppressing their culture to teach kids in English in the schools.
If they are learning English, why do they need their books printed in Spanish?
I guess two liberal groups are running afoul of each other. If they can't force Spanish kids to read CA texts, how can they teach them about how wonderful homosexuality is?
DNC
$100
This story was sent to you by: Shelly Spiegelcoleman
> Everybody read and write a letter to LA Times. This is as good as it gets. Shelly
> > The un-empirical presidency
> By Bruce Fuller
> BRUCE FULLER is a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley. >
> August 24 2005 >
> PRESIDENT BUSH'S love affair with the scientific community is awkward at best.
Ding, we have a winner.
Here in AZ the school system has been fined 21 miliion dollars by the court for no spanish learners program. A bill was submitted to the court and the Governor, Gas Can Jan said it wasn't enough and asked to the court to reject the program.
There's a kid in my daughters' classroom this year that is from Ethiopia. He couldn't speak any English when he started in their classroom, and he understood limited English.
He is now speaking English. It's not great, but I can hold a conversation with him. He probably speaks better than my daughter who has a severe speech problem.
The kid is still way behind where he needs to be for 3rd grade, but at least he is speaking English. He's starting to read and so some math. The school is going to retain him, so he'll repeat 3rd grade. They are also trying to get him extra help, but there are lots of hoops to jump through.
When my (now 13 yr old) son was in kindergarten, a boy from Japan, who spoke zero English, was put in his class in January. By June, he spoke perfect English and he was also teaching his mother how to speak English.
A friend of mine spoke only German on her first day of school when her mother put her on the bus to go off to kindergarten. By Christmas, she spoke like a native English speaker. (Of couse, this was back in the 'olden' days when common sense still ruled....)
Another friend is from Pakistan and speaks his native language at home so his kids will learn it. He wants them to learn English at school by being in English classes but, the school keeps insisting that his kids be in 'English Learner' classes.
It seems to me that they are only slowing kids down if they keep them in English learner classes for years and years. Sheesh!
The people voted to get rid of the failed bilingual mess here in CA and yet these folks keep at it trying to turn CA schools into Mexican schools. Add to that the blacks who see education as "white" and reject it, along with standard written English and you have a recipe for an irreparably fractured society.
Whoa! We can't talk about this! You have to be All For It, or you're labeled a racist. Didn't you know?
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