Bilingual Education News & Updates: Why California Schools Choose To Expand On Bilingual Education From English-Only Instruction

According to Californian education law of 1998, bilingual education was ended laying strong emphasis on English as a medium of instructions in schools. English-only instruction would decrease the time taken by the children to learn English.

The current law states that students who do not speak English must spend one year in English-only class before moving to mainstream classes in English at their grade level. Reportedly, the lawmakers are asked to make some changes in this November. This would be a test to check California's attitude toward immigrants as they constitute 25 percent of the state's population.

According to state senator Ricardo Lara, who sponsored the legislation to put the measure on the ballot, said a global place needs a multilingual society. Lara added, "we have waiting lists at the small fraction of schools that offer dual language. Why would we not want to give them the chance to expand that? What we know now about teaching and learning language is vastly different than it was a generation ago."

As per The New York Times, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the state's largest school system is putting efforts in bringing in dual language programs. To change California's strong law on English-only education, the ballot has taken a measure known as "Learn Language Education, Acquisition and Readiness Now." This measure has been supported by California's teachers' union and school boards association. Along with them, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and Democratic elected officials are supporting.

About 400 schools in the state of California offer dual-language programs where students are taught different subjects in their native language for the first half of the day while the second half teaching is carried out in English. However, a huge proportion of the state's 1.4 million English language learners spend their days in the classrooms that use only English.