Otroyo comments

There are many factors at play here that are NOT addressed in the article. Unfortunately, very little is mentioned about the Asian immigrant students learning English. In many, if not most instances, Asian immigrant students are not offered full-immersion bilingual programs (most are Spanish-English) yet the dropout rate is extremely LOW for these students. They assimilate and many go to college. Though many are poor, the families' work ethic and attitude toward education is what makes them successful. The expectation is to learn English and do well in school. Many of the families have waited and fought through the immigration process and have a strong sense of appreciation for the opportunities given to them. On the other hand many Latino immigrants, also poor but unlike their Asian peers, are afforded full-immersion bilingual programs, services both in the school and community in both English and Spanish, yet continually show poor academic performance as a group. The family attitude toward education, even with all the "extras", does not show the same eagerness for assimilation and academic success-even after several generations. One could argue that the very same programs put in place to help are most often serving as a barrier to their success. These programs while great in theory, are plagued with incompetent bilingual teachers and serve to only isolate these students further, delaying their English acquisition and their academic success. As the US education system has become a more test-driven system where everyone is expected to go to college, there is even more frustration since the DEPTH of English ability that must be acquired is just not attainable when a large part of the day is used teaching both concepts and applications in Spanish. I feel that many school districts also take advantage of this as well, promising wonderful bilingual results to parents--most uneducated but trusting to the schools. There is a lot of federal funding available for these schools with students in such programs. It also makes good sense politically while pandering to the (future) Latino voters. I will say that I have personally known college educated parents from Latin America have to fight the school district to keep their kid out of one of these programs. They knew of the poor results and knew that the key to success was in-depth English learning and assimilation with their new American peers. As many of the readers of JT are both bilingual and well-educated and/or have bilingual children, we know that it takes more than just a school resources to make one successful academically. I think the vast majority value bilingualism yet we must be realistic when it comes to the degree we can achieve it, especially considering the attitudes and priorities toward education. We are losing many students (drop outs), especially Latinos, due to these "feel good" programs which ultimately produce kids that are not academically proficient in either language. Here is a very interesting article from the LA Times a few years back. I personally liked it in that the kids honestly address issues from their points of view in a very matter of fact way. It is interesting to see the consternation shown by experts in the field and educators. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lincoln16-2008jul16,0,7098728,full.story