A RECENT Boston Globe review indicates the Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) programme in Massachusetts, the United States, has largely failed in its goal: to quickly immerse students in English so they're ready to join regular classes.
Massachusetts is one of the states in the US that did away with bilingual education. In US schools, the primary issue has been how to rapidly get non-English speakers up to speed in English speaking classrooms. Educators are divided about whether immersion or bilingual programmes work better.
The issue first became a lightning rod a decade ago in California, when some immigrant parents and others protested the fact that non-English-speaking students were kept separate and taught many subjects in their own languages ?a method they felt kept these students from learning English as quickly as they should. A 1998 ballot initiative was passed, largely eliminating bilingual education from public schools, and placing non-English speakers in SEI programmes.
Arizona followed suit, and in 2002, Massachusetts became the third state to vote out bilingual education. Students who were once taught primarily in their native languages are now put in SEI classrooms where Spanish or other languages are used solely for clarification purposes.
But as educators analyze the results of the Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment tests, some doubt how well the SEI programme is working.
The Boston Globe review showed that 83 per cent of English language learners in Grades 3-12 still weren't fluent enough in English to join regular classes after a year, and more than half weren't fluent after three years.
However, Ron Unz, a California businessman who spearheaded the ballot measures, claims that over four years, the academic performance of 1 million immigrant students put in immersion programmes in California roughly doubled, while students who were still in bilingual programmes didn't improve. He bases his findings on California test scores posted online.
But Robert Slavin, an education professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, says such claims ?outside a scientific study ?should be taken lightly. Of the high-level research, he says, numerous studies have found that kids learn best if their native language is given an important role, and many studies have found there's no difference.
"Virtually no studies find that it's better to be taught in English only," he says. The most effective programmes, he says, seem to be the "dual language" ones in which children spend parts of each day in English and in their native language.
