'English-Only' Laws in Education on Verge of Extinction

Education Week reports:

Just 15 years ago, bilingual education was banned in three states—Arizona, California, and Massachusetts—which altogether educated 40 percent of the nation’s English-language learners.

Now, amid the national embrace of biliteracy and dual-language education, those statewide English-only laws are on the brink of extinction.

In the past three years, voters and lawmakers in California and Massachusetts repealed anti-bilingual education laws, leaving Arizona’s as the last one standing.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman intends to push for a full repeal of the state’s “English for Children” law, during the 2020 legislative session that begins in January and she has support from both Democratic and Republican legislators.

Lawmakers in Arizona already dealt a blow to the bilingual education ban this year, cutting the amount of time English-learners have to spend in mandatory English-only immersion classes from four hours a day to two.

“We should be using evidence-based best practices and giving flexibility to school communities, so our [English-learner] students can more quickly pick up their new language and succeed in the long-term,” Hoffman said in a statement provided to Education Week.

How sad it is that we have children in the government schools that can't speak English and some people went them to not learn it?