large increases in segregation in the West, the nation’s first predominantly minority
area in terms of public school enrollment (Orfield, 2004).
Segregation is strongly associated with poverty for all groups: Nearly 90 percent
of intensely segregated Black and Latino schools have student bodies with concen-
trated poverty (Orfield, 2004). Concentrated poverty means students with worse
health care, lower nutrition, less-educated parents, more frequent moves, weaker
preschool skills, and often limited English skills. They have two strikes against them
in their quest for educational excellence already, and then they must contend with
outdated textbooks, inadequate facilities, overcrowded classrooms, and, often,
inexperienced, uncredentialed teachers.Bilingual Education
Up to the 1960s, public education in the United States was always conducted in En-
glish (except for classes designed to teach foreign languages). Children were not
allowed to use another language in the classroom, and often they were punished for
speaking another language in the hallways or in the schoolyard. Immigrants, Native
Americans, and others who came to school with poor or no English were lost.
In 1968, Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act, asserting that these chil-
dren were being denied equal access to education and that school districts should “take
affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency.” These steps included courses in
ESL (English as a second language) and often classroom instruction in the student’s
native language on the primary level.
In recent years, critics of bilingual education have argued that the programs are
costly and inefficient; that there simply aren’t enough qualified teachers fluent in
Navajo, Somali, and Thai to go around; and that students tend to do poorly in tests
of both English and their native language. But often the question boils down to melt-
ing pot versus multiculturalism. Should everyone be learning English as quickly as pos-
sible, or is there room for Navajo, Somali, and Thai in our schools and in our society?
Many researchers have concluded that bilingual education helps students to learn
English. A long-awaited, federally commissioned report was supposed to summarize
existing data to determine whether bilingual education helps students who speak other
languages to read English, but its release has been cancelled by the government. It is
known that the researchers involved conclude that it helps (New York Times,2005).
While they don’t offer instruction inother languages, other countries around the
world do teach languages other than the native tongue beginning early. Denmark has
compulsory second language learning at age 11. In Sweden, it begins in the lower
grades. France is initiating second language training for children under 5. But in the
United States, despite increasing domestic diversity, globalism, and children’s early
language-acquisition abilities, language education remains weak.
Maybe it is a matter of globalization. No longer is German the language of
science or French the language of the arts. No longer is Russian the other “big” lan-
guage, the way it was during the Cold War era. Now English is the universal second
language. Whether you live in Beijing or New Delhi, Caracas or Rome, chances are
you either speak English or are scrambling to learn. Thus, Americans wonder, why
learn their language, when they are learning ours?Tracking
Tracking,or grouping students according to their ability, is common in American
schools. Some schools do not have formal tracking, but virtually all have mechanisms568 CHAPTER 17EDUCATION