The number of public school children in Colorado who are non-English-speaking is now 86,500! 35 percent of the overall enrollment in Denver are classified as non-English speakers! They could not possibly be the children of illegal immigrants, could they? I wonder what percent of Denver's population are illegal immigrants. In the last decade the number of non-English-speaking Colorado students has risen 260 percent! These figures are from an article in today's Denver Post by Jeremy P. Meyer.
Talk radio guy Michael Savage had it right years ago when he pleaded for America to protect its borders, language, and culture. Those in power, in both political parties, did not listen to Dr. Savage. Republicans saw cheap labor, and Democrats saw votes, I surmise.
Meyer writes that Judge Richard Matsch ordered in 1999 the Denver Public Schools to offer native-language instruction in the core subjects for three years, then transfer into reading in English. It appears from Meyer's article, that Denver is not following the judge's orders. Instead, students are mostly in immersion programs, with little or no support in their native languages.
2 comments:
We passed a law in Arizona a few years back that insists on immersion programs and bans ESL courses in Primary Education settings. Whether or not it is enforced is unknown, but it was rumored that the passing of that bill increased the high school dropout rate tremendously.
Immersion works best for kids under age ten or twelve, especially when ESL classes are offered to help the laggers.
Older kids need dual classes (a lot of "14 year olds" in my son's dual language program were illegal Mexicans who were 18 or older but wanted to go to school).
One problem with the "dual language" programs is that kids who know English are shoved into them when they don't need them. I even had an Apache mom complain to me that her kid, who was merely polite/shy, was put into a Spanish class because she had a Hispanic last name...
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