Quick Post

I really need to update this thing for real, but it's late and I have a bit of alcohol in me, so I'll just say this:

There are kids whose first language is Spanish, but their parents chose to opt out of putting their child in the bilingual program. We call them waiver kids, since their folks sign a waiver. Anecdotally speaking, since I don't know the research, these kids are worse off academically (especially in language) than the kids who went through the bilingual program. Even though the bilingual program kids had pre-K through 3rd grade in almost all Spanish, their English is better than the kids who, despite speaking Spanish, were placed in an all-English classroom for those years.

That pretty much tells me that, flawed though the bilingual program may be, it is doing its job.