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On
Capitol Hill
Official English Bill Nears 100 Co-Sponsors
As of the August recess, the English
Language Unity Act (HR 997), which declares English the
official language, had attracted 92 congressional co-sponsors
including both Republicans and Democrats. The bill, which
was introduced in February by freshman Representative Steve
King (R-Iowa), is picking up the kind of bipartisan support
and endorsements of powerful committee chairmen that make
it increasingly hard for the House Republican leadership
to ignore.
"Because of Rep. King's hard
work, HR 997 is gaining momentum and we believe that it
will surpass 100 cosponsors soon after Congress returns.
Right now the biggest obstacle the bill faces is opposition
from the Bush Administration," noted ProEnglish director
KC McAlpin. "But with enough public support even that can
be overcome," he added. McAlpin urged ProEnglish supporters
who may have been holding back to contact their congressional
representatives and make their opinions known.
To call your congressman, you
can find your Congressman' s contact info here.
Or use ProEnglish's new Legislative Action Center Fax System
by clicking here.
Rep.
Bob Stump: In Memoriam
Retired U.S. Rep.
Bob Stump, one of the best champions the official English
movement ever had in Congress, died of a rare blood
disorder, myelodisplasia, on June 20th, 2003. The Arizona
congress- man served as chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee prior to retiring in 2002, due to
his health. |
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At age 16 he enlisted in the
Navy and later fought in the Pacific at the battles of Iwo
Jima and Okinawa. Stump was elected to Congress as a Democrat
in 1976, before switching parties in 1981 to become a Republican.
Known to his colleagues for his quiet, self-effacing manners,
besides championing English as the official language, Stump
was known as a fighter for veterans' health benefits, and
fair pay for the military. Stump also led the effort in Congress
to revoke Executive Order 13166 through legislation.
Reacting to the news of his
death ProEnglish chairman Bob Park said, "We are deeply, deeply
saddened by his passing." He called Rep. Stump, "a true patriot"
and "a man of quiet courage whose presence will be deeply
missed."
Bill to Revoke Executive
Order 13166 Attracts Support
HR 300 is a bill to repeal
Executive Order 13166 (EO 13166 - see story on p.1). Introduced
in the House by Representative Peter King (R-NY), the bill
has garnered strong bipartisan support and a list of 70 co-sponsors
as of the August congressional recess. To find out whether
your congressman is a co-sponsor, please click
here for information about your congressman, or here
to see a list of the cosponsors
Congress, which in theory
controls the purse strings under our system of government,
has special reason to revoke this unprecedented administrative
decree. Unless it's revoked, EO 13166 will force the expenditure
of tens of billions of dollars at the federal, state, and
local levels to provide interpreters and translations for
dozens if not hundreds of foreign languages. Simply put, EO
13166 is the mother of all un-funded mandates. Congress was
not even notified before it was issued.
Dispatches
from the Bilinguad-Ed. Battlefront
Bloomberg
Caves on English Immersion Pledge
New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg, throwing good money after bad, has
decided to increase the city's funding of bilingual
education by $20 million, in direct violation of a campaign
promise in support of English immersion.
An education policy
paper issued by Bloomberg's successful 2001 mayoral
campaign stated, "There must be total (English) immersion
for youngsters." Bloomberg tried to dodge questioning
of his flip-flop on the issue; "There is no easy answer,"
Bloomberg waffled, concluding that bilingual education
was "a very complex thing."
The Mayor's words continue
to contradict his actions. "I have never wavered from
my belief that if you do not speak good English and
have good academics that you will not be able to share
in the American dream the way everybody would like to.
I have never changed my view," Bloomberg said at the
June 25 news conference where he announced the increased
funding for bilingual education.
An October 2002 Lexington
Institute study found that more than 83 percent of New
York City students who entered bilingual programs in
the ninth grade were not proficient enough in English
to test out of the program after four years. It also
showed that even after nine years of bilingual education,
more than 16 percent of all city students had failed
to become fluent enough in English to enter mainstream
classes.
In 2001, the Advocates
for Children of New York along with The New York Immigration
Coalition published a similar report, finding that for
the class of 2001, "nearly one-third of English Language
Learners (ELLs) dropped out within four years" with
"fewer than 30 percent graduating during that span."
In contrast, the report noted that among former ELLs
who gained enough proficiency to go to regular classes,
60 percent graduated within four years-a higher percentage
than students who grew up speaking English. "This is
very sad because Bloomberg knows better," said ProEnglish
executive director K.C. McAlpin. "His actions are condemning
many innocent children to the prison of bilingual education,
from which they are unlikely to escape."
Mass Governor
Romney Vows Voters to Have Last Say on Immersion
Last
year Massachusetts voters passed a referendum by the
highest margin ever recorded in the state --68 percent--
requiring all non-English-speaking students to be placed
in English immersion classes for one year from day one
of their school careers. But this summer their elected
representatives in the Democratic-controlled state legislature
acceded to the demands of the state's politically powerful
bilingual education industry, and created loopholes
in the law that will leave some students trapped in
native-language classes.
Dr. Rosalie Porter, co-chair
of English for the Children Massachusetts warned that
a school district could manipulate the law by putting
one English-speaking student in a bilingual education
classroom and calling it "dual immersion,"
which are now exempted from the law. Kindergarten-aged
children, who are the most capable of learning a new
language quickly, can also be exempted in favor of native
language instruction. An exemption available for children
with "limited formal schooling" is another
huge loophole that could be applied to many immigrant
children.
Republican Governor Mitt
Romney fought heroically for the voter-adopted immersion
law. But his repeated vetoes were overridden by a legislature
intent on following the dictates of the bilingual education
lobby. Romney denounced the legislature for its "unfathomable
arrogance" in overturning the people's will, and
vowed to make it an issue in future elections. "English
immersion passed by an overwhelming majority. To then
create loopholes large enough that can be used to abuse
that direction is wrong, and it is arrogant," Romney
said. "As a result, . . . we're going to campaign
hard to do everything possible to ensure that people
who are in the legislature are individuals that will
follow the will of the people, …" he added.
Study links English skills
to Hispanic dropout rate
The high-school dropout
rate among Hispanics remains stubbornly high, due to
a massive influx of immigrants who do not speak English,
according to a new study released by the Pew Hispanic
Center.
While native-born Americans
showed dramatic improvements in graduation rates, the
dropout rate among Hispanic immigrants rose. Also, immigrants,
who are far more likely to drop out of school, make
up a growing share of the Hispanic population. Nearly
40 percent of fifteen-to-nineteen year-old Hispanic
immigrants leave school without graduating.
The high dropout rate
is closely related to a lack of fluency in English.
The dropout rate for Hispanic students who did not speak
English well (59 percent) was more than four times higher
than the dropout rate of Hispanic students who spoke
English at home (13 percent).
The report concludes
that American schools must do a better job of teaching
Hispanic youths English. California has seen its students'
test scores rise dramatically following the implementation
of the state's English immersion law and other educational
reforms. The state's dropout rates plunged over 30 percent,
while states like Texas and Florida where many immigrant
children remain trapped in bilingual education classes,
saw their rates rise sharply.
The data behind the Pew
report also suggest that the dropout problem is due
largely to continuing mass immigration. Among native-born
Hispanics, the dropout rate has improved steadily over
the last decade, although it is still relatively high
compared to the dropout rates for whites, blacks and
Asians. Hispanic immigrants, however, are nearly three
times more likely than native-born Hispanics to drop
out of school and their dropout rate is rising. The
report analyzed data from the 1990 and 2000 Census.
Vietnamese-Speaking
Student, Forced into Spanish Bilingual Education Classes,
Sues
From
Wisconsin comes the story of another non-English speaking
immigrant student who, despite his parents' strong objections,
was forced into a bilingual education class taught almost
entirely in Spanish.
Unfortunately, the student
didn't speak Spanish either.
Kiet Tran, 15, was brought
to the United States in April 2002 after his Vietnamese
mother married an American from Wisconsin. Although
he knew no Spanish, he was forced into bilingual education
classes taught entirely in Spanish for three hours a
day. His stepfather, John Gardner, petitioned the school
system to get Kiet removed from the bilingual education
classes, without success. The family eventually had
to move out of the school district in order to extricate
Kiet from the bilingual education program. The Gardners
are now suing the district and its officials.
Denver Students Thrive When
Tested in English
In Denver, Colorado, school
children are switching to tests in English, and thriving.
The number of students taking the Colorado Student Assessment
Program (CSAP) test in Spanish there has dropped by
nearly half over four years.
Bilingual supporters
had objected to letting Spanish-speaking students take
their academic tests in English. They said the students
would score lower, damaging their self-esteem and harming
their educational progress. Yet, early test scores show
improvements as great as 30 percent.
Denver's chief academic
officer Sally Hay told the Rocky Mountain News: "There
has been a great focus in the last number of years on
strengthening the [English language acquisition] program;
this is a natural outgrowth of that." Four years ago,
the Denver public school system got approval to reform
its bilingual-education program. The new plan, implemented
last year, requires schools to prepare students for
mainstream English-language classes within three years.
Maintenance of Spanish language is no longer a top priority
of the program.
Several other major Colorado
school districts are making similar changes, including
Aurora, which is second to Denver in the number of Hispanic
students enrolled. |
Non-English speaking
trucker charged in vehicular homicide
A commercial
truck driver whose English was so bad that he could not
communicate with police ran a stop sign in Slippery Rock,
Pennsylvania, this past July crashing into North Carolina
family's car. Killed in the crash were Kenneth and Janet
Kerr, both age 35, their two daughters ages 16 and 13, and
their 4 year-old son.
Authorities investigating
the tragic accident were mystified how the Bosnian-born
trucker, Ejub Grcic, 54, was able to obtain a valid Utah
commercial driver's license. Grcic is part owner of EH Transport,
a one-truck business in West Valley, Utah. Brandon Olsen,
head of training at Mountain West Commercial Driver's License
School in Salt Lake City, Utah, was equally perplexed. According
to Olsen, "You have to have some ability to speak English.
. . To be a trucker, you have to. It's the law."
But according to news
reports Grcic, who speaks Croatian, needed an interpreter
to communicate with police called to the scene of the accident.
He also needed an interpreter at his subsequent court arraignment.
Among other things authorities wanted to know why Grcic's
rig was traveling on a rural road just prior to the accident.
Police reports said the 40-ton tractor-trailer was far too
heavy for the road, which had posted signs proclaiming a
10-ton weight limit.
According to the Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Administration's regulations for state
driver qualifications, Section 391.11, commercial driver's
license holders are supposed to be able to "read and
speak the English language sufficiently to converse with
the general public, to understand highway traffic signs
and signals in English, to respond to official inquiries
and to make entries on reports and records."
"It's terrible
events like the death of an entire family in Slippery Rock,
Pennsylvania that makes us angry that the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration decided to withdraw its proposed
national English standard for commercial truck drivers,"
said ProEnglish executive director KC McAlpin (see related
article). "If the drivers of 80,000 pound rigs don't
know English, the lives of every member of the public who
use U.S. roads and highways are in danger."
Employment heaven
"There are newly created jobs all over the
country."
- Walter Bacak,
executive director of the American Translators Association,
commenting on the exploding demand for translators due to
the influx of non-English speaking immigrants and Executive
Order 13166's mandate for state and local government agencies
to provide them with free translation services.
The Washington Post, "Translation Transformation,"
July 9, 2003.
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Tracking
the Administration
Bush appoints multilingual zealot to civil rights post
President Bush has elevated
R. Alex Acosta to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil
Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Prior to his appointment,
Mr. Acosta served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney
General in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
Mr. Acosta's nomination was endorsed by a number of left
wing interest groups who credited him with playing a key
behind the scenes role in persuading the Bush Administration
to retain President Clinton's Executive Order 13166, despite
strong opposition from English language advocacy groups
like ProEnglish and many of the administration's political
allies.
Acosta-a Harvard Law School
graduate and the son of Cuban immigrants-was endorsed by
the National Council of La Raza, the National Asian Pacific
American Legal Consortium, and the Arab American Institute,
among others. Vincent Eng, legal director of the National
Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, said of Acosta,
"He definitely knows how to work the system in order
to accomplish things." Acosta will become the first
Hispanic to head the Civil Rights Division.
But Acosta's support for
compulsory multilingualism drew fire from official English
supporters who argue that discrimination based on the ability
to speak English is not prohibited by the Constitution or
civil rights law.
"Our common language
is the most important part of the national glue that holds
us together," commented Roger Clegg, general counsel
of the Center for Equal Opportunity. "It is important
for our government to encourage people to become fluent
in English and to be careful about removing incentives for
learning English."
FMCSA scraps English
fluency standard for truck drivers
The Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration (FMCSA) has dropped a proposal to
standardize English fluency requirements for truck drivers,
claiming there is not enough data to support such changes.
In 1997, the Federal Highway
Administration (which at the time was in charge of motor
carrier safety) proposed regulations requiring that commercial
vehicle drivers in interstate commerce be able to "read
and speak the English language sufficiently to converse
with the general public, understand highway traffic signs
and signals, respond to official inquiries, and make entries
on reports and records."
The idea was to update a
rule from the 1930s that made employers responsible for
evaluating a driver's proficiency in English. Currently,
there is no provision for roadside enforcement and English
proficiency is not a federal pre-requisite for a Commercial
Drivers License (CDL). In fact, CDL rules allow states to
give driving tests in foreign languages.
Public debate on the proposal
centered on whether therxe should be a definitive standard,
whether the rules should be more stringent, and whether
they violate federal discrimination laws. "The rule
as written gives carriers the flexibility to individually
determine if a driver has the communication skills necessary
to operate safely," the agency concluded. The agency
further said it found no inconsistency in the fact that
states are allowed to offer CDL tests in foreign languages
but carriers must ensure an undefined level of proficiency
in English. "The tests, training, and study manuals
associated with obtaining a CDL are complex," said
the FMCSA. "Therefore, the administration of the CDL
test in languages other than English is justified. However,
in actual operation on the highway, the CDL driver must
be able, based on the needs of the carrier's operation,
to have a sufficient command of English to ensure that safety
is not compromised."
ProEnglish chairman Bob Park
reacted angrily to the FMCSA's retreat on English fluency
standards for commercial truck drivers. "In effect,
the federal agency charged with ensuring highway safety
has backed away from its responsibility for fear of offending
multicultural interest groups, raising the danger to the
traveling public," he said. "Not enough data to
support the changes? Tell that to the authorities in Slippery
Rock [see related story], who can't
even talk to the commercial trucker who recently plowed
into and killed a family of five, because he can't read
or speak the English language," he added.
Official
Klingon?
When mental health officials
in Multnomah County, Oregon, made an earnest attempt to
implement Executive Order 13166 (see story, page 1) and
compiled a list of 55 languages for which they needed interpreters,
they included "Klingon."
Don't be surprised if you're
never heard of Klingon. The Klingon "language" was invented
in 1985 for one of the alien races on the popular Star Trek
series of television shows and movies. There have even been
three books published in Klingon: translations of Gilgamesh,
Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing. "We have to provide
information in all the languages our clients speak," said
Jerry Jelusich, procurement specialist for the Multnomah
County Department of Human Services, which has about 60,000
mental health clients.
The county's announcement
that it was searching for interpreters of a fictional language
native only to people who thought they were extraterrestrials
drew scores of derisive newspaper articles nationwide. Faced
with becoming a laughingstock, the county withdrew the announcement.
"It was a mistake,"said Multnomah County chair Diane Linn,
"and a result of an overzealous attempt to ensure that our
safety net systems can respond to all customers and clients."
Apparently, Multnomah County officials never heard of the
Klingon proverb,
"Motives are insignifcant." (English translation)
Arizona
Schools Superintendent Champions English Immersion
In a recent letter
to the editor of The Arizona Republic, Arizona's superintendent
of public instruction, Tom Horne, stood up for English immersion
and against bilingual education, on the basis of the results
they produce.
Citing his own professional
experience and a recent analysis in the Fall 2002 issue
of Harvard's Education Next magazine, Superintendent Horne
championed the superior results of English immersion classes.
"I have been in a number
of English immersion schools where at least 85 percent of
the students become orally proficient in English in one
year and fully proficient in reading and writing within
three years," Horne wrote. "Leonard Basurto, director
of Arizona's largest bilingual program, testified at the
[state] legislature that in a bilingual program, it takes
seven years for a student to become proficient in English.
A student who came to the United States at age 12 would
graduate from high school without ever becoming proficient.
That anyone would try to perpetuate a program that takes
seven years to bring students to English proficiency is
scandalous."
Horne, in citing the Education
Next analysis, pointed out that English immersion students
outperform bilingual education students by staying in school
longer, going on to college more often, achieving a higher
average income as adults, and by entering into high-status
occupations almost twice as often as bilingual education
students.
According to the analysis
by Prof. Joseph Guzman of Georgetown University, "The
clear indication is that any positive returns owing to bilingual
instruction are outweighed by the associated costs of delaying
transition to English. … For children who have not
achieved English fluency by the 1st grade, the clock is
ticking; not attending to deficiencies in English by the
critical age of five or six makes catching up much more
costly. It is imperative that the English deficiencies of
these children be fully addressed sooner rather than later."
The full text of Prof. Guzman's
analysis is available at www.educationnext.org.
Where's
the 'E'?
MA English Teachers' Rep says English
kills culture
MATSOL is an organization
of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) instructors in Massachusetts
who teach people English for a living. It's the state affiliate
of a national organization called TESOL, which stands for
"Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages."
Most TESOL state affiliates
have names like NYTESOL in New York, CATESOL in California,
or MITESOL in Michigan. But in a letter to the organization's
journal, TESOL Matters, MATSOL President Zoe Morosini explained
why there's no "E" in MATSOL: "Naming MATSOL
without the 'E' [for 'English'] was intended to be more
inclusive."
When the citizens of
Massachusetts voted by an overwhelming 68 percent margin
last fall to scrap bilingual education after decades of
failure, MATSOL condemned the vote and urged the legislature
to ignore the voters' will. Contrary to the real-life experience
of many of its members, the organization argued that English
immersion was not effective for teaching English. The organization
sent letters to legislators claiming that a similar measure
had "failed miserably" in California, even though
the test scores of English language learning students in
California have soared since English immersion was implemented
there.
When ESL teacher Tom
Griffith wrote to TESOL Matters suggesting MATSOL faced
an identity crisis as a result of the MA referendum, and
urging the teaching of both English and American values
to immigrant children, MATSOL recording clerk Margaret Adams
fired back: "The role of assimilation also has no place
in English as a foreign language instruction... The 'English'
that Griffith advocates is a killer because it destroys
[the culture of] immigrant children."
ProEnglish finds it
both sad and ironic that a group supposedly formed to promote
excellence in teaching English is so adamantly opposed to
the most effective method for teaching it, and so fearful
and guilty about the universal appeal that American values
have for people around the world that it would ban the very
word "English" from its name.
Hispanics
See No Need for Expanded Government Translation Services
A new survey of Hispanics
proves once again that the demand for expanded translation
services mandated by Executive Order 13166 (EO 13166) comes
from multicultural ideologues intent on fracturing U.S.
society along linguistic and cultural lines, and not from
non-English-speaking immigrants themselves.
A CBS News/New York Times
nationwide poll of 1,074 Hispanics found that most (48 percent)
felt the government was providing enough translation and
interpreter services and almost one in four (23 percent)
felt the government was doing too much in this regard. Even
those Hispanics who took the survey in Spanish felt the
same; only 21 percent of the Spanish-speaking respondents
felt the government should be doing more.
The poll also showed a sharp
linguistic divide between U.S.-born Hispanics, 79 percent
of whom are likely to speak either English only (48 percent)
or a mixture of English and Spanish at home (31 percent),
and foreign-born Hispanics, 71 percent of whom speak only
Spanish at home.
Reacting to the survey findings ProEnglish executive
director KC McAlpin said, "The Bush Administration and every
member of Congress should look at this poll and ask themselves
why they are letting multicultural activists force government
agencies to waste billions of dollars on expanded translation
services that nobody wants." He urged Congress to take up
and pass H.R.300, a bill to revoke EO 13166, the executive
order that forces government agencies to provide greatly
expanded translation and interpreter services (see story
p. 2).
In The Courts:
E.E.O.C. Attack on
English Workplace Rule Defies 9th Circuit Ruling
As readers
of The ProEnglish Advocate know, one of ProEnglish's
current projects is helping an Arizona couple named
the Kidmans who are being charged with illegal discrimination
in federal court by the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) for having an English-on-the-job rule
at their restaurant. The EEOC filed its suit in open
defiance of an earlier case, EEOC v. Spun Steak, in
which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals told the EEOC
it was acting beyond its legal authority when it brought
an almost identical lawsuit against an employer with
an English on-the-job rule ten years ago.
Recently, ProEnglish executive
director K.C. McAlpin had the chance to interview Ken
and Dora Bertlesen, owners of the Spun Steak Company
that was the target of the earlier EEOC lawsuit. When
a federal judge sided with the EEOC and said they were
violating the law because they had an English on-the-job
rule at their meat processing business, the Bertlesens
made the courageous decision to appeal the ruling to
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Bertlesens were
vindicated when a 9th Circuit Court panel overruled
the lower court. "The main difference in the two
cases," said McAlpin, "was that instead of
Navajo-speaking employees abusing non-Navajo speaking
[Navajo] employees in the Navajo language, at Spun Steak
it was a case of Spanish-speaking employees abusing
African-American and Chinese-American employees in Spanish."
But even though the Bertlesens
won their case and generated headlines across the country,
it was a costly victory; the Spun Steak owners spent
over $300,000 in legal fees defending themselves, none
of which was ever recovered.
The Bertlesens' story
and the fact that the EEOC is defying the 9th Circuit
by once again suing an employer for having an English
on-the-job rule is an example of the contempt anti-English
bureaucrats in the EEOC have for the rule of law.
Juror's lack of English triggers
new trial
The Wisconsin Supreme
Court has thrown out a rape conviction because one the
jurors didn't understand English well enough to hear
the case.
Although the man, a Laotian
immigrant, had checked "no" on the questionnaire to
prospective jurors, his answer was accidentally overlooked
and he was assigned to the trial for sexual assault.
None of the lawyers noticed his language inability during
pre-trial questions, nor did any fellow jurors mention
the situation to the judge.
The accused will receive
a new trial. |
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