Bilingual Education In Miami

While California debates whether to stop teaching school children in two languages, the school system in Miami, Florida is expanding bilingual education. This city at the crossroads of the Americas is expanding bilingual education under the argument that students will need to speak, read and write in English and Spanish when they reach the business world. The decision to do this almost seems natural for a metropolis where the top-rated television stations broadcast in Spanish, the top-ranked newspaper publishes a separate Spanish daily edition, many top civic leaders speak effortless Spanish and Latinos have become the majority. Educators in Miami, home to the first bilingual public school in the modern era, are baffled by the cultural and political firefight over bilingual education in California.

Nowhere is the controversy more intense than in California. On June 2, 1998 there was a vote on an anti-bilingual education initiative, Proposition 227. This proposition would end most bilingual programs in California and give students with limited English skills about one year of special English classes before placing them in the mainstream. To even have something like this on the Ballot in California seems very odd. California has more students with limited English skills than any other state. California has approximately 1.4 million students with limited English and about 30% of them are in formal bilingual programs, including some two-way programs. The most common approach in California is “transitional” bilingual education, in which students often spend more time being taught in their native language than in English for their first school years. Due to the large population of Spanish speakers in California I would think that educators would want to mock Miami’s style of teaching both English and Spanish.

In Miami educators view it differently than they do in California. They look at bilingual education as a business opportunity for students. Miami’s trades with Latin America amount to billions of dollars a year. Top business leaders say that Miami can not afford to do with out bilingual education. James F. Partridge, chief of Latin American and Caribbean operations for Visa International said, “I don’t give a hoot about the political aspects of it. To me, that’s a lot of garbage. I am interested in the financial well being of this community. We need bilingual people to survive.” Partridge is so concerned about the issue that his office gives remedial lessons in Spanish and Portuguese to dozens of employees whose weak bilingual skills don’t allow them to communicate with clients in those languages.