CHILDREN WITH LIMITED ENGLISH ABILITY

Many school districts are faced with the problems of educating children with limited English ability. While children from Spanish language backgrounds predominate nationally, locally a wide variety of language groups are involved. Most recently, American schools have seen a great influx of refugee children from Southeast Asia, for example. AFT recognizes the importance of providing special language programs and we agree with the Supreme Court's view that children shouldn't be plunged into classrooms without special help.

In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lau v. Nichols that failure to take positive steps to assist children of limited English ability constituted a violation of those students' civil rights. The court made it clear that a school district must provide access to equal educational opportunity for limited English ability students, and indicated that there were various kinds of programs which could satisfy this requirement. The Lau decision required no specific methodology that state and local education agencies must follow, nor is there any scientific evidence that one methodology is better than others.

The AFT strongly believes that programs which teach students to function in the English language as rapidly as possible are by far the best approach in meeting the purposes of education, the needs of society and of children of limited English ability. Since no approach has been proven superior, AFT believes school districts should be free to choose their approaches or to develop new ones as enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court. It is clear from the federal Bilingual Education Act (ESEA, Title VII) that the majority of the congress shares this view.

In response to the Lau decision, the HEW Office of Civil Rights has promulgated a very technical and confusing set of guidelines called the Lau Remedies which mandates specific programs of bilingual education, and places very stringent requirements on local school districts which far exceed the requirements of the Supreme Court's decision.

On August 5, 1980, the Secretary of Education issued proposed rules to give the Lau Remedies the force of law.

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers do all in its power to cause the federal government to make major changes in those proposed rules in the following areas:

The federal government should not mandate specific bilingual education programs, but, in compliance with Lau v. Nichols, should allow local school districts to employ a variety of programs to meet the needs of children with limited English ability. The AFT strongly believes that the federal government should not mandate specific programs of curriculum and instruction, such as bilingual education, on local school districts.

The federal government should make it clear that any programs for children of limited English ability should be transitional in nature and designed to assist these students to function in English as rapidly as possible.

The federal government should strengthen the proposed rules to ensure that children will be mainstreamed into regular school programs after there is no longer a demonstrated need for the children to be in the bilingual program.

The federal government should eliminate that portion of the proposed rules which denies access to equal educational opportunity by mandating non-certified persons to teach in public school classrooms. We oppose such a mandate and further object to the use of non-certified personnel in any teaching program.

The federal government should fully fund any program mandates on local school districts.