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Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, February 25, 1998
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Bilingual Waiver's Impact in Orange
The communities served by Orange Unified School District are now beginning
to find out that the waiver created to end bilingual education in OUSD
has done just the opposite. The waiver compliance requirements have actually
spread bilingual programs to every school in the district.
Compliance with the waiver can cause native-born,
English-speaking children to lose up to an hour of instructional time each
day. The waiver requires their classroom teacher to spend that amount of
daily time working only with the students in the class who need language
development help. This can mean that a class of 20 or 30 children is given
busy-work to do while their teacher works with just two or three children
who need language assistance.
Furthermore, waiver compliance requires that
the daily hour of language instruction be taught by a teacher who has or
is working toward a Crosscultural Language and Academic Development or
similar authorization from the state. Very few OUSD teachers have such
authorization or are truly working toward one. The state can rule the district
out of compliance and begin imposing fines and sanctions. Principals have
been left to deal with these problems on their own and to suffer the liability
consequences.
In short, OUSD's bilingual waiver is serving
no one's needs and is only creating real and potential problems.
JOHN ROSSMANN, (Teacher, OUSD), Tustin

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