You are correct that teaching foreign-born children that they do not need to learn English would be a huge mistake. However you are completely wrong if you think that is what happens at Amigos.
Rather than just give you my own opinion and experience as a parent to support this, here's a little data, from the DOE web site:
Grade 7 ELA MCAS Results for 2007, Hispanic / Latino students (shown
as percentages for Amigos / Cambridge / statewide, in that order):
Any way you want to slice this data, Hispanic / Latino students at Amigos are clearly doing better on this test *of English academic ability* than their counterparts elsewhere in Cambridge or in Massachusetts. The percentage of students demonstrating proficiency in English (proficient + advanced) is much higher in both grades than for Hispanic / Latino students in the district overall, or in the state.
Amigos students also do as well as ALL students (not just Hispanic / Latino students) statewide -- here's the data:
2007 ELA Composite Performance Index (CPI), grade 7:
Amigos Latino / Hispanic students: 89.3
Statewide ALL students: 86.9
2007 ELA Composite Performance Index (CPI), grade 8:
Amigos Latino / Hispanic students: 89.3
Statewide ALL students: 89.5
To make sure this was not a fluke, or a specific cohort that was particularly proficient in English, I checked 2006 and 2005 as well. The 2006 data are similar or perhaps better. For 2005 the comparison of Amigos to Cambridge is similar; the state comparison can't be done as the report on the DOE site does not show statewide data for comparison -- it only has school and district data.
Two-way bilingual education at Amigos is actually giving these students BETTER success in English than the monolingual programs in other schools. This is exactly what a couple of decades of research on bilingual education shows: two-way programs, properly implemented, are highly successful at exactly the task that is important to you -- making sure that non-native speakers learn English well.
As an aside, the research I have read says that the transitional programs which the voters eliminated clearly have less success than the two-way model, though in my view they are not nearly as bad *on average* as the rhetoric around that campaign suggested, even though some specific programs were poorly run.
Ms. Imrie,
You are correct that teaching foreign-born children that they do not need to learn English would be a huge mistake. However you are completely wrong if you think that is what happens at Amigos.
Rather than just give you my own opinion and experience as a parent to support this, here's a little data, from the DOE web site:
Grade 7 ELA MCAS Results for 2007, Hispanic / Latino students (shown
as percentages for Amigos / Cambridge / statewide, in that order):
Advanced: 0% / 6% / 2%
Proficient: 79% / 57% / 40%
Needs Improvement: 14% / 31% / 37%
Warning: 7% / 6% / 21%
Composite Performance Index: 89.3 / 85.6 / 71.5
Grade 8 ELA MCAS Results for 2007, Hispanic / Latino students (shown
as percentages for Amigos / Cambridge / statewide, in that order):
Advanced: 7% / 3% / 3%
Proficient: 64% / 56% / 45%
Needs Improvement: 29% / 34% / 35%
Warning: 0% / 6% / 17%
Composite Performance Index: 89.3 / 85.1 / 75.2
Any way you want to slice this data, Hispanic / Latino students at Amigos are clearly doing better on this test *of English academic ability* than their counterparts elsewhere in Cambridge or in Massachusetts. The percentage of students demonstrating proficiency in English (proficient + advanced) is much higher in both grades than for Hispanic / Latino students in the district overall, or in the state.
Amigos students also do as well as ALL students (not just Hispanic / Latino students) statewide -- here's the data:
2007 ELA Composite Performance Index (CPI), grade 7:
Amigos Latino / Hispanic students: 89.3
Statewide ALL students: 86.9
2007 ELA Composite Performance Index (CPI), grade 8:
Amigos Latino / Hispanic students: 89.3
Statewide ALL students: 89.5
To make sure this was not a fluke, or a specific cohort that was particularly proficient in English, I checked 2006 and 2005 as well. The 2006 data are similar or perhaps better. For 2005 the comparison of Amigos to Cambridge is similar; the state comparison can't be done as the report on the DOE site does not show statewide data for comparison -- it only has school and district data.
Two-way bilingual education at Amigos is actually giving these students BETTER success in English than the monolingual programs in other schools. This is exactly what a couple of decades of research on bilingual education shows: two-way programs, properly implemented, are highly successful at exactly the task that is important to you -- making sure that non-native speakers learn English well.
As an aside, the research I have read says that the transitional programs which the voters eliminated clearly have less success than the two-way model, though in my view they are not nearly as bad *on average* as the rhetoric around that campaign suggested, even though some specific programs were poorly run.