Should Oregon Pass the English Immersion Measure?

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In a December 2006 report, the Oregon Department of Education reported that only 22 of 129 school Oregon school districts met the minimum state goal for students in their ESL/ELL/etc. programs. An 80 percent failure rate.

The Woodburn School District reported that after 5 years in ELL programs only 13 percent of its ELL students were English proficient. Woodburn Schools have one of the highest, if not the highest, percentage of ELL students in Oregon.

Nationally about 60 percent of ESL students drop out of high school.

ELL Students in the New York City School system drop out at a 76% rate.

ESL students in Canada drop out at a 74 percent rate.  

If a program has an 80% failure rate and 60% of its participants drop out of the program, any prudent observer would say, discontinue the program, try something new or return to policies that worked in the past. However, because English Language learners are funded at a 50 percent higher rate than regular students, Oregon school districts continue to use ELL/ESL/etc. programs.

Dr. Rosalie Pedalino Porter, author of Forked Tongue: The Politics of Bilingual Education, advisor to public school districts across the country and to the U.S. Congress, said the following, "California, Arizona and Massachusetts recently changed their state laws to improve the education of English Learners. They threw out bilingual programs that never worked and require English Immersion teaching. There is already documented proof in these states that teaching children English from the first day of school, with special help, gives the greatest chance for academic."