Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill that would allow high schools to administer No Child Left Behind-mandated tests in Spanish. Now, some of you out there might think that giving such tests in Spanish is a lunatic idea leading to language balkanization and the like. But, you probably aren't a Denise Ducheny (D-San Diego)-grade "liberal":
"Forcing newly arrived students to test in English measures their language ability, not knowledge of school subjects... The bill didn't exempt students from taking the tests and wouldn't keep us from our goal of teaching them English; it simply would have given us a better tool to test what they know in science, math and other subject areas."
"Newly arrived" is Ducheny for "illegal aliens". Science, math, and other similar subjects don't demand the English proficiency of things like essay writing. And, not testing students in English will take the heat off teaching them English, meaning they'll end up even worse off.
The tests in question have been already dumbed down far enough, and still there are incredible problems: 20% of California high school seniors can't pass junior high test.
The bottom line is this: if "liberals" and corrupt "conservatives" weren't forcing us to educate hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from the Third World this would not be an issue.
California · Mon, 10/10/2005 - 20:59 · Importance: 1
Independent, in-depth coverage of immigration, politics, and media bias since 2002. Also: multiculturalism, Los Angeles, California, privacy, and occasionally celebrities and wacky humor...
If you can't find what you're looking for, see the About page or use the navigation features to the right.
Atom feed · RSS 2.0 feed · RSS 0.91 feed · WML
Comments
Arnold's vetoing this bill will not sit well with the White House. Bush favors bilingual education (read: native language instruction) and is on record as saying "this English only stuff is going to kill the (Republican) party." I am sure that if he thought he could get away with it, he would issue an executive order giving Spanish some kind of protected status as an "official" language.
Posted by: Gary at Oct 11, 2005 9:16 AM