Big Lie #2
Young children can learn enough English for school in "a few months to a year"

"It's not that hard to teach little children English. ... My own mother grew up speaking not a word of English. Her parents taught her a little bit of English the year before she started school. Then once she started kindergarten she learned English very quickly and easily and ended up graduating from college with a degree in English literature." — Ron Unz, debate at the Sonoma County Office of Education, 31 March 1998

Even in small things, it seems, Ron Unz has no respect for the facts. The anecdote about his mother is contradicted by another family member: "By the time she started kindergarten, she was fluent in English," says Unz's aunt, Rivko Knox (Contra Costa Times, 10 May 1998).

Unz concedes that he had personally failed to become fluent in French despite four years of instruction in high school. So what makes him so sure that children will learn English in a crash course "not normally intended to exceed one year," as Prop. 227 would require?

"I did my own reality check. I just asked friends how long it took them to learn English" (West Magazine, 11 January 1998).

When researchers do a "reality check," they gather hard evidence rather than subjective impressions. As Stephen Krashen explains, no scientific study has documented that one school year – 180 days – is enough time for children to learn a second language for academic purposes. Typically, English learners need up to five years of special help to prosper in the "mainstream."

Ron Unz has also justified the one-year English program with another dubious anecdote. He cites a 1st grade classroom in Santa Ana taught by Gloria Matta Tuchman:

"One year is really all that's necessary. The children coming out of Gloria's class can certainly function well in an English language environment" (Contra Costa Times, 6 April 1998).

Ms. Tuchman, who happens to be cochair of the Prop. 227 campaign and a perennial candidate for public office, also makes this claim (Education Week, 14 January 1998). But is there any unbiased evidence about the outcomes her English immersion program? As it happens, there is. According to data provided by the Santa Ana Unified School District, not a single one of Ms. Tuchman's students was designated as fluent in English last year (Los Angeles Times, 6 May 1998). Starting school in kindergarten, most of these students had already had two years of English instruction.

It's clear that English immersion programs provide no short-cut to English proficiency. In Orange County, California, where most school districts prefer this approach, children are "redesignated" as fluent in English at rates lower than the statewide average. For example, in Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified, only one out of 3,800 English learners was redesignated last year: "a fifth-grader who had attended an exclusive private school in her native Korea and worked nightly with a private tutor" (Orange County Register, 29 April 1998).

How does Unz respond to all this? With another distortion, of course:

"The current system says they have to be at grade level compared to native English speakers. If you wait for poor Latino children to be above average, it ain't gonna happen" (Orange County Register, 29 April 1998).

While procedures vary among school districts, most set the 36th percentile as the threshold of English proficiency. But Unz makes the underlying assumptions of Prop. 227 crystal clear – lowered expectations and a second-class education for English learners.