Vile and incendiary rants in print

The Sacramento News and Review hosts a flamethrower columnist Jill Stewart. From time to time she takes off on bilingual education and Latino elected officials.
Her articles are mostly name calling, rarely using evidence nor offering supporting evidence. She is sort of a Sacramento Ann Coulter, flaming from the Right in an effort to make a name and a place for herself.


The name calling in lieu of evidence style is insulting.
Here is an example.
http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2005-02-17/cappun.asp


Bilingual doesn't work in any language
Latino kids advancing in English-speaking classes should get an A, but those politicians holding students back in bilingual classes deserve a failing grade

By Jill Stewart

“When test scores came out a few days back showing that Latino immigrant kids in California are learning to read and write English at a steadily faster pace, California’s schools superintendent, Jack O’Connell, urged schools to move kids more quickly from English-learner classes into mainstream classrooms.

Good idea, since Latino children can’t get access to rigorous academics like Advanced Placement courses for college as long as the kids are still designated by officials as “English learners.”

It’s really kind of rich that O’Connell is urging schools to stop holding kids back in English-learner classes. O’Connell shares tremendous blame for the fact that Latino children are being warehoused in these training-wheels classes long after they can read and write in English.

The time when O’Connell could blame others for holding back immigrant children has long since passed. As superintendent, he has failed to publicly release crucially important data that shows how well English-immersion kids are doing compared with kids trapped in “bilingual” classrooms that still teach in Spanish.

If the public could get its hands on the information O’Connell is protecting, we’d see an end to this coy debate over whether kids are learning English better by being taught in English.”

So begins the Stewart flame.

One of several reasons why Stewart gets away with this stuff is that she throws so much stuff up on the wall that it is difficult to respond to it all. Enter this blog.

Lets look at some data presented by Dr. Patricia Gándara of the U.C. Linguistic Minority Research Institute at the hearings of the Assembly Education Committee on March 2, 2005.

About those test scores.

The small growth in CELDT scores for English Learners from 2001 to 2004 are not evidence that can lead to Stewart’s conclusions.
The test has changed. It is shorter. Parts have been eliminated. Test items have changed. The process of administration changed.
And, the students taking the test have changed.
The number of 1st. graders who take the test (and score lower because they are just entering English) has declined 3% while the number of 12 graders (who score higher because they have been in English longer) has increased 22% since 2001.

The Stewart assault is typical of her uninformed, ideologically driven writing. It is rapacious, anti teacher, and anti Latino.

Dear reader. I invite you to assist in deconstructing the remainder of the Stewart essay. Take any portion of the text where she is referring to a subject which you know well. Analyze the claims. Write a brief (200 word – 1000 word) response. Send the response in a Word file to me at campd22702@pacbell.net.

I will read it. If it follows normal rules of discourse, ie. Analyzing the evidence, lack of profanity, etc., I will post it on this blog.
This is how we can make this blog work. Welcome aboard.