A press release from the Illinois state government says Gov. Pat Quinn signed a law yesterday that passed unanimously in both chambers of the General Assembly. It’s intended to improve the quality of bilingual education in Illinois by authorizing the Illinois Advisory Council on Bilingual Education to study some additional aspects of bilingual education, namely the role parents play and how well bilingual students understand American culture. WMAQ-TV (NBC affiliate) also has this report.
“School is challenging enough for students and parents alike without having to struggle with a new language,” Gov. Quinn said. “This new law will keep Illinois on the cutting edge of bilingual education programs to ensure that every student is ready for the workforce.”
Generally speaking, House Bill 3819, sponsored by Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora) and Sen. Iris Martinez (D-Chicago), requires the advisory council to evaluate the success rate of bilingual programs, examine innovative initiatives, and submit a report to the state superintendent of education, governor, and General Assembly by Jan. 1.
It directs the advisory council specifically to determine how best to support bilingual parent advisory committees within school districts in order to increase the “opportunities for parents to effectively express their views concerning the planning, operation, and evaluation of bilingual education programs,” the bill’s authors wrote. These parent advisory committees within school districts are groups that can choose their own officers and set their own rules—locally.
“Parents of non-English speaking students want—and need—to feel a greater stake in navigating their child’s education. This new law opens the door to such innovations as ‘parent academies’ to accomplish that,” said LaVia, who chairs the Illinois House Elementary and Secondary Education Appropriations Committee.
Current Stats
The Illinois State Board of Education estimates that there are about 183,000 students in the state whose first language is not English. That’s a little more than 10 percent of all students. Spanish is the primary language for about 80 percent of those students, while Polish, Urdu, Arabic, Tagalog, Korean, Cantonese/Mandarin, Gujarati, Vietnamese, and Russian all make the Top 10 list.
Most of the English language learners (ELL) who speak English as a second language (ESL) live in Chicago, but Elgin, Waukegan, Cicero, and Aurora all have growing ELL populations.
‘Bout Time!
In my opinion, this is a great law. It’s 40 years too late—or at least 20, if you have been paying attention to research in bilingual education—but here we are!
Schools knew involving parents could help with educational objectives by at least 1986, according to some research on the ERIC database. In one early study, a collaboration between Trinity College in Washington, D.C., and the Arlington, Va., Public Schools, was designed to help ESL students learn English.
The study’s facilitators showed parents how to collaborate—to be co-learners or co-tutors—with their children in completing specially-designed home lessons from the Vocationally-Oriented Bilingual Curriculum (VOBC), a supplement to the ESL program used at the schools where the study took place. These home lessons reinforced ESL concepts and language skills taught to students during regular ESL classroom instruction.
The results for the students were good and statistically significant. English language and survival skills of the parents improved as well, and that helped the kids to become more proficient. In other words, as a result of their collaboration on the VOBC home lessons, parents and students alike learned a great deal about life in America and about the American school system.
The authors concluded one of the most important factors in the success of a parent-involvement program is a liaison between the school and the parent—someone who is a respected member of the parent’s language community and also understands how schools and school systems work in America. This report dates back to December 1986.
Enter the “parent academies” being created and/or studied by this 2012 Illinois law! That’s the “liaison” we knew we needed back in 1986 or before (Simich-Dudgeon, C. Trinity-Arlington Parent-Involvement Project, Final Report. Submitted to the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Affairs. Washington, DC: Department of Education, 1986). Glad we finally got a law in place, right? Although, in many cases, these academies have been operating outside any formal evaluation process for some time. Let’s see what making it legal does.
