Ballot Argument Against Prop. 203

Mexican American Political Association

We, the members of MAPA (Mexican American Political Association), do hereby oppose Proposition 203, in which the elimination of our current bilingual education system would be replaced with a one year crash course.

This proposition is not feasible for the children of bilingual families in Arizona for the f ollowing reasons:
• More students will drop out of school at an earlier age due to language frustration.
• Fewer students will graduate high school with the implementation of the AIMS testing.
• Fewer students will enroll in college because they couldn’t grasp K-12 curriculum without bilingual classes.
• Parents will no longer have the right to choose programs like bilingual education, ESOL, LEP.

Bilingualism is a highly marketable skill to posses in this age of global marketing and technology. The abolishment of this program would be detrimental not only to the future of the children that stand to lose much, but to our own futures as well.

For the future of Arizona as well as for the future of the country, we must prepare our youth to communicate globally. Proposition 203 will place Arizona students at a disadvantage from the graduating students in the rest of the country.