San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, July 7, 1998
Bilingual Surprise in State Testing
Many native-English speakers outscored in S.F., San Jose
By NANETTE ASIMOV, Chronicle Staff Writer
Achievement test scores from two of the Bay Area's largest school districts reveal a surprising result: Graduates of bilingual education programs out- scored native English speakers in most subjects and in most grades.
In San Francisco and San Jose, students who completed bilingual education -- a system of instruction outlawed last month by California voters -- generally performed better than native English-speaking children in reading, math, language and spelling.
The results appeared on the state's new Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) exam, a multiple-choice test that uses a 99-point scale. Third-graders who had graduated from bilingual classrooms in San Francisco, for example, scored 40 percentage points higher in math than their native English-speaking counterparts. On the language portion, bilingual fourth-graders scored 25 points higher than the natives. And in reading, eighth-grade bilingual grads outscored the natives by nine points -- although their reading scores slipped behind in later grades.
Similar but less impressive differences showed up in San Jose. There, for example, fourth-grade bilingual graduates scored 19 points higher than natives in spelling. In the seventh grade, they outscored the natives by seven points in math.
Even Sean Walsh, spokesman for Governor Pete Wilson, who became one of the state's harshest critics of bilingual education in the weeks before the June 3 election, raised his eyebrows.
``It's remarkable,'' he said.
Lest the observation be interpreted as an endorsement of bilingual education, Walsh pointed out that Wilson all along has looked to the new state test as a way to tell what works and what doesn't in public education.
``The governor has never been flatly against programs designed to help kids transition into English,'' Walsh said.
The surprising trend was reversed in San Jose high schools, where the scores of bilingual education graduates slipped one to 16 points behind those of native English speakers. Even those lower scores, however, generally hovered around the national average of 50 points.
Not so surprising were the politics coloring the explanations for the overall performance of the bilingual graduates.
Ron Unz, author of the recently passed Proposition 227 that outlawed bilingual education, declared the phenomenon ``very simple'' to explain.
``You'd expect it,'' he said. ``You're basically comparing the smartest (nonnative speakers) with the average population of regular students.''
Doug Stone, spokesman for state schools Superintendent Delaine Eastin, said the nonnatives are not smarter than other students, they've just paid more attention to grammar, spelling and overall academics in their attempts to learn a second language.
Independent testing expert Joan Herman, associate director of UCLA's Center for the Study of Evaluation, called the results ``very promising data'' at a time when the bilingual education battle is not yet over.
Immigrant rights advocates, who call Proposition 227 unconstitutional, sued in federal court last month to have it overturned. A hearing is scheduled for July 15 in San Francisco.
The STAR test also sits at the center of the English-only debate. All test scores -- for every school in all 999 districts across the state -- were supposed to have been released no later than June 30.
But the Oakland and Berkeley school districts won a Superior Court injunction prohibiting state officials from releasing the scores because they included the scores of thousands of children who speak little or no English. The educators say the results are invalid because the students had to take the test in a language they did not understand.
The group in question does not include the graduates of bilingual programs, who speak English.
State law required all students in grades 2 through 11 to take the STAR test in English this spring, whether they understood the language or not.
A hearing is scheduled in San Francisco Superior Court July 16.
Yesterday, lawyers for the state Department of Education and the state Board of Education said they have taken the matter to the state Supreme Court to try and reverse the injunction.
Meanwhile, school districts have been releasing test scores on their own -- some with the scores of non-English-speakers, and some without.
San Jose released its non-English-speaking students' scores yesterday. But these contained no surprises.
COMPARISON OF SAN FRANCISCO AND SAN JOSE STAR TEST RESULTS
Here are districtwide results for two of the Bay Area's
largest urban school districts. The Standardized Testing &
Reporting (STAR) exam was taken in the spring by more than 4
million students in grades 2 to 11. The multiple-choice test
is scored on a 99-point scale, with a national average of 50.
----------------------------------------------- [Webmaster's note: "Bilingual students" (FEP) below are those from language-minority backgrounds who started school fluent in English. "Bilingual ed. graduates" (R-FEP) are students who were limited in English before graduating from a special language program -- bilingual or otherwise. In 1996, 43% of SFUSD's and 47% of SJUSD's limited-English-proficient students were enrolled in fully bilingual classrooms.] -----------------------------------------------
SAN FRANCISCO
.
Grade 2
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 49 50 47
Bilingual students 58 65 60
Bilingual ed. graduates 75 87 80
.
Grade 3
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 43 44 44
Bilingual students 54 64 57
Bilingual ed. graduates 60 84 74
.
Grade 4
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 49 42 48
Bilingual students 56 56 58
Bilingual ed. graduates 66 79 73
.
Grade 5
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 51 51 50
Bilingual students 58 66 61
Bilingual ed. graduates 62 80 71
.
Grade 6
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 47 50 47
Bilingual tudents 53 63 57
Bilingual ed. graduates 58 79 64
.
Grade 7
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 47 49 55
Bilingual students 59 66 67
Bilingual ed. graduates 63 78 71
.
Grade 8
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 47 46 48
Bilingual students 63 66 66
Bilingual ed. graduates 56 71 61
.
Grade 9
Reading Math Lang. S.S.(x) Sci.
Native English speakers 50 64 61 54 50
Bilingual students 56 72 66 58 56
Bilingual ed. graduates 44 74 63 52 53
.
Grade 10
Reading Math Lang. S.S.(x) Sci.
Native English speakers 49 55 54 50 53
Bilingual students 51 62 57 51 56
Bilingual ed. graduates 38 65 49 44 49
.
Grade 11
Reading Math Lang. S.S.(x) Sci.
Native English speakers 56 64 64 67 54
Bilingual students 61 73 68 72 62
Bilingual ed. graduates 46 74 59 66 54
-----------------------------------------------
SAN JOSE
.
Grade 2
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 53 48 53
Bilingual students 51 54 50
Bilingual ed. graduates -- -- --
.
Grade 3
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 57 52 54
Bilingual students 54 57 56
Bilingual ed. graduates 61 76 65
.
Grade 4
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 58 51 57
Bilingual students 61 57 61
Bilingual ed. graduates 64 69 67
.
Grade 5
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 59 51 59
Bilingual students 56 56 63
Bilingual ed. graduates 65 68 69
.
Grade 6
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 58 55 55
Bilingual students 59 65 60
Bilingual ed. graduates 58 62 63
.
Grade 7
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 59 54 61
Bilingual students 59 61 66
Bilingual ed. graduates 55 61 62
.
Grade 8
Reading Math Lang.
Native English speakers 57 53 56
Bilingual students 63 68 65
Bilingual ed. graduates 53 52 54
.
Grade 9
Reading Math Lang. S.S.(x) Sci.
Native English speakers 52 64 60 59 54
Bilingual students 50 67 64 60 56
Bilingual ed. graduates 42 60 58 54 48
.
Grade 10
Reading Math Lang. S.S.(x) Sci.
Native English speakers 47 51 52 54 54
Bilingual students 50 59 58 55 54
Bilingual ed. graduates 37 48 43 42 47
.
Grade 11
Reading Math Lang. S.S.(x) Sci.
Native English speakers 57 60 61 74 59
Bilingual students 52 63 62 74 54
Bilingual ed. graduates 38 53 45 62 44
.
(x) - S.S. represents the subject social studies
Source: San Francisco Unified School District
and San Jose Unified School District
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