Education Week
American Education's Newspaper of Record


January 22, 2003

Poll: Immigrants Value
Speaking English


By Mary Ann Zehr
Education Week


Immigrants are no more likely than the general public to support bilingual education in public schools-though some immigrant groups are more supportive of the controversial approach to instruction than others are.


The results of the survey, "Now That I'm Here," are available from Public Agenda Online. A copy of the complete survey may be downloaded for free until Feb. 11.That is one finding from a survey of immigrants released last week by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion-research group based in New York City . Only about a third of immigrants responding-32 percent-said students should be able to take some courses in their native languages in the nation's public schools. Sixty-three percent said that all public school classes should be taught only in English. Immigrants' responses mirrored those of the general public in a 1999 survey by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University .

Mexican and Caribbean immigrants are more supportive of bilingual education than Europeans and East Asians, but a majority of each subgroup surveyed still favors classes only in English.

Forty-five percent of Mexican immigrants said that students should be able to take some classes in their native language, while 51 percent said classes should be only in English.

The findings are not surprising, said Patricia Gándara, a professor of education at the University of California , Davis , and a supporter of bilingual education.

"Immigrants don't have a lot more information than the general public about the most effective way to learn both subject matter and a second language," she said. "The problem is they don't understand how just immersing children in English impedes their learning in other things."

In bilingual education, students are taught some subjects in their native languages while they are learning English.

Public Agenda based its findings on a telephone survey of 1,002 foreign-born residents of the United States conducted in October and November of last year. The margin of error for the survey overall is 3 percentage points, but greater when responses are compared across subgroups.

The survey shows that immigrants believe learning English is very important. Nearly nine in 10 respondents said it's hard to get a good job or do well in the United States without learning English. About two-thirds said that "the U.S. should expect all immigrants who don't speak English to learn it."

A sizable share of the respondents-37 percent-said they already had a good command of English when they came to the U.S. Of the immigrant groups surveyed, Caribbean and European immigrants were most likely to say they spoke English before they arrived. Seven percent of Mexican immigrants said they spoke English when they came to this country.

Most respondents reported having a good command of English now. Sixty-one percent say their English was either "good" or "excellent."

More immigrants are favorable than unfavorable on the question of whether public schools do a "good" job of teaching children English as quickly as possible. Thirty-nine percent said schools do an "excellent" or "good" job. Twenty-seven percent said they do a "fair" or "poor" job. More than a third of respondents- 35 percent-said they "don't know enough to say."

Christine H. Rossell, a political science professor at Boston University , said that the survey results show that because so many immigrants do learn English, "we don't need to worry that bilingual education will prevent immigrants from learning English."

She believes sheltered English immersion is more effective than bilingual education, however, and supported the fall's ballot initiative to curtail bilingual education in the state. Still, she said, "you're not going to find me saying that kids don't learn English" in bilingual education.

Commentary by Dr. Stephen Krashen

I read the original document this article is based on, and Zehr's summary is correct. Of the 1000 subjects interviewed, only 32% support allowing children to do some coursework in their native language. The questionnaire avoids many of the problems of previous questionnaires: it does not assume that bilingual education delays English language development, does not assume that bilingual education is all-Spanish, does not confuse enthusiasm for English with rejection of bilingual education, as previous surveys has.

Previous polls with reasonably phrased questions, those done before the Unz initiatives passed, showed much more support for bilingual education. In previous polls, only about 1/3 were against bilingual ed, with about 1/3 in favor and 1/3 undecided. We have lost the "soft middle" undoubtedly due to unfavorable publicity, and distorted reporting, such as erroneously giving Prop. 227 the credit for increases in test scores in California .

The irony of all this is that when people are told about the principles underlying bilingual education, most find them reasonable. They agree that if you know subject matter, thanks to education in your first language, instruction in English is easier to understand. They agree that if you are literate in your first language, it is easier to become literate in a second language. And the biggest irony of all is the consistent success of bilingual education in the research.

(The poll did not ask if the respondents had had any direct experience with bilingual education or even ESL programs: research also tends to show that those who have more experience with bilingual ed are more in favor of it. Shin's research showed that parents of minority language speaking children were generally in favor of the use of the first language in school.)

Bilingual Debate 

Related article of mine:  The Poll: The Truth Is Out There