The student body is more than 93 percent Latino. The second largest group is Filipino, at 2.9 percent. A third of the students were born outside the United States, and well over half are not proficient in English. As many as half may be children of illegal aliens. There are as few Angles as there are Native Americans: six. In the school library there are books in Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish and English, But not even a third of the faculty can speak Spanish. The others rely on bilingual teacher assistants to translate the lessons. This is an explosive subject here. Many claim that bilingual education has done more to divide teachers than to help Spanish speakers. Defenders see it as a multicultural keystone. The faculty has been Balkanized by bilingualism: at lunchtime the two sides segregate themselves by table.
Most of the newest immigrants come from Central America, and many bring with them the trauma of war. Asked whether he had witnessed much fighting in his hometown of San Rafael, El Salvador, which he left three years ago, fifth grader Angel Alfaro nods but doesn’t want to talk about it. Asked about his school and what he would do to fix it, he perks up and says in unaccented English, “Nothing. It’s perfect.”
The Union Avenue kids’ eagerness to please, and to learn, is irrepressible. Yet it is hard to be optimistic about their future. For all of its inadequacies, the school is a relatively calm way station. Most of the kids will go on to Virgil Middle School, where education competes with gangs, graffiti taggers and drugs. Fifth grader Reggie Perez, whose parents are Guatemalan, says he is going to go to a school in North Hollywood “because at Virgil there are just too many gangs.” Out of 15 students interviewed last week (the school is in session year round), all but one said their parents were trying to get them into a parochial school or bused to a school in a better neighborhood. Still, most of the fifth graders will end up at Virgil.
Schools like Union Avenue are making a valiant effort, But as a recent report from the Rand Corp. says, “School systems that are beset by debt, declining and unstable revenues, dilapidated buildings and inadequate instructional resources cannot improve simply by trying harder.” The federal government has all but ignored the needs of states with large immigrant populations like California, New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois. The single federal program that targets immigrant students is funded at $30 million a year–or $42 per child. In California. where budget tightening has hit specialized programs especially hard, state officials estimate that they are short 8,000 bilingual teachers.
Historically, a solid education has been the quickest road to assimilation. But today, during the greatest surge in immigration since the turn of the century, the schools are failing the 2 million children who have been part of the influx. Their education is isolating them from the mainstream, rather than helping them to join it, and exposing them to all of the pathologies of ghetto life. Meanwhile, as the NEWSWEEK Poll indicates, anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise. Such a charged atmosphere “doesn’t make the job any easier,” said Lorraine M. McDonnell, coauthor of the Rand report. The kids, instead of getting the best that their new home has to offer, often get the worst.
Do you agree or disagree: (percent saying agree) 62% Immigrants take the jobs of U.S. workers 78% Many immigrants work hard–often taking jobs that Americans don’t want 59% Many immigrants wind up on welfare and raise taxes for Americans
THE NEWSWEEK POLL, JULY 29-30, 1993
