Educators cannot agree on the best way to teach English to non-native speakers. Success is anecdotal. Studies appear to contradict each other. Meanwhile, the percentage of California English learners who are proficient in fourth-grade English has dropped on a national test.
The dual-language program at Geddes, where children are taught in Spanish 90 percent of the day until third grade, is a relative rarity in California these days. Since 1998, when voters passed Proposition 227, limiting the use of bilingual education, the number of English learners being taught in their primary language has dropped by half.
