When I read and speak to my seven-year-old in Spanish, he only understands a word or two of what I say and gives me his patented "my mother is crazy" look.
"I don't know what you're saying, Mom. Tell me in English," he says.
Whether he realizes it or not, my son is asking me to use bilingual education to help him learn to read, speak and master a second language. Given that other countries require their students learn three or four languages, I'm happy to give my son a bilingual edge.
But in 2000, Arizona voters passed Proposition 203, a bill that made it unlawful to use any language other than English in our state's public schools. After Prop. 203 passed, Arizona schools were forced to swap bilingual education for what is referred to as English-immersion instruction.
Teachers who were teaching their non-English-speaking students the three Rs were suddenly no longer able to use their students' native language to help them comprehend lessons and prevent them from falling behind in their studies.
English immersion was our state's less-than-brilliant plan for how best to educate children who speak English as a second language. The idea was to dump kids into an English-only classroom and in about a year they'd magically come out proficient enough in English to master their studies at the same rate as their English-speaking peers.
Well surprise, surprise. Six years later we have thousands of kids who still speak limited English and who are performing below state and national averages.
Our state places little importance on education. Arizona is ranked 50th in expenditures for K-12 students, has the third-highest student-teacher ratio, and ranked 43rd with only 23 percent of fourth-graders rated proficient or better in reading. So the fact that English-limited students are performing below their English-speaking peers is not at all surprising.
But it is pitiful.
Federal judges decided it was also unlawful. In 1992, judges in the case Flores v. Arizona found that Arizona violated the Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974, a federal law that prohibits states from denying educational opportunities based on race, color, sex or national origin.
But more than a decade later, the state has yet to satisfy those judges' orders.
What's worse is we've raised a generation of uneducated children.
In January, the federal court had enough with our Legislature's decade-plus of stalling. They fined Arizona $500,000 for every day that passed without a proper legislative proposal to fund equal education for English-language-learner students.
Our Legislature still has not come up with a plan the governor will sign. Meanwhile, fines rose last week to $1 million a day.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out we have a serious problem on our hands.
Our legislators need only look at the numbers to see the disturbing result of bad policy.
With 56,000 English learners in grades pre-kindergarten to fifth, Arizona is failing thousands of children and the dangerous outcome is a generation of frustrated high-school dropouts who can't read or write in any language.
And for those of you who want to waste time arguing the immigration factor, the Urban Institute and the Migration Policy Institute released a study last fall that found more than half of our country's English-learners are U.S. citizens.
The fact remains that local and national studies find bilingual education superior to English-immersion programs in helping English learners maintain their studies while they are learning English.
Because legislators are busy fighting to limit funds for English learners and ensuring countless children are left behind in a flawed and unequal education system, our state is losing its competitive edge.
We are missing out on an opportunity to teach thousands of residents to become bilingual and help Arizona prosper in a global market where our leading trade partnership resulted in $4.6 billion in exports to Mexico in 2000.
Arizona can't afford to lose out on that amount of cash. How else are we going pay the million-dollar fines we're wracking up by the day?
Dianna is a graduate student. Reach her at dianna.nanez@asu.edu
