(adopted by the Delegate Assembly
of the California Council on the Education of Teachers
at the 1998 CCET Spring Conference on March 26, 1998)

WHEREAS all students have the right to a quality education that maximizes their potential to learn all they need to know to make informed choices about their future lives and careers, thus contributing to the overall well-being of society; and

WHEREAS students who are second-language learners make up more than 1.3 million students in California’s classrooms; and

WHEREAS the majority of the second-language learners in California receive no primary language instruction in the schools; and

WHEREAS far too many second-language learners in current “English-only” classrooms have standardized test scores well below the norm in reading and math; and

WHEREAS the explicit goal of programs initially offering primary-language instruction to second-language learners is ultimately to teach students to speak, read, and write English, and thereby to excel in grade-level-appropriate content areas in English; and

WHEREAS extensive research has found that second-language learners who initially receive primary-language instruction subsequently perform better on English standardized tests than their peers “immersed” in “English-only” programs; and

WHEREAS Proposition 227 on the June 1998 ballot in California (the Unz-Tuchman Initiative which bears the title “English language education for children in public schools”) fails to recognize and does not acknowledge the above educational circumstances and procedures relative to second-language learners; and

WHEREAS passage of Proposition 227 would dictate specific educational practices to all school districts and individual teachers across California, thus eliminating the opportunity for school districts and teachers to employ local and individual professional judgment in meeting the needs of second-language students, thereby setting a dangerous precedent affecting all of California’s teachers; therefore

BE IT RESOLVED that the California Council on the Education of Teachers join the numerous other educational organizations in opposition to Proposition 227 as a pedagogically unsound, unproven, and unethical proposal for educating California’s second-language learners.