Home Press Center Center for Equal Opportunity Challenges Denver School Board to End Bilingual Education

Center for Equal Opportunity Challenges Denver School Board to End Bilingual Education

Thursday, 25 July 2002

Contact: Roger Clegg (703)421-5443 (Sterling, VA)    Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), sent a report to the Denver Public Schools’ (DPS) Board of Education today, attacking bilingual education and, in particular, its use in Denver.     Chavez said, “The report indicates that Denver public schools are failing in their central duty, which is teaching children the most essential skill for success in America: learning to read and write in English.”     The 17-page report — which has been posted on CEO’s website, www.ceousa.org —brings to the board’s attention “disturbing evidence” that “the English acquisition programs of the Denver Public Schools are not working.”  It “summarizes the information collected in recent on-site visits and analyzes data from students’ performance on recent standardized tests.”     CEO had been conducting on-site visits at a number of schools until suddenly it was refused further access by the DPS in 2000.  University of Colorado professor Ernest House, the court-appointed official monitor for Denver’s bilingual programs, ended his three-year term this year but has recently been asked to resume his classroom observations this Fall.  House’s monitoring is part of an existing 1999 agreement between DPS and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.      The standardized-test data referenced in the CEO study were collected by the state of Colorado. The report asserts that Denver’s current English acquisition programs raise both policy and legal problems.  Chavez has sent a copy of the report to the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.     Linda Chavez grew up in Denver and graduated from the University of Colorado.  In the summer of 2000, Chavez spearheaded an effort by local activists to place a ballot initiative before Colorado voters that would have ended bilingual education in the state.     The Center for Equal Opportunity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, Section 501 (c) (3) research and educational organization based in Sterling, Virginia.  It studies bilingual education, civil rights, and immigration issues nationwide.