"The State's own report found that over 40 percent of all the non-English-speaking students in Arizona take 6 years or longer to learn English, and less than 6 percent were reclassified as having learned English last year," said Linda Chavez, President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. 

The report compared the achievement of students in bilingual programs versus English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs using the Stanford 9 test in English. However, only 34 percent of the bilingual students were tested versus 49 percent of the ESL students, indicating that ESL better prepares students to take a test in English. State law allows schools to exempt language-minority students from taking the Stanford 9 for three years. Since the test starts in second grade, this means that students don't have to take the test until fifth grade in most cases, or unless their school thinks that they can pass the test. 

According to Chavez, "Even with schools essentially cherry-picking results, bilingual students scored only 3 percentile points above ESL students on average." 

English-speaking students scored at the 53rd percentile in reading, while the two groups most heavily affected by bilingual programs--Spanish- and Navajo-speakers--scored at the 25th and 17th percentiles, respectively. By contrast, students who speak the other 60 languages in Arizona schools, and who tend to be served by ESL programs, scored at the 41st percentile. 

Bilingual programs in Arizona focus more on native language development and maintenance than ESL programs, which more closely approximate the structured English immersion that the English for the Children initiative (Prop. 203) calls for. 

The Center for Equal Opportunity is a nonprofit, Washington, D.C.-based research and educational organization.