CONNECTING BICULTURAL PARENTS TO THEIR CHILD'S SCHOOL

Connecting Bicultural Parents to their child's school

Connecting Bicultural Parents to their child's school

Introduction

Approximately 5 million students in U.S. schools have limited English language skills that affect their ability to participate successfully in education programs and achieve high academic standards. It is the responsibility of schools to ensure that all students, including these English language-learning (ELL) students, have equal access to a quality education that enables them to progress academically while learning English. The specific services to be provided are not specified by federal or state law; however, legislation provides the following broad outlines.

In 1970, the federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a memo regarding school districts' responsibilities under civil rights law to provide an equal educational opportunity to ELLs. This memorandum stated: Where the inability to speak and understand the English language excludes national origin minority group children from effective participation in the educational program offered by a school district, the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional program to these students.

Although the memo requires school districts to take affirmative steps, it does not prescribe the content of these steps. It does, however, explain that federal law is violated if:

students are excluded from effective participation in school because of their inability to speak and understand the language of instruction;

national origin minority students are inappropriately assigned to special education classes because of their lack of English skills;

programs for students whose English is less than proficient are not designed to teach them English as soon as possible, or if these programs operate as a dead end track; or

parents whose English is limited do not receive school notices or other information in a language they can understand.

During the last two decades bilingual-bicultural education programs (programs which recognize that children may come from a different culture and speak a different language in the home than in the school) have flourished in the United States as the ethnic composition of children attending public schools has become more diverse. In the late 1980's discussion of bilingual-bicultural education for children who are Deaf brought about new theories. (A capital D is used by bilingual-bicultural programs to identify deafness as a cultural, rather than a medical, issue.) According to Schirmer (1994) "the impetus for implementing bilingual-bicultural programs for children who are deaf comes from two sources: (1) The Deaf community, who advocate for the right to pass on their language and culture to succeeding generations; (2) the overall disappointing achievement of youngsters who are deaf. (p. 98) Although small gains have been made in the levels of reading achieved by the average child who is deaf, overall achievement remains considerably lower compared to their hearing peers despite ardent attempts to teach Deaf children through Total Communication and oral approaches.

"A person who is bicultural can move freely within and between two different cultures. Biculturalism implies an understanding of the mores, customs, practices, and expectations of members of a cultural group and the ...