Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Educational and political dimensions of bilingual education 61
slightly different benchmarks. However, typical Californian practice, as reported by
Hakuta et al. (2000: 3), is that pupils are reclassified as Fluent English Proficient
(FEP) once they have passed an oral proficiency test and, additionally, scored above
a designated level on an academic achievement test – usually ‘a standardised English
reading test’ (e.g. SAT 9), which is ‘norm-referenced to a national sample of English
speakers’. The designated level is typically set at around the 36th percentile rank.
Both test and criterion have been criticised for two main reasons. First, it is widely
recognised as problematic to assess minority language pupils against a criterion
derived from a test norm-referenced to a different population. Second, the 36th
percentile rank is by definition unattainable for at least one third of native Englishspeaking
pupils, never mind minority language students.
There are, then, obvious limitations in the instrumentation used in reclassifying
pupils as FEP, but, in the absence of more meaningful benchmarks (see Hakuta et al.
2000) and of useful normative developmental data, it seems for the present to be the
accepted method.
Turning now to the ‘how long’ findings, caveated though they must be for the
reasons just mentioned, we at least find that they display a persuasive consistency.
Thus, Cummins’s (1981) findings that immigrant children arriving in Canada after
the age of six take between five and seven years on average to attain academic English
proficiency but considerably less to develop high levels of oral proficiency are broadly
consistent with those of later studies. Thomas and Collier (1997: 36), for example,
conclude that it takes between four and ten years for minority language pupils to
achieve ‘on grade’ levels of performance in reading in English. Progress, they say,
is faster for those who receive L1 instruction and L1 support. Gandara (1999: 5)
reports that by grade 3 LEP pupils’ listening skills are at 80 per cent of native
proficiency with reading and writing skills lagging behind, and Hakuta et al.’s (2000:
13) comprehensive review concludes that:
in (school) districts that are considered the most successful in teaching English to
EL students, oral proficiency takes 3 to 5 years to develop and academic English
proficiency can take 4 to 7 years.
The reasons why academic English skills take this long to approach grade level norms
are not, in fact, difficult to identify: acquiring English is difficult in itself, and LEP
pupils are continuously striving to catch up with native-speaking peers whose own
academic skills in English continue to advance.
It turns out, then, that Proposition 227’s call for the mainstreaming of minority
language pupils at the end of a transitional period ‘not normally intended to exceed one
year’ is, on most evidence, unrealistic in what it assumes about the rate of acquisition
of English academic skills. Too quick a shift to English-only instruction may, moreover,
impede parental involvement with their child’s schooling with the adverse
consequences that typically follow.
There is, therefore, as Cummins (1998: 2) points out, no ‘quick-fix’ solution:
indeed, Hakuta et al. (2000) propose the entire duration of elementary school as a
realistic time span for the development of academic skills in English, during which