Veteran teacher Arthur Goldstein writes here about New York state’s cruel indifference to educating non-English-speaking students.
He writes:
President Trump commits outrages against humanity by separating newcomers from their families, leaving them without soap, blankets or toothbrushes. New York State would never do things like that. We’re more enlightened. Instead of depriving young immigrants of physical necessities, we simply decline to them their most fundamental educational need—instruction in English…
State officials, he asserts, decided to give ELL students less direct instruction in English, expecting they would pick up English in their regular subject classes.
This way, while native English speakers take 45 minutes to learn about the Battle of Gettysburg, newcomers would somehow learn not only about the battle, but also all the necessary vocabulary and culture in the same 45 minutes. Having less direct English instruction would somehow support this.
How would they accomplish this? I spoke face to face with NY Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia, who told me they would use “strategies and techniques.” You could’ve knocked me down with a feather. I’ve been teaching ESL for three decades. I know strategies and techniques. However, I don’t know of any that compensate for lack of time.
State officials, he writes, have cut ESL classes by 33-100%, then they wonder why ELLs are not succeeding.
Imagine how you’d feel if you went to China tomorrow, and they sat you in classes with almost no instruction in Chinese language. That would mirror official NY State policy. It’s a disgrace, in 2019, that we can’t do better. In NY State, we may not practice outright xenophobia, but our support for newcomers is dubious at best.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Mr. Goldstein’s blog is a must to follow if you’re a New York State teacher. He has been a prominent voice in the travesty of New York’s ELL legislation. During my last professional development given by the regional office tasked to push these “strategies”, one brave person admitted the new policies were not working. Instead of admitting this, New York State is doubling down on compliance. My question is why are we forced to comply to harmful initiatives? For all of the feel good talk about immigrants by DeBlasio and Cuomo, where is the substance? The answer is there is none. It’s all so much political gaslighting.
If only this question, asked by thousands of teachers over the past decade in district upon district, could be answered with any kind of logic other than that someone is making a profit: WHY are we forced to comply on harmful initiatives?
You aren’t forced. You comply, more likely than not, not willingly. But you do have the choice not to implement nefarious educational malpractices. Perceived self preservation provides the necessary cover to assuage the guilt feelings of implementing malpractices.
From Ch 7 “Ethics in Educational Practices” of “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractices in American Public Education”:
Would not “personal integrity” entail not only “respecting and obeying the law” but to stridently opposing and challenging the law or policy that mandates the malpractices of educational standards and standardized testing that are “detrimental to learning, health or safety” of the students? Unfortunately, teachers are under constant pressure to institute and maintain those fundamentally and fatally flawed malpractices. The vast majority of public school educators, especially administrators, believe that upholding the ethics toward the profession and its practices holds sway over upholding ethics towards the students. While doings so may be quite beneficial to the educators, it serves to cause harm to the students as their interests play second or third fiddle to administrative decrees which is backwards to the interests of justice for the student.
“Should we therefore forgo our self-interest? Of course not. But it [self-interest] must be subordinate to justice, not the other way around. . . . To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value. . . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.” [my additions]. . . .
Not only that but since these practices cause untold harm through false conclusions that result in students being denied certain educational goals and aspirations the process must be deemed unethical as a violation of the ethical principle of “the educator shall make reasonable effort to protect the student from conditions harmful to learning”. False and error filled test results can only insure to produce those harmful conditions and, therefore, rightly should be rejected on ethical grounds. The results of the tests discriminate against some students not only through mis-categorization but also in falsely labeling (grading) some students as beginning, not proficient, average or whatever other terminology is used to describe the various categories of results.
NO!
You raise an interesting question. How do the powerless relate to the powerful? There have been many responses. Southern slaves broke tools so often that historians think they did so out of subdued resistance rather than the ignorance ascribed to them by their owners in their writings. Contrived sit-ins, worker slow-downs, and walkouts enmasse have been tried. Hostile mobs have attacked purveyors of perceived wrongs. Gandhi suggested the power or force of truth, which entailed making sure that any negative consequences of your disagreement with anyone exercised themselves at you instead of your opponent.
Just quitting tends to leave the field to the people who are willing to play by the rules you do not accept. I am not sure what to do. So far I have tried the approach of verbally rejecting what is required of me that do not like. I just tell the kids I am not teaching to some god forsaken test meant to line the pockets of some ass somewhere. For the most part, I have been left to my devices. Stay tuned.
You point to a starting point for teachers. First, by admitting to the students the malpractices and then doing one’s best to teach in a fashion that mitigates, or better, eliminates the actual practice. I wish you continued luck–and it is just plain luck that you have a principal who hasn’t had their ego triggered by your minimal compliance and that doesn’t see fit to come after you.
But also, it doesn’t just come down to quitting or playing by the rules. You point to another alternative, that if all would employ, the testing malpractice would have to cease.
Thanks, Duane. I was blessed by my mother’s diplomacy. Driven by a genuine love for all humanity, she had an uncanny ability to tell you you were set up for hell and sound like you were going to a Sunday school picnic. I used to warn my students that I was her son, and the community thought so highly of her that I could commit murder in the school cafeteria in front of the whole school and every jury in the county would say “but that is Jocelyn’s boy” and acquit.
Talleyrand made it through the French Revolution and Napoleon, so I will try this here.
Speaking of Talleyrand, have you read Calasso’s book “The Ruin of Kasch” which is mainly about Talleyrands life as it was interspersed with the zeitgeist of the times in France. If not you may want to check it out
I taught economically disadvantaged ELLs for 24 years, and I was National Board Certified in TESOL before becoming an assistant principal.
I am appalled at NY State’s treatment and indifference to ELLs. They deserve better, and my suggestion is to take this advocacy right into the core of NYSABE, which does many important and critical things on behalf of ELLs and MLLs.
One thing ELLs need is time and experience to learn the sound system of English, vocabulary development through the five senses, concepts of school and print, and repeated reading protocols using the Lotta Lara method. Orthodox guided reading has far too many gaps for ELLs unless you adapt it heavily and provide extreme front loading in every lesson, in which case, it’s fine to use if you are using it in tandem to repeated reading.
I wish leaders would look at the effectiveness of repeated reading when it comes to the literacy end of ELLs’ needs. Everything for ELLs should not revolve around Readers’ Workshop and guided reading unless those approaches have a lot of differentiation, especially for children who are entering and emerging levels of English.
Now is the time to get involved:
NYSABE
New York University
Metropolitan Center for Urban Education
726 Broadway, 5th floor
New York City, NY 10003
Telephone: 212-998-5104
Executive Director
Nancy Villarreal de Adler
President
Rebecca Elías
Email: info@nysabe.net
“I’ve been teaching ESL for three decades. I know strategies and techniques. However, I don’t know of any that compensate for lack of time.”
Anyone that has taught ELLs for many years knows that time on task is important. Students do not learn English by osmosis. In my experience as an ESL or EL or ENL teacher or whatever teaching foreign students is called today, students benefit from a structured program in English. When I taught in New York, New York State actually added the transitional level into the ESL program and changed the exit criteria from a 35% to 40% on a standardized test. They sought to give students more intensive instruction in English.
Cutting English instruction by 33% to 100% is not plan to improve outcomes for ELLs. I do not know the rationale for the change, but it does not make a lot of sense. I am guessing that DeRosa and the Regents are expecting SIOP ( Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) to make up the difference. First of all SIOP requires lots of training to implement, and I can guarantee New York City and many NYS districts have not trained their teachers. I had two SIOP courses. The model that they used for high school instruction in the training I received was in a self contained class. Students did not change classes for academic subjects, and English was infused into every subject during the day. Two teachers rotated between the classes by subject taught depending on the certifications of the teachers. If students are shifting classes for different subjects and stand alone English is not offered, and the teachers do not have SIOP training, the students will fail English! Even monolingual American students that learned English as babies get a stand alone English class, and we know that some ELLs need double and triple periods.
I have one more comment to make about various trends in education that I have seen in over thirty-seven years in teaching. Like SIOP, bilingual education and whole language are trends that many schools have rejected because of failure. However, all of these approaches can be successful if there is excellent training and excellent teachers that do the implementing. Change takes investment. Districts often jump on and off bandwagons without making the necessary investment in the program. Then, the program fails. New York is failing its ELLs. New York should consider a return to stand alone ESL classes which have a proven record of helping students become proficient in English. It is far less complex to implement than poorly implemented SIOP instruction. What New York is currently doing is hurting the education of ELLs, and these students, as I well know, do not have time to waste.
New York is not even advocating for SIOP. I was told by the regional office it was a failure. They are pushing poorly run bilingual or learning English by osmosis. I have seen too many of my high school ELLs become so frustrated in their content classes that they give up and drop out. The truth is there is minimal support for them to actually Learn the English language. I have even suggested that instead of my newcomer from Yemen taking Spanish as a foreign language, perhaps they could take English. What a novel idea? This seems to be over the heads of the regents.
I cannot understand why New York would pursue an obvious blunder. Anyone that has studied second language acquisition knows that language has to be comprehensible in order to be learned. Content cannot be learned unless the student has the language and academic background to learn the new material. No wonder ELLs are overwhelmed and floundering.
What is SIOP? I am AI (Acronym Impaired).
It is Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. It is a method that combines content and language instruction for ELLs. I don’t know if this is what New York intended, but what has been created is costing these students dearly. ELLs are falling behind because they are not getting the type of English instruction that will help them be successful. Too many ELLs are failing or dropping out. NY needs to rethink eliminating stand alone ESL classes, in my opinion. Whatever they are doing is failing students.
Ah! Thank you. Sounds like a program headed for disaster.
I see that in many schools that idea that immersion is the answer has become the trend. The bottom line is that it is no cost and instead it is sold as a great idea even though there is no research to support this. In our state ELL students are expected to take and pass the state bench mark Smarter Balance after they have been in the country one year. When I questioned this and asked why they could not take the test at a lower level as SPED students do- I was told that I would be depriving students of their right to take the test at grade level. Silly!
Oh yes, immersion is the trend, even if it’s totally inappropriate. I have ELL students in my general geography class from the first minute the enter the country and cannot speak any English. ELLs don’t a dedicated class.
Special education has gone the same way. They are immersing even kids with moderate-severe disabilities, without any additional assistance, except maybe a peer tutor, or who is the same grade (or younger) than the student in question. I have had upwards of a dozen students on IEPs (out of classes of 40) in the same class.
It’s a travesty for ELL kids and kids on IEPs. I do what I can, but I know it’s not enough. It makes me sick to my stomach, and I have no choice in the matter. That’s what my district is doing.
So-called immersion is a way to cheap out on ELLs. The smart advanced students may be able to cope, but the beginners and intermediate students will be lost. ESL teachers know how to organize language instruction in such as way, students will build language incrementally like a snowball that rolls down a hill and keeps getting larger. Few bright beginners can learn from immersion. Most students do not have this type of mind so they will be lost. Many students will fail, and clearly this is the case in NY.
I just read a report by NPR. New York is failing its ELLs terribly. Only 37.1% of them are getting a high school diploma versus 77.8% of students that are graduating in the state. New York is fourth from the BOTTOM in this study. This is disgraceful! It breaks my heart to read this. I hope New York wakes up pronto! https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/23/512451228/5-million-english-language-learners-a-vast-pool-of-talent-at-risk
States like New York didn’t help themselves when they “dumbed down” the requirements to get a license to teach ESL in New York. If you need more teachers, lowering the requirements for the job will get you “warm bodies,” but not the professionally trained teachers needed to do the job right.
Thanks, Gov. Cuomo, for your willful negligence.
https://www.aqeny.org/2018/12/17/gov-cuomo-scrooge-of-public-schools-denies-cfe/
And thank you, Carranza, for being incompetent and abusive.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/ny-metro-flap-over-shakeup-for-students-learning-english-20190111-story.html
If Cuomo will not invest in ELLs, the city will continue to get poor results. Students that succeed will become responsible contributors t o the common good. Those that fail are more likely to get snagged by the criminal justice system, and that is not good for anyone.
Sink or swim is back! It doesn’t work with anyone but the most motivated learners. With newcomer refugees, there must be a lot of relationship building, basic vocabulary and cultural instruction, alongside wraparound health and wellness care. New York State has excellent resources on line for teaching Students with Limited and Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE). I’m surprised that the state is adopting such regressive multilingual learner programs. This is happening in California as well. Content teachers are being asked to teach newcomers and beginner Multilingual Learners their content area without the benefit of a trained ELL teacher at all. No common planning time, no extra prep, and no curriculum. They often get new teachers to teach these courses, courses in which the teacher also has the opportunity to “sink or swim” alongside their students. We are setting up both students and teachers for failure. It’s unfortunate that we have so much knowledge, research, and expertise in the field of Multilingual Education, and yet policy makers jump on trends and make poorly informed decisions.
To me, the bottom line is the same as always.
Some children will learn better in separate ELL classes. Some children will learn better if they spend most of their time immersed in English classes.
It is no different than learning to read. It is no different than learning math. But there is always someone there to sell a new approach.
The notion that all children learn exactly the same way at the same rate is the real problem.
No matter what way is used, some children will always be ill-served and some children will thrive. If the state understood that, there would be ELL classes but also immersion.
That should be common sense and it stuns me that it isn’t.
Sometimes parents who happens to have an easy baby or toddler — one who sleeps easily or eats everything or behaves perfectly or toilet trains at 18 months — are certain that it is because they are doing the right things and it is all in their perfect parenting. Then they have baby #2 or #3 who screams all night when put down or would rather go hungry than eat everything or who has constant accidents when toilet trained at 18 months. And those parents suddenly realize how wrongheaded they were.
Children are not widgets.
You are correct that not all ELLs are the same. However, generally, beginners and intermediates need to be sheltered and given explicit instruction in order to make sound progress. Even most students that are advanced need the attention of a trained ESL teacher. While their comprehension improves, and they can begin to function in mainstream classes, they still need help with cognitive-academic language and writing. Sink and swim results in most students drowning, particularly those SIFE, (students with interrupted formal education), and that includes the majority of newcomers. With the right support, these ELLs can become good students and productive members of society.
Yes, I didn’t intend to imply otherwise. I thought your comments above were excellent — especially about how various approaches can work if implemented with well-trained teachers but that schools jump on and off bandwagons without making proper investments.
“Sometimes parents……” Never was there a truer statement or a more apt analogy. There are so many ways human beings given themselves credit for things out of their control. Perhaps his is the theme of all the issues we discuss here daily.
This is educational malpractice, and this is what gives the privatizers ammunition to promote private charter schools as the “solution.” In fact, most privatizers do not want these students. ELLs benefit from small classes, and they are expensive to educate. To be successful these students need lots of time, resources, and teachers with expertise available to them. It costs money! Fail now, and we all will pay later. It costs a lot more to warehouse prisoners than to educate!
“Imagine how you’d feel if you went to China tomorrow, and they sat you in classes with almost no instruction in Chinese language.”
There are fifty-six spoken Chinese languages and one written Chinese language, but only two languages are mandatory to learn in public ed and the major one is Mandarin (thanks To China’s 1st Emperor a couple of hundred years before the birth of Christ). Mandarin is the only written one in China that is also has a spoken element different than the other 55 recognized spoken languages.
Guess what the second mandatory written and spoken language to learn is in China’s K to 6th grade:
English.
Imagine what it would be like to live in a country with fifty-six recognized spoken languages but only one written one. Then there are different dialects like Shanghainese.
For instance, someone that grew up speaking the Shanghai-style of Mandarin might not be understood in Beijing where the Mandarin dialect is different.
But if you are tone-deaf, forget it. Mandarine is a tonal language and the same word has four meanings depending on the tone. Get the tone wrong, and instead of asking for an apple, you could be calling someone an ass hole.
You’re right, Lloyd. Language teachers know how to organize curricula so students can learn efficiently and effectively.
My son-in-law has been here about seventeen years without any English instruction. He has hustled to make a living the whole time he has been here. He understands English fairly well, but only in subjects he knows. He is from Mexico, and he can read and write in Spanish. He is a smart fellow. His writing in English is terrible. He can read in English, but he reads slowly because he is translating. His spoken English communicates, but his grammar is terrible. His accent is so strong he lets my daughter talk to his customers so as to not cause confusion. My third year ESL students can read, write and speak much better than my son-in-law. By the way, I am not trying to put this guy down. I admire his resourcefulness. He can take an engine apart, and put it back together. I could never do this, ever! My point is language instruction works!
Arthur: First, thank you for your amazing blog. And–your “sidebar” of other blogs is the only way I can access Diane’s when I’m using a computer rather than my own: if I Google “Diane Ravitch’s Blog,” I only get one old post, or info. about Diane, or, under “Diane Ravitch’s Blog” it says “not available.” So, I can (& this is info. for other readers who encounter the same problem) always Google “NYC Educator Blog,” that opens up, then I click on “Diane Ravitch’s Blog.” (Guess Google doesn’t want us to access you, Diane…NOT surprised…
Also–& this should come as no shock to anyone–someone I know who was asked to speak to a summer school Civics class (at what is considered one of the nation’s best public high schools)–told me that a very large portion of an audience of 100 students were “clueless & amazed when I told them government is responsible for & regulates every single thing around them: the air, the water they drink & flush, the streetlights, the planes overhead, the trees on the parkway, etc.”
Once again, thank you Bill Gate$, Walton$, Eli Broad, Koch Bro$., Pear$on & Common Core. Part of the 99% (thus, Other People’s Children)?
NO Civics for you!!
Oh, but some good news–a good bill in favor of ELL students & parents just passed in IL
(notice I’m not using ILL-Annoy very much anymore–things, here, are better w/o Bruce), as well as a recent appointment of a very dedicated & hard-working sp.ed. parent to the IL Ed. Advisory Board.
Keep fighting & writing, people, there is hope to be had.
&…vote on Election Day–“paper is safer!”
“notice I’m not using ILL-Annoy very much anymore”
Don’t worry, I continue to use it-LOL-with proper attribution of course! 🙂
Gracias, Senor!
Lastly (not sure, however that anyone is reading this but Diane), S.I.O.P. (looks like SLOP) sounds like R.T.I. (Response to Intervention, which is actually NO response & NO intervention, just the usual $$$$ runaround, which keeps sped. kids from being diagnosed as such, thus getting the help they need.
& ELL “immersion” is exactly the same as special ed. “inclusion.” Once, our entire school district sped. dept. (all the teachers) were told that inclusion was mandatory.
(The former sped. director had told his flunky follower to tell us “it is the ;aw,” because, of course, none of us knew the law. {My colleague, who was president of our IEA local & I had both taken both special ed law & general ed law classes w/in our 1st year of teaching–& we KNEW “the law!” Hence, we filed a contract-based grievance [now, see, this is where unions as protectors of students comes in]–& we WON!!}. Thus, the continuum of services continued in our district, & the kids benefitted. {Unfortunately, the sped. director wasn’t fired–as she should have been–& went on to do many other ignorant things–AND WE FOUGHT HER–& WON!–EVERY STEP OF THE WAY…the UNION way!)
So, strongly agree w/Senor Swacker–only adminimals & GAGAs can allow this all to continue (& good for you, Roy Turrentine, up there at 9:03 PM!), so…KEEP FIGHTING!!
I assume you have seen some of Nancy Bailey’s comments about this on her web site. One question I have had is whether the failure to understand a language does not automatically place the thinking in the 504 area. I am not good on the law, and I am not a good organizer, so I do what I can for kids who need things for any reason that are pretty distant from the class. That said I cannot claim success except in involving some kids in class discussions who are “included” for reasons other than language, and, of course, trying to do no harm.
Without effective language instruction, ELLs will become even more over represented in special education. They will get all kinds of labels on them when what they really need is effective language instruction. I know what works because I have had many ELLs that graduated and gone to college. The whole district at the time was geared to do a good job with students. I have no idea what is going on now with these ridiculous regulations.
New York needs another ASPIRA lawsuit.https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095429298
I completed my masters in Bilingual Education at NYU in 1978, which included 18 credit hours in English as a Second Language instruction. Until Massachusetts violated the civil rights of our ELL’s by adopting the Unz English Only initiative in 2001, I was a bilingual teacher. Massachusetts had no ESL certificate until about 2003, so in the interim they grandfathered English teachers. One day I walked past the classroom of such a colleague and found she had ELL’s diagraming English sentences. She spoke loudly, one presumes to make herself understood, to kids who had no idea what she was saying.
Recently, those holding the reins at the state department of education have been pushing Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) as the cheap fix. All teachers have to take a couple of modules as PD, then they’re magically qualified to teach ELL kids in the same classrooms as native English speakers in whatever content area they also happen to teach. No linguistic understanding of second language acquisition necessary! Voilà! They pretend, too, that the influx of kids without an English language background is a new issue. It must be a virus that spreads from state to state.
In the winter of the year I was to retire, I was told by an administrator that I was required to complete these modules before June. I told her that would not happen, first because in my subject area – Spanish – no one needed to learn anything in English, so there was no need for SEI; and that second, I had far more training than two modules, and that third I would not be returning the following September to deploy the newly acquired modules. I got written up for my troubles.
I meant to add that, after years of advocacy and losing nearly twenty years to ineffective instruction, Massachusetts passed the LOOK Act in 2017, which allows school systems to choose how to instruct their ELL students. It’s not perfect and some systems will choose badly, but at least there’s no prohibition on linguistically based instruction.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/ell/look-act.html
Christine, I am surprised that Massachusetts did not have provision for grandfathering you in, based on your degree. At least Mass. is providing for more varied options for ELLs than New York.
I had a master’s degree in ESL long before certification arrived. When certification came in, I would have had to take one simple minded global studies course to qualify for certification. BTW, I had 18 undergraduate credits in anthropology. I didn’t need “global studies.” I decided to just keep my grandfathered status in NYS rather than subject myself to a superfluous course.
By the time MA got around to certification, they required 36 hours in ESL and for god only knows what reason, Bilingual Ed was considered a different field – politics? I’d been teaching for more than 20 years by then, had three young kids and no desire to go back to get a cert under those circumstances.
What they should have done was grandfathered any World Language teacher, perhaps with a methods class or two. It’s the same linguistic skill set, just from the opposite side of the cultural exchange. If you’re bilingual in French and English, you can go in both directions!
I think immersion only works for really young children (preschool-kindergarten). My grandmother did not speak English when she started school and neither did my mother-in-law, but they learned from the kids around them. No one would have recognized them as non native English speakers as adults. My grandmother was eventually literate in three languages and taught in a one room schoolhouse before getting married and raising a family. If she had been older, I don’t think it would have worked out as well. I think the strategy for working with ELLs is probably both age and child dependent. I remember how easily my daughter picked up Spanish words and phrases from Dora the Explorer before she went to school. She’s learning French in school now but is finding language acquisition is much harder.
Young children can become bilingual or even trilingual quite naturally, but they will only gain a command of listening and speaking, not reading a writing. This is mostly social language, not the cognitive-academic language demanded of students in our secondary schools. That is very different and a lot more complex particularly when students never had much cognitive-academic language in their first language.
At this moment, I am visiting friends in Croatia whose young children are trilingual: English, Croatian, and Finnish. The boys are 3 and 7. They switch from language to language without hesitation.
The nephew of one of my students hit the trilingual trifecta; at home his parents spoke English to him; at his paternal grandparents’ Spanish; and at his maternal grandparents, Mandarin. By the age of 5, he was communicatively and culturally competent in three of the world’s major languages – just a regular lower class kid with a loving family who valued communicating with their first grandchild.
I’ll bet these children have great accents in all three languages too! If you can teach children a new language before puberty, they can sound like native speakers. My former elementary ELLs sound like native speakers of English, but my former high school students still have an accent from their home language when they speak English.
My host is Finnish. His wife is Croatian. The children and parents speak those languages as well as English.
“I think the strategy for working with ELLs is probably both age and child dependent.”
Yes! I’m surprised that the age thing is not talked about more. A student who is 4 or 5 may very well be able to learn via immersion and will rarely lose out on much learning (some top private schools don’t even expect students to read until age 6 or even 7). Not all of them will flourish in immersion classes but giving the students who do the opportunity to be in them seems like a no-brainer.
But it is different when students have content they need to learn, which is what happens in higher grades. It is likely that immersion will not be enough for many students and they will be at a huge disadvantage.