Court: U.S. high schoolers should speak English
Chad Groening - OneNewsNow - 8/4/2009 6:40:00 AM
Last week, the First District Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected arguments that English-only exams violate a federal requirement that limited-English-speaking students "shall be assessed in a valid and reliable manner." Nearly 1.6 million students in California have limited command of the language.
The appellate court's three-to-zero ruling upholds a 2007 decision by a San Francisco judge, who also ruled against the bilingual-education groups and nine school districts that sued to overturn the state's English-only testing methods.
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Aloysius Hogan, a spokesman for English First, says there is no excuse for graduating high school students not to be proficient in English.
"The schools haven't done a very good job if you can't even speak English well enough to take a test. So I question why it would be a good idea to increase the 
costs to California's citizenry and government at this point when California faces such a deficit," he notes. "I also question the 1.6 million limited command of the language. Their number -- 1.6 million -- I question that as well."
Marc Coleman, a lawyer for the school districts and advocacy groups, says they are considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court. But Hogan believes the solid three-to-zero appeals court ruling will be tough to challenge.
