Dear Readers

Gilberto Arriaza
Co-Director, Leading for Equity and Achievement Design (CES Regional Center) College of Education, San José State University

The right to think is perhaps the most fundamental of all human rights. One thinks in a language, and only when one is able to think in one's primary language it is possible to consider oneself whole and authentic. The history of language in the United States is littered with countless legal and political maneuvers aimed at limiting its people from their right to preserve their primary language. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, European immigrants were forced to forget their tongues. They became monolingual English speakers. The new immigrants, mostly from Latin America and Asia, have witnessed the same legal and political maneuvering, this time against bilingual education.

Anti-bilingual initiatives were recently approved in several states, promising that by forcing students to be immersed in the English language, their English competence and academic performance would quickly improve. But reality has proven those promises false. In the 2000-2001 school year in California alone, 1,393,849 children failed to be promoted to fluent English proficiency—a failure rate of 92%, according to the standards set by the same promoters of the English Only legislation. As a result of an increasing interdependent and global culture, English language learners will continue to be a large presence in schools, in some states more than others.

Successful programs, such as dual immersion, tap into students' primary language skills and knowledge, nurturing and enriching the school's culture to everyone's benefit. Students' right to think—thus to read and write—in their primary language resides, ultimately, in the capacity and political will that educators deploy to daily enact this right in the whole school.

Jill Davidson, Horace Editor

Data from the year 2000 United States Census tell us that nearly eighteen percent of U.S. residents speak languages other than English at home. More than half of that group self-report English fluency, and most among the remainder report significant English competence. We all—schools, families, children, ultimately, each one of us—need supportive public opinion and policy environments to be able to continue this trend toward multilingualism.

This issue of Horace looks at schools and communities that are committed to helping students hold onto their linguistic heritage as they learn to use their minds powerfully in English. Like so much else in education that's worth doing, multilinguistic teaching and learning takes skill, understanding, hard work, and, most of all, time. Thank you to the schools that let me see what happens inside their bilingual and ESL classrooms. I'm in awe of your work, and grateful.

On another note: we work hard to keep the web site's resources up to date—the first issue of this year's volume of Horace, "School Design: Elements of Smallness Create Conditions for Success," is online already. To find it, and past issues of Horace from 1988 onward, click the Horace button on the site's home page, www.essentialschools.org. A special thanks to CES National's Cisco Orozco, who keeps the site timely and transforms print material, speeches (including Ted Sizer and Governor Howard Dean's addresses at the 2002 Fall Forum) and more into internet-accessible resources. If you haven't already or recently, take some time to explore CES's online world.