The issue of bilingual education is a much debated topic in this country and especially in this state. The Spanish-speaking populace has grown tremendously in these past decades, much of which has immigrated with Spanish as their only language. This has left the public school system with an interesting problem; how to successfully transition Spanish speaking students into an English environment. Public school systems have generally adopted one of two approaches to this problem. One is to allow students several years to develop their English with lessons taught in both languages. The other is a total immersion program where students are thrust into English-only lessons with little time develop their second language. Both approaches have ardent followers with valid arguments for each approach.

In immersion programs children are allowed at most one year of English study before being placed in main-stream English-only classes. Proponents of this sink-or-swim approach...