How a dubious proposition turned into a bureaucracy
For most of Chicago’s history, immigrant education was built around a hard but simple bargain: When you came to America you were expected to speak the native tongue. It was not always gentle. It was, however, clear. The child adapted to the English-speaking school, and the family, parish, neighborhood, and classroom all pushed in the same direction.
That older world is easy to caricature. It can sound like the gruff neighborhood command: “You come to America, you speaka da English!” Yet millions of children from Italian, Polish, Greek, Czech, Lithuanian, Jewish, and other immigrant families did learn English that way. Some failed, some muddled through, and some soared. It was a sink or swim mentality. At the very least it punctured the modern assumption that English immersion is educational malpractice.
Today, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) operate in a very different legal and bureaucratic universe. The old sink-or-swim model is gone. English Learner (EL) services are no longer optional. Under federal civil rights law, state bilingual education rules and decades of court precedent, CPS must identify students with limited English proficiency and provide language support. Bilingual Education Act