The issue has nothing to do with good or bad teaching methods. The attack on bilingual education is part of the capitalist rulers' attempts to curtail the rights of immigrant workers and oppressed nationalities while chipping away at social entitlements, driving down wages and working conditions, and pushing back the democratic rights of working people as a whole. Their "welfare reform" schemes, police brutality, and widespread Immigration and Naturalization Service raids and deportations are aimed at deepening the divisions within the working class and forcing its most vulnerable sections to share a major burden of the devastating capitalist economic crisis. This is how the rulers seek to weaken working-class solidarity and resistance to their austerity measures.
Bilingual education was won through massive struggles by Chicanos, Chinese, and Puerto Ricans in the 1960s and '70s. It coincided with the battles of farm workers to unionize California's fields. It was one front in the battle for equal education that included the fight for affirmative action and busing for desegregation of schools, open admission to public colleges, and Black, Chicano, Asian, and Native American studies programs.
The Chicano youth who walked out of high schools for bilingual education demanded and won respect for themselves and their culture. They challenged the racist setup that condemned them to the poorest schools, the worst jobs, and the prison cells throughout the country.
The "English for the Children" sponsors want to roll back the clock to the days when Mexican and Chicano students were forbidden from speaking Spanish at school, and when the quality of education available to them was among the worst.
These rightist politicians are political servants for the wealthy class, who seek to exploit the real concerns among millions of working people over the inadequacy of education offered in the public schools, including many of the existing bilingual programs. They are in the vanguard of advancing the rulers' campaign to scapegoat immigrants and oppressed nationalities for social problems, while promoting U.S. national chauvinism, to convince working people to view themselves as "Americans."
Working people should reject this reactionary propaganda, which lays the ground for deeper assaults and imperialist war moves. By fighting to defend and extend the right to bilingual education, the labor movement can strike a blow on the side of those hit hardest by the capitalist system and advance the struggle for a society where the resources are used for all of humanity instead of the profit hunger of the wealthy minority in power.