A new definition of "bilingual"
Do you think an American who can't communicate well in English should be fired from his or her job? Doesn't sound quite fair, does it? After all, the job might not depend on the worker being fluent in English, and insisting upon English fluency might prevent the company from hiring the best (or most qualified or most available or cheapest) person for the job.
But what if the job in question is bilingual education teacher?
Doesn't the job title explicitly state that the person must be fluent in at least two languages - specifically, the two languages being taught? Turns out that Boston cut corners a while back to hire "bi"-lingual teachers, and are now discovering that dozens of them may lose their jobs because they can't pass oral exams in English:
A new state law will eliminate most bilingual education programs and require schools to prove by the end of the summer that their teachers are proficient in English. So far, assessments, such as classroom observations by administrators, have found that dozens of them may have difficulty holding onto their jobs because of poor language skills.
In Lawrence, for example, 31 of 93 teachers evaluated did not pass English proficiency standards and could be fired if they fail an oral exam scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, Lawrence Superintendent Wilfredo Laboy said...The state Department of Education recommends various methods of determining proficiency, such as the classroom screenings Laboy oversaw in Lawrence. If a teacher's proficiency is in question after the initial review, the state suggests an oral test be given by outside evaluators. The test measures the speaker's ability to use English in real-life situations...
Districts hired teachers who couldn't adequately speak English because growing ethnic populations had to be educated, but there were few qualified bilingual teachers to do it...
Bizarrely, the article the quotes someone who describes the hiring of someone with poor English skills as essential merely because that person was "bilingual." Either you can be fluent in only one language and be considered bilingual in Massachusetts, or you can be fluent in two languages, but neither needs to be English. What a wonder.
Update: Reader Bill claims that my last statement here was a misinterpretation. Here's the full quote:
Districts hired teachers who couldn't adequately speak English because growing ethnic populations had to be educated, but there were few qualified bilingual teachers to do it, said Claretha Coleman, director of personnel at the Springfield public schools. She added Springfield has less than 10 teachers who need testing.
''We really shouldn't let it happen at all,'' Coleman said. ''Sometimes a principal needs a person who's bilingual. So we take that person.''
Bill claims that what Ms. Coleman is really saying was, the principal had to have someone who spoke the language that wasn't English, so they were willing to hire "that person" regardless of their fluency in English. Okay, I see where I mixed that up (sorry), but I think Ms. Coleman's statement could have been clearer (because the "that person" in sentence 2 of her statement is not the "a person" that is bilingual in sentence 1 of the statement). I believe what she meant with her statement is, "We really shouldn't let it happen at all...Sometimes a principal needs a person who's bilingual, but when no qualified bilingual teachers were available, we chose to hire non-bilingual teachers who were fluent in the non-English language that the students used."