More Good Coverage from Arizona

As hoped for, the press coverage of the Arizona “English for the Children” initiative, sparked by last week’s press conference in Phoenix has generally been extremely positive, and seems to properly emphasize the substantial base of Latino support for the measure.

The Capitol Times (Arizona’s main weekly newspaper for politics and governmental affairs) carried a good story with a front-page color photo of several Latino supporters holding their “Ingles para los Ninos” (“English for the Children”) signs at the event.

The Tribune (Arizona’s second largest paper) carried an excellent lead editorial, emphasizing that the campaign should be waged on the actual merits of bilingual education (which seem quite scanty) rather than diverted into any misleading conflict over race or ethnicity.

Just today, E.J. Montini, one of the Arizona’s leading liberal columnists, wrote a very fair-minded, even favorable column on our measure, while on Monday, the Republic ran an excellent op-ed piece in support by Johanna Haver, a retired teacher.

Finally, I’ve just learned that Superintendent Ken Noonan of Oceanside, founding president of the California Association of Bilingual Educators and recent convert to Prop 227-type English immersion, was suddenly invited to Washington to help brief the White House on Hispanic educational issues. Perhaps the Democrats are indeed beginning to move on this subject…

This entry was posted in Bilingual Education, UnzColumn and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.