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The reporter has done a reasonable job of reporting on this 'not really new' situation of Hispanic students and this new development . It is no secret, though it has seldom been a past Board emphasis, that over, it seems, the last 10 years the Hispanic students in DI do no better than district average, and the non-Hispanic were hitting near 'the top of the charts' (API 1000) with the highest demographic sub-category schools in all of Santa Clara county! The absolute worst Academic Achievement GAP in the district (K-5).

This is part of the reason why, "They tell us lies" was heard from Hispanic parents, talking about the information they were being given, prior to Castro/Mistal decision.

How to fix this? Just 'separating' Castro neighborhood (traditional ELL) program, and Mistral Elementary School, apparently has not done it. I'm glad Trustee Gutierrez and Superintendent Rudolph are pushing this reform.

@Steven Nelson

"It is no secret ... that over,... the last 10 years the Hispanic students in DI do no better than district average,"

On the standardized tests, I assume?

How about testing how well the native Spanish-speakers do in speaking English as well as a native English speaker does?

If Dual-Immersion causes the Spanish speaking kids to learn how to speak with little or no accent when they speak English, I think that would be of great benefit to these kids in their futures.

I would ask the same of the English speaking students. How well are they learning to speak Spanish with little or no accent so they sound like native Spanish speakers?

I submit that as long as they are all getting a good general education, then also learning how to be bi-lingual and still sound like a native speaker is of high life-long value to all these students. If they then pass along what they have learned to others, so much the better.

"and the non-Hispanic were hitting near 'the top of the charts' "

And you're saying this is a "BAD" thing?

This district already abandoned the highly effective GATE program, what is wrong with creating high performing students who speak both languages as a native speaker would?

Maybe Mistral needs to do a better job of recruiting native Spanish speakers who also have well educated parents, even if the were only educated in Spanish. Then, Mistral might produce top performers in both English and Spanish and across the board as well.

Thank you for writing this article, Kevin. I discussed it with a high school teacher and briefly looked at some bilingual education material.

The poor performance on standardized tests and lower GPA should scare everybody. New teachers are not an excuse. They probably have plenty of enthusiasm, and management should be making sure the all the bases are covered. High principal turnover is a problem, and it suggests there are management problems above the principal level. The poor performance clearly says something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

The no playground sounds like a serious impediment. Kids don't learn languages in classrooms, they learn it from their parents and friends. Even if a language is spoken at home, friends will be the major resource. Don't make language learning all about classwork.

The student makeup of Mistral raises questions. Despite its good intentions, I'm wondering if Mistral is an "ESL pull out" school. If we survey the kids at Castro, what will they think of those who went to Mistral?

One requirement for a successful English immersion program is a reasonable presence (at least 30 percent) of strong English speaking students. Apparently, all ELL students is a crushing handicap for any program. However, if students are speaking their language on the playground, then they are missing an immersion benefit. There's no social incentive to learn the other language.

The article does say that Mistral claims a majority of English-fluent students. That sounds good, but are those English-fluent students keeping together rather letting non-English-fluent students join in? If there is a majority of English-fluent students, then do the poor test scores suggest something worse? Are the English-fluent students performing almost as well as their peers at other schools, and the non-English-fluent majority dragging the average score down by performing more than twice as bad as the school average suggests? Or is the English-fluent majority not that fluent? Or is a watered down curriculum at Mistral dragging down scores for all students? In the latter case, parents should pull their English-fluent children out of Mistral. Learning accent-free Spanish might be nice, but keeping up with your peers is better.

Another scary point is that Mistral immersion starts out a 10/90 and gradually increases to 50/50. Then the ELL students are sent to a non-bilingual middle school. Jumping from 50/50 to 0/100 does not sound plausible. It seems more reasonable for Mistral to finish at 90/10 or 80/20 rather than 50/50. If you cannot reach 80/20 in elementary school, then you will foot higher costs in middle school.

I also don't get how the 10/90 start fits with a dual immersion program. Does that mean some 1st grade classes are taught 10% Spanish and 90% English? That approach would separate the students into two groups and make them less likely to mingle outside of class.

Another detail is that weak immersion programs need 8 years to achieve parity. Poor test performance suggests Mistral is weak. I'm mystified when Rudolf speaks of not dismantling what already works well for the Mistral community. What is working well? The Voice article suggests serious achievement problems at Mistral, so the "goal is to take an already-strong program and help it reach a nationally renowned status" sounds delusional. The district has an under-performing program rather than a strong one. Rudolf seeks "improving Mistral so that it performs at an extremely high level", but how will that be accomplished?

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