Our program is both effective and ineffective. Many of the students who are out in two years come from homes in which the parents were highly educated in their native countries. The boy from Kosovo, for instance, had a very involved mother who had been a teacher in her native country. Once I learned to interpret her accent, I found her English to be quite good, though she hadn't spoken it either before moving here. Many of Plano's foreign students are children of computer engineer and programmer types from Asia or Europe. The preschool my daughter goes to is heavily populated with those sorts of kids. My school is less effective with native Spanish speakers, but two years ago (I taught only honors classes last year), I had three Mexican students who made it into "regular" English by the second semester of the year. One wonderful little girl excelled. The other two struggled a bit, but passed. We've had some Asian kids come into our school before not speaking a word of English, and they'll end up in honors English within two years. That's not uncommon at all.
From what I have seen, it is mostly a question of motivation or desire to learn English. Many of the Mexican immigrants I have met (legal or illegal) simply aren't motivated to learn English because they can get by quite well here without it. There was a food manufacturing plant in Lewisville that was a customer of mine. They had 2 Mexican guys in their maintenance dept that I worked with on a regular basis. One was a legal, who had been here for over 20 years. His accent was so bad I could barely understand him. The other was illegal, and had been here less than 5 years. His English was perfect, with no accent at all. I was amazed when I found that out. I used to have the attitude that those who spoke English poorly were "stupid", but then I realized that even those who did it poorly could speak a second language, where I could not. If you look at most European countries, many if not most of the younger people (say 40 or younger), can speak English on some level. I think we should put more emphasis on learning foreign language in schools here, but the problem is that even if our kids learn them, they have no real outlet to practice it.
that's the kicker. there is no real reason for kids to be taught a foreign language unless there is going to be interaction with said language to actually develop it. You can learn basics how to somewhat communicate with it yet that's not learning the language, per se.
