In 1967, California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed legislation authorizing bilingual education and ending a 95-year-old state mandate that "all schools shall be taught in the English language." The bipartisan legislation passed during an era of militancy on civil rights issues and was based on evidence that English-only schooling had harmed Hispanic, Asian, and Native-American students. The 1960 Census showed, for example, that 50% of California's Mexican-American residents aged 18-24 had dropped out of school before completing the 8th grade.

Now, 30 years later, a wealthy and politically ambitious California businessman by the name of Ron Unz wants to ban bilingual instruction and re-impose an English-only mandate on all state classrooms.

Unz is the man behind the so-called "English for the Children" initiative that will go before California voters on June 2. The ballot measure, officially known as Proposition 227, goes far beyond the symbolism of previous English-only campaigns and strikes at the heart of public education and the right to equal educational opportunity. Further, it is part of a national backlash against immigration and, if successful, could establish a chilling precedent for other districts and states with large numbers of students who do not speak English as their first language.

A former Republican gubernatorial candidate who lost to Pete Wilson in the 1994 GOP primary, Unz is a multimillionaire software developer from the Silicon Valley. He has no expertise in education. He recruited as co-author of the initiative Gloria Matta Tuchman, a first-grade teacher and former national board member of U.S. English, the leading supporter of English-only and official English policies in the United States.

If approved by California voters, the Unz initiative would require the placement of all public school pupils in "English-language classrooms." The state's limited-English-proficient (LEP) students -- who currently number about 1.4 million -- would "be educated through sheltered English immersion during a temporary transition period not normally intended to exceed one year." Bilingual education would be virtually eliminated.