Bilingual classrooms flourish in some areas of the country. Inner city elementary schools on the south side of Chicago maintain classrooms where native English speaking students and native Spanish speaking students coexist, and they are partnered, so they can teach each other one another's native tongue, while they learn from text books and books that are written in, both, English and Spanish. However, in California, the Los Angeles school district is looking to keep non-English speaking students separate from other children.  

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is making the changes to separate non-English speaking students from English speaking students, alleging that the presence of non-English speaking students leads to English learning students learning "Spanglish," rather than proper English.

LAUSD's decision to segregate students enraged teachers, parents and principals. And, the district's experts say that this may be a common sense idea on paper, however, the execution of such of a plan would make Spanish-speaking students feel like aren't as intelligent  or valuable because they lack fluency of the "mainstream" students.

"Kids with little or no English are going to be segregated and told they're not good enough for the mainstream," one mother of a kindergartner told the L.A. Times.  "Kids learn from their peers, and they're not going to be able to do that anymore." 

Being that the LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country, and 73 percent of the student population is Latino, this could set precedent, and ripple across the nation to other districts. Other U.S. cities may decide that the integration of proficient English speaking students and non-English speaking students is detrimental to English speaking pupils.

Students who are separated from the rest of the student population and placed in classes designated for students who lack proficiency tend to remain there longer, learning English at a slower rate.

In 2010, the federal Department of Education launched a formal investigation against LAUSD, to determine if they violated the civil rights of non-English speaking students by not educating them properly. The investigation led to a settlement, and the district agreed to make changes, and one of those changes was the "separate learning" policy. Despite the LAUSD's thoughts on the subject, the U.S. Department of Education has stated that peer learning between native-English speakers and their counterparts is the most effective practice for learning English.

Non-English speaking children should have the opportunity to learn alongside their peers, and be provided with education that the same about of attention and effort. Furthermore, LAUSD isn't in the classrooms with these students or their teachers, and they have little idea how these children learn. LAUSD should consider the fact that, both, teachers and principals seem to disagree with their ruling.