By Gloria Rebecca Gomez | AZ Mirror
The Arizona Supreme Court won’t consider whether public schools need to ask for parental permission before teaching students in more than one language, dealing another legal setback to Republican state Superintendent Tom Horne in his multi-year effort to end bilingual education in the state.
The Arizona State Board of Education allows schools to use one of four instructional models to help English Language Learner students become proficient in English. Under one of those methods, the 50-50 Dual Language Immersion model, students learn half the day in English and half the day in another language, such as Spanish. Horne, who has long opposed multilingual education and ran, in part, on a campaign promise to end it, filed a lawsuit in September of 2023 that would have significantly restricted the ability of schools to use the teaching method.
Horne argued that the model, as it is being implemented in more than 100 schools across the state, violates the Arizona law. In 2000, voters approved Proposition 203, which prohibits teaching English learner students in any other language but English until they’ve achieved proficiency.
