I agree w/ everything you said CAR-with this to add: teaching non-english speakers in their native language in the early grades hurts them to no end. I grew up in non english speaking househld and went to grade school w/ a lot of others like me. When those others did not do well in class, guess where they were sent, straight to the bilingual class. Did their school work improve? No!
What happened to a lot of those was they got to speak their native tongue all the time and as we got older(high school) they were the kids who never assimilated, the ones who never had any friends that were not of the same race as them. If I had my way, any kinder kid who did not know english would be prescribed 5 hours of Sponge Bob everyday until they became fluent.
