Ronald Coleman: “I think sometimes in the course of debates like this we have sometimes gotten angry and sometimes not discussed what the…”

“I think sometimes in the course of debates like this we have sometimes gotten angry and sometimes not discussed what the real issue is. I think today, instead, we have actually had a fairly serious debate about these amendments offered by our colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Roth], and I appreciate them. I can tell the Members that 21 years ago in my State, in our legislature we had a proposal called bilingual education offered in the State of Texas, and I remember being asked to coauthor it. I asked a lot of questions of the author, a gentleman named Matt Garcia from Corpus Christi, a member of the House at that time, about that legislation and how in the world we would get to the point where we would do what it is that all of us know bilingual education is meant to do, that is to teach a child English, math, reading, writing skills, social studies, geography, all the rest, in a way that educates the child and in fact leaves no one else behind, not the English-speaking child, not the Spanish-speaking child, or others in the class who may have been brought up to speak as a first language a completely different language than the two I just mentioned.”