Bilingual Controversy at CUNY-Hostos Revolves Around Final Exam
BRONX, NY
A controversy that erupted this spring over bilingual
education at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College, which is part
of the City University of New York (CUNY), has languished in the courts
and turned into a war of words in the media.
Critics of Hostos, primarily the board of trustees for CUNY. charge
that the bilingual college, which was founded in 1968, is failing to
produce bilingual students. They further charge that Hostos has
replaced the standard CUNY exit exam with a “watered down” version.
Herman Badillo, one of the founders of the college and a trustee for
CUNY, said. “First the CUNY Writing Assessment Test (CWAT) was an
entrance exam, then an exit exam, and now, it has been dropped
altogether.”
Administrators and supporters of Hostos strongly disagree with the
charges and say that attacks against the nation’s only bilingual
two-year college are politically motivated, part of the anti-bilingual
education movement in the country, and most importantly, based on
misinformation.
Hostos English professor Henry Lesnick said that Hostos is fully
within its rights to discard CWAT. He also said that research
conclusively shows that using multiple factors in language-proficiency
assessment is better than a fifty-minute test. The week prior to the
trustees’ action, the Hostos College Senate endorsed multiple measures
of assessment.
“The trustees disregarded the prevailing academic wisdom,” he said.
