Only government would boast about a decision this stupid

There's nothing quite like a presidential election campaign for suggesting government solutions to nearly every human condition. For a few months, we are painted a picture of what government might be, not what it is.

But if we are momentarily enthralled by naïve messages about hope coming from lumbering bureaucracies, we are also constantly reminded that by and large, government usually fails us.

One need only look at the condition of state and local roads, pothole-filled minefields that are popping tires and bending axles with regularity these days. Or the latest proposal by a do-nothing, debt-loving General Assembly, a 66 percent tax hike courtesy of the state Senate's most profound thinkers.

But the best example this week of your government in action is the punishment handed out to Diamond Lake School District 76 in Mundelein. Its sin? Its non-native English speakers were doing too well.

The Illinois State Board of Education initially lauded the district for the academic gains posted by its non-native English speakers. Test scores rose dramatically. In 2005, 67.6 percent of those students surpassed state expectations in reading and 32.4 percent surpassed state expectations in math. Last year, those numbers had risen to 71.1 percent and 78.6 percent, respectively.

Why? Because the school district started teaching classes primarily in English in 2003, using Spanish only as a last resort to assure comprehension.

If you don't believe immersion works, you've never taken a foreign language class only to discover that you learned 10 times as much in a quarter of the time when you visited a place where using that language was necessary. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of both invention and comprehension.

Discovering that holding these classes primarily in English helps students learn English faster should hardly be a surprise. Just a year or two after California voters eliminated bilingual education by referendum some years back, state test scores there dramatically improved, too.

But because the classes are now so English-heavy, the same state board is now punishing the school district by taking away $175,000 in state and federal funds. That's because bilingual regulations require teaching in the native language.

Doesn't matter to the government that it is punishing a district for doing what it is supposed to do -- helping kids learn a new language.

"When we monitor the bilingual program, we're looking at the services they are supposed to provide," Matt Vanover, an ISBE spokesman said in published reports. "We're not looking at how they are doing."

Of course not. Government in general is very good at "not looking at" whether programs actually work as intended. And that, of course, is a prime argument for keeping government out of any issue that really matters.

"I'm not saying bilingual education doesn't work," said District 76 Superintendent Roger Prosise in published comments, although he probably should say just that. "What I'm saying is, if another program is working, the district should be able to use the program without losing funding."

I'm guessing the average taxpayer would agree with Prosise and agree that punishing a school district for successfully teaching its non-English speakers is asinine.

Only a government could crow about a decision this stupid with a straight face.