Bilingual education is getting a bad rap that a representative of Georgetown University's Evaluation Assistance Center calls unmerited.

Ann Willits is renowned for refuting results of a U.S. Department of Education report on the status of bilingual education, said Odette Pineiro, president of the Puerto Rican Student Association. The report -- titled Baker-De Kanter -- concluded that bilingual education was of little value to language minority students.

Willits -- who spoke to about 20 people yesterday in Eisenhower Chapel -- said she re-examined the studies used in the Baker-De Kanter Report and determined that the researchers employed insufficient controls. This caused her to question the results, she said.

"You end up knowing very little about bilingual education," she said.

Moreover, the results of her analysis suggest that better research might find that bilingual education raises scores of language minority students -- those who speak English as their second language -- on IQ and vocabulary tests, she added.

Willits also criticized a recent report by Lloyd Dunn of American Guidance Associates. That report contended that bilingual education cannot and will not work because Hispanic students in the United States are intellectually inferior and incapable of dealing with two languages in a single program. The report also said that intelligence is hereditary.

"Unless we're in an environment which will let us answer those questions on (vocabulary or IQ) tests, it doesn't matter how much of our intelligence is inherited," Willits said. She added that although potential intelligence may be limited by heredity, actual intelligence is largely the result of environment.

Willits said comparisons must be made among students who are similar or else no valid comparisons can be made.

Differences in culture, language usage and experience, all influence the way a student answers questions on an intelligence or vocabulary test, she said. Such differences make cross-cultural IQ comparisons impossible, she added.

Willits is the first in a series of nationally-known speakers sponsored by the Puerto Rican Student Association and the University's Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Pineiro said.

The speakers will focus on issues concerning Hispanics in the northeastern United States, Pineiro said, adding that she hopes the addresses will encourage University students to reach out to Hispanics and other language minorities in the community, she said.

"Our mission is not only within the university (system). It is with Hispanic students in school districts. We want to be the bridge to bring students to the university," she said.

Joseph Pruitt, who runs two bilingual education programs at the University, said he thought the speakers are important because, "We don't have Hispanic students here locally."

He said he hopes that the speakers' first-hand experiences will encourage students in the University's bilingual education program to "take the University to the people."