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2001 - This was a revision to the Bilingual Education of Elementary & Secondary Education Act of 1964.

Basically, revisions mandated that each and every state would be held responsible for measuring students' progress in math and reading. Years of importance, regarding measuring, would be between the third and eighth grades.  Students would then be required to be measure one additional time between the tenth and twelfth grades.

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no child left behind act - Google Search

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Most likely, one of the most important legal findings regarding bilingual education.
January 21, 1974: U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the plaintiff in that the lack of supplemental language education  provided DISPARATE IMPACT for the students of limited English proficiency, thereby violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
While the result of the non-English speakers being denied a meaningful education, specifically, the DISPARATE IMPACT was the end product of the treatment to 2,856 Chinese students. While many of these students had limited English proficiency (LEP), the majority of them could not speak any English.  Of the 2856 Chinese students, some 1,000 of them were afforded some time of extended English language classes.  Many of the remaining were placed into Special Education classes, as they had no way of learning English and, therefore, could not learn any of the content classes.
As for the remaining students, they were forced to repeat the same class year after year; or, at least until they were 16, when they would finally be old enough to legally drop out of school.  Should the student be able to make it through the content classes despite not knowing English, they still would not be allowed to graduate, as the SFSD had a policy that forbade students from graduating unless they were fluent in English.

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"National Bilingual/Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month"  (April: H. Res. 690)

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"National Bilingual/Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month"  (April: H. Res. 690)

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April 16, 2016

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Education Act was repealed and replaced by the No Child Left Behind Act . NABE plans to rise to meet these new challenges. We hope you will return frequently to our Advocacy pages for the latest information on legislative and policy issues affecting English language learners.

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Ohio - First state to past law approving bilingual education (regarding predominantly German speaking immigrants)

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Ohio - First state to past law approving bilingual education (regarding predominantly German speaking immigrants)

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In 1840, Ohio approved and implemented a program necessary to instruct German-English speaking immigrants. It was the ultimate goal of this passage for the German students to not only become proficient in English, but to also assimilate to the culture and customs here, in the United States.

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Ohio Was First State to Adopt Bilingual Education Law

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Ohio was first U.S. state to adopt bilingual education law

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While bilingual education is still a hotly contested issue within the states, by 2015, what appears to have emerged after  the halt on bilingual education with the passage of Proposition 227 is that the  country is now in a period of time where Bilingualism (as opposed to bilingual education) is viewed as the preferred path to follow.
Studies have shown that by pursuing bilingualism (the ability to speak fluently at least two languages) students can actually succeed at a higher rate exponentially.  Not only does multilingualism increase a student's cognitive abilities, but it has shown to offer a financial boost for those that  are proficient in at least two languages.

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In the United States, bilingual education continues to provoke fierce debate. It seems that nearly everyone-from educators to policymakers to parents with school-age children to those without children-has a strong opinion on whether children with little fluency in English should be taught academic content in their home language as they learn English.

Many people, however, regardless of whether they support this approach, would be surprised to learn of our country's legacy when it comes to bilingual education.

Bilingual education has been a part of the American educational landscape since before the United States was forged from a collection of fractious colonies. According to one report, the first instance of bilingual education in the future United States occurred with 17th-century Polish settlers in the first permanent English settlement of Virginia. ¹ At the time, the colony was in severe need of the Poles' manufacturing skills for shipbuilding and glassworks. So the colonial government extended to Poles "the rights of Englishmen," permitting them to establish the first known bilingual schools on the American continent.

The American Bilingual Tradition by the German scholar Heinz Kloss, first published in English in 1977, further documents the little-known history of bilingual education and other types of support for those whose first language was not English. ² From its colonial beginnings, bilingual education in the United States has existed in one form or another to the present day, with a brief interruption during and right after World War I in the wake of virulent anti-German sentiment and a more general nativist opposition to the use of non-English languages.

There have been German bilingual schools in Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and other states; bilingual schools for Scandinavian languages in the Dakotas, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, among other states; Dutch bilingual schools in Michigan; Czech bilingual schools in Nebraska and Texas; Italian and Polish bilingual schools in Wisconsin; French bilingual schools in Louisiana, Ohio, and throughout the northeast; and Spanish bilingual schools in the southwest and, most recently, in Florida and the northeast. By 1900, contemporary estimates were that more than 1 million elementary grade students-more than 6 percent of the 16 million elementary grade students at the time-were receiving bilingual instruction in English and another language. ³ This is almost certainly a greater percentage than are enrolled in bilingual programs today, at most around 3 percent of the elementary grades population (prekindergarten through grade 8). ⁴ The schools educating these 1 million students in 1900 form part of the American bilingual tradition, which is essentially ignored in contemporary debates over bilingual education. ⁵

Political Support for and Challenges to Bilingual Education

The modern bilingual education era in the United States had its origins in the Cuban Revolution. ⁶ Cubans fleeing their native island after 1959 were overwhelmingly from the professional and business classes and were intent on succeeding in their new English-speaking home while maintaining their language and culture. The bilingual programs they established in Florida were and remain among the most successful in the country. These expatriates did nothing novel, much less radical. In keeping with the American bilingual tradition, they were becoming part of the fabric of American society while maintaining their own distinct linguistic and cultural strands, both in and out of school.

The most important impetus for widespread adoption of bilingual education, however, was the 1960s civil rights movement. At a time of national liberation struggles and demands that our society live up to the ideals of "equality under the law," Latino activists, educators, and academics made the education of Spanish-speaking children a top priority. Among their principal tenets, as a matter of civil rights, was that the education of Latino children build on their native cultures and include instruction in Spanish.

The culmination of this political movement on the educational front came with the passage and 1968 signing into law of the Bilingual Education Act (also known as Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA), which Kloss calls "the first major measure adopted at the federal level in order to promote bilingualism." ⁷ On the one hand, this was indeed precedent setting. But on the other, the act was an extension of a legacy reaching back to the 17th-century Polish settlers in Virginia mentioned earlier. It was "much more in keeping," Kloss observes, "with wide-spread though little known American traditions than some of those who fought for its adoption may have been aware of." ⁸ Contrary to its title, however, the Bilingual Education Act did not require bilingual education, even though in practice all of the early programs it funded used students' native languages in the curriculum to one degree or another. ⁹

For the next 30 years, through different presidential administrations, the status of bilingual approaches to educating language minority students rose and fell. Studies, evaluations, and research reviews appeared that presented differing views of bilingual education's effects on student achievement. Polemics proliferated. Caught up in the culture wars, bilingual education pitted "traditional" American values and visions of a unified America against presumed "radical" attempts to promote multiculturalism and linguistic pluralism, both of which were feared to result in a fractured and Balkanized America.

At times, bilingual education was favored, or at least not slated for elimination. At other times, most recently with the 2001 reauthorization of ESEA under the No Child Left Behind Act, bilingual education was left far behind, no longer part of the federal framework for the education of English learners as it had been since 1968. Tellingly, under the administration of President George W. Bush, the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs became the Office of English Language Acquisition.

Throughout its history, bilingual education has always had its share of doubters and detractors. ¹⁰ The present era is of course no exception. In addition to federal policies that were at best indifferent, if not outright hostile, to bilingual education, starting in 1997 voters in Arizona, California, and Massachusetts enacted the country's most restrictive language policies, severely limiting the use of the home language in the education of language minority students.

These political moves were understandable, given the widespread frustration with naggingly low achievement by many of the nation's 11 million students from non-English-speaking backgrounds. But have such moves worked? Results suggest not so much.

In a 2006 study of the effects of Proposition 227, California's "English for the Children" ballot initiative, researchers found that even after 10 years in California schools, an English language learner has less than a 40 percent chance of being considered proficient in English. ¹¹ A similar examination of Boston's public schools, conducted in 2009, showed increases in out-of-school suspensions, grade retention, and dropout rates for most of the five largest non-English-speaking language groups after Massachusetts restricted bilingual education. ¹² In Arizona, the achievement gap in reading between English language learners and non-English language learners has increased by about one and a half grade levels for fourth- and eighth-graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In California, the gap has increased almost as dramatically as Arizona's in eighth grade and has increased slightly in fourth. In Massachusetts, the achievement gap has increased somewhat in both grade levels. In contrast, in the country as a whole, where generally bilingual instruction remains an option, the reading achievement gap has decreased by nearly a grade level in fourth grade and has decreased slightly in eighth grade. ¹³

To be fair, it's difficult to draw hard and fast conclusions based on state data, since policies vary in many ways and other trends might suggest different conclusions. For example, the rate at which Arizona's English learners are considered "English proficient" has increased since 2005. But even so, the test scores of the 70 percent of English learners who do not become proficient in English each year have plummeted. In California, the rate of English learners considered English proficient has also increased, although very little-from 7 to 12 percent.

One thing is clear, though: restrictive language policies are no silver bullet. As the data reported above suggest, they might even be counterproductive.

In order to assess the advantages and disadvantages of bilingual education, it's more useful to look at research than at messy state data, where we know little about what types of bilingual education students are receiving, how many are receiving it, and how the redesignation rates-the rates at which students who are initially classified as "limited English proficient" gain sufficient English proficiency to be designated fluent English speakers-have changed. And, unlike earlier periods in American history, we now have a credible research base to determine whether the American bilingual tradition benefits individuals and society at large.

A Closer Look at the Research

It may seem counterintuitive, but in fact instruction in a student's home language can improve achievement in English (or whatever the national language may be). At least six meta-analyses (quantitative research syntheses), involving dozens of studies, support this conclusion.* A recently published long-term study by two Stanford University researchers found that students enrolled in bilingual programs since elementary school were, by high school, more likely to be deemed proficient in English compared with similar students who had been in all-English programs. ¹⁴

A likely theory to explain these results is that students develop their academic skills most readily in their home language while acquiring English proficiency, and then, as they learn English, transfer what they have learned in the home language to their new language. ¹⁵ (If this sounds implausible, just think of those skeptics who believed Columbus was out of his mind when he suggested one could reach east by sailing west, or those who condemned Copernicus and Galileo for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around.)

Other studies have found that, at worst, instruction in the home language produces English results that are no different from results for English learners in all-English instruction, with the added bonus of allowing them to maintain and further develop their home language. In fact, these were the findings of researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the most experimentally rigorous study of bilingual education conducted to date. ¹⁶ The researchers, who studied data from Spanish-speaking students in Texas's Rio Grande Valley, found that bilingual education can help promote bilingualism without significantly sacrificing English proficiency. Comparable findings have been reported with Mandarin and English speakers in Northern California. ¹⁷ In these studies, students in Mandarin immersion-whether they were English or heritage Mandarin speakers-developed Mandarin proficiency while outperforming their nonimmersion peers on standardized reading and math tests in English in the upper elementary grades.

Why, then, the opposition to bilingual education? Despite the evidence that bilingual education can actually boost achievement in English, or at a minimum not detract from it, many continue to subscribe to the "commonsense" logic that English-only instruction will lead to faster acquisition of English proficiency. Moreover, opposition toward bilingual education is inflated by critics who falsely frame it as a choice between proficiency in English or in the student's home language. ¹⁸

Resistance to bilingual education is sometimes rooted in xenophobia and ethnic prejudice, although clearly not all bilingual education skeptics are prejudiced xenophobes. But the anti-foreign-language and anti-immigrant rhetoric that peaks during periods of increased immigration is clear evidence that nativist sentiments can lead to fears that the use of languages other than English in school will somehow fracture the national identity. ¹⁹

For many Americans, this national identity is tightly bound to speaking English. Liberal historian and John F. Kennedy confidant Arthur Schlesinger worried that encouraging multiple languages and cultures would lead to a " disuniting" of the United States. ²⁰ But Heinz Kloss's monumental study that we mentioned earlier demonstrates just the opposite: "non-English ethnic groups in the United States were Anglicized not because of nationality laws which were unfavorable toward their languages but in spite of nationality laws relatively favorable to them." ²¹ This seems paradoxical, as does so much having to do with bilingual education.

The explanation Kloss offers should give pause to bilingual education's detractors. Language minority groups became assimilated, Kloss persuasively argues, not because of "legal provisions" restricting the use of their native languages but because of "the absorbing power ... of the manifold opportunities for personal advancement and individual achievements which this society offered." ²²

From Bilingual Education to Bilingualism

Whatever the reasons for opposition, it's time to move the discussion away from bilingual education-which in the United States is invariably about those kids-and focus instead on bilingualism and its benefits for our kids -all of our kids-and the adults they will become. Experience and research in the United States and other countries around the world, including Canada, Finland, and Sweden, have demonstrated that children can learn their own and a second or even a third language-for example, French, Spanish, and English; Swedish, Finnish, and English; or Mandarin, Cantonese, and English-and turn out academically and linguistically competent in both, all three, or more. Canada, despite language-based political tensions that seem to appear occasionally in Quebec, has a relatively seamless approach to bilingualism that spans from school instruction in both English and French to official government business to road signs and to labels on merchandise.

Far from being a problem, bilingualism is an asset both to individuals and to society. Bilingual education (a means) can help us take advantage of this asset by promoting bilingualism (a goal) both for English speakers and for students who come from non-English backgrounds.

Apart from the obvious intellectual and cultural advantages of speaking two or more languages, bilingualism has been linked to a number of other positive outcomes. In a comprehensive review of 63 studies, researchers from Washington State University found that bilingualism is associated with cognitive benefits such as increased control over attention, improved working memory, greater awareness of the structure and form of language, and better abstract and symbolic representation skills. ²³ Other research, widely publicized when it first appeared, has even shown that bilingualism delays the onset of Alzheimer's disease. ²⁴

Beyond the cognitive benefits, recent studies suggest that bilingualism may also have economic benefits for young adults related to employment, promotion, and earnings. One study has found that fluent bilingualism is associated with a decreased likelihood of dropping out of high school and an increased probability of obtaining a higher status job and higher annual earnings. ²⁵

Conversely, monolingualism may have costs: one study has found that for young adults in the United States, a lack of proficiency in one's home language is associated with annual income losses of between $2,100 and $3,300 (after controlling for cognitive ability, educational attainment, and parental socioeconomic status). ²⁶ A University of Phoenix Research Institute survey, reported in the Wall Street Journal, found increasing demand among prospective employers for workers who speak foreign languages, particularly Chinese and Spanish. Referring to bilingual candidates, a New York City executive coach noted, "It's easier to find them jobs and they often get paid more." ²⁷

The economic benefits of bilingualism can vary significantly depending on factors such as age, location, industry, and languages spoken. For instance, in towns along the U.S. border with Mexico, fluent bilingualism may help individuals obtain certain occupations, while at the same time making employment in other positions less likely. ²⁸ Specifically, research has shown that fluent bilinguals have an advantage over monolinguals in obtaining occupations above low-skill services and manual labor but not necessarily in higher status occupations. For instance, fluent bilinguals are more likely than English-speaking monolinguals to gain employment in middle-tier public service roles such as police officers, medical assistants, and receptionists. On the other hand, fluent bilinguals are less likely than their English-speaking monolingual peers to have occupations such as physicians, lawyers, and public safety managers, even at similar levels of education. These findings suggest that bilingualism can confer important economic advantages, but that the advantages might be constrained by other factors, such as the social status of bilinguals' first language or discrimination against immigrants.

To the extent that these other factors constrain the advantages bilingualism confers, it appears that bilingual education can also play a role in reducing their effects. In a review of the research on bilingual education in Canada and the United States, researchers found that bilingual education can have positive effects on intergroup relationships, identity, and self-esteem. ²⁹ Likewise, others have found that white, English-speaking children who participated in Spanish bilingual instruction were more likely to choose Latino children as potential friends compared with their white, English-speaking peers who, though in multiethnic classrooms, did not take part in bilingual education. ³⁰

The United States has great linguistic resources we are not only failing to use-our schools are actually quashing them, if only through neglect. More than 11 million of the country's 50 million public school students speak at least one of 400 different languages other than English at home. Yet only a negligible fraction of these students are in programs that simultaneously nurture their home language while using it to help them acquire English and also to help English-speaking students acquire a second language.

* * *

Last year, 17 years after California (followed by Arizona and Massachusetts) began its assault on bilingual education, California state Senator Ricardo Lara introduced a bill in the California legislature, recently approved, to put a proposition on the 2016 California ballot that would give students more access to bilingual and even multilingual instruction. Passage of the proposition by California's electorate would be an important step forward in increasing the state's and the country's linguistic resources.

Lara's bill was timely, as demand for bilingual education has been rising in many states. In Oregon, an explosion of interest in dual-language programs led the state to award nearly $900,000 in grants for additional programs in 2013, adding to the programs that already existed in 70 schools throughout the state. ³¹ Parents and students in Washington, D.C., have also demonstrated their desire for bilingual programs. At one of the city's eight dual-language immersion schools, nearly 1,100 applicants applied for 20 spots in 2013. ³² The Seattle area now boasts 30 bilingual preschool options, and the parents driving this demand are not necessarily bilingual themselves. In fact, at one of Bellevue's Spanish-English immersion public preschools, 96 percent of the children have monolingual English-speaking parents. ³³ Interest in bilingual programs crosses lines of language background, neighborhood, and income as parents across the United States realize the social and economic value of bilingualism. ³⁴

School districts, seeing the benefits bilingual education offers to their students, are also actively fighting for these programs. Despite legislation in California that has come close to eliminating bilingual education, 30 percent of students in the San Francisco Unified School District are enrolled in bilingual programs. ³⁵ This is in large part due to the district's efforts to reach out to parents and notify them of the option to authorize their children's placement in one of these programs. New York City has partnered with foreign governments that provide funding for bilingual programs in their languages and is developing or expanding 40 dual-language programs for the 2015-2016 school year. ³⁶ To ensure the success of their investments, districts like Arlington Public Schools in Virginia are undergoing extensive evaluations of their bilingual programs. ³⁷

Support for bilingual education is evident at the state level as well. Nine states have approved the "Seal of Biliteracy," which will appear on the high school graduation diplomas of students who have studied and attained proficiency in two languages. ³⁸ Hawaii's Department of Education established the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program in 1987, ³⁹ and Montana's governor recently signed into law a bill that will fund Native American language immersion programs in public schools. ⁴⁰

For its part, in reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Congress is missing an opportunity to capitalize on this groundswell of support by including provisions and even providing funds to encourage and help states and localities develop and implement bilingual instruction, not just for language minority students but for all students to have the opportunity to become bilingual.

Such provisions were part of the ESEA legislation of the 1960s but were eliminated under No Child Left Behind-a dysfunctional aspect of the law that should be corrected. Federal legislation cannot and should not attempt to impose bilingual education, of course. But it can help strengthen an important American tradition that we risk losing, to everyone's detriment.

Claude Goldenberg is the Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Education at Stanford University. Previously, at California State University, Long Beach, he was a professor of teacher education, an associate dean of the College of Education, and the executive director of the Center for Language Minority Education and Research. Early in his career, he taught junior high school in Texas and first grade in a bilingual elementary school in California. Kirstin Wagner holds an undergraduate degree in international relations from Stanford. For the last four years, she has worked with elementary and middle school students in Palo Alto, California. Portions of this article were published online in Goldenberg, "Congress: Bilingualism Is Not a Handicap" (Education Week, July 14, 2015).

*For more on effective instruction for English learners, see " Unlocking the Research on English Learners" in the Summer 2013 issue of American Educator. ( back to the article)

Endnotes

1. Stanley S. Seidner, In Quest of a Cultural Identity: An Inquiry for the Polish Community (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1976).

2. Heinz Kloss, The American Bilingual Tradition (Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1977; repr., Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1998). Originally based on Heinz Kloss, Das Nationalitätenrecht der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Vienna: Braumüller, 1963). Citations refer to the 1998 edition.

3. Kloss, American Bilingual Tradition.

4. The basis for this 3 percent figure is as follows: The most recent federal study of Title III, which provides federal funds for English learner (EL) support, reported that native language instruction was the least common type of instructional service for EL students: Only 20 percent of districts provided native language instruction to a majority or all of their ELs. There are approximately 3,700 Title III districts. See U.S. Department of Education, National Evaluation of Title III Implementation: Report on State and Local Implementation (Washington, DC: Department of Education, 2012), 45. Based on numbers reported in the Title III report, the average number of ELs in the nationally representative districts was about 1,200. Multiplying this number by 20 percent of 3,700 (740), we can estimate that, at most, about 900,000 ELs receive some amount of native language instruction in school; the number in elementary school is certainly lower. A second source of students in bilingual programs would be students from English-speaking backgrounds in immersion programs designed to help them acquire a second language. A current estimate places the number of these programs at around 1,000. See Korina Lopez, "Spanish-Language Immersion Schools Gain in Popularity," NBC News, November 9, 2014, www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/spanish-language-immersion-schools-gain-pop.... As with the data on ELs in bilingual programs, it's impossible to give a precise number of students enrolled, but we can estimate that each school might enroll, at most, 270 students (assuming one or two classrooms of 30 students each at each of six grade levels). 270 students at 1,000 different schools total 270,000 English-background students in immersion programs; but again, the number in elementary school will be lower. Taken together, these figures suggest that there are, at most, about 1 million elementary grade students in bilingual programs, no more than in 1900. When we consider there are nearly 40 million elementary grade students in the United States, this means that no more than 3 percent of U.S. students in the elementary grades are receiving some form of bilingual education. See "Enrollment in Educational Institutions, by Level and Control of Institution, Enrollment Level, and Attendance Status and Sex of Student: Selected Years, Fall 1980 through Fall 2021," in National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, 2012, table 2. Even if some of the assumptions made here are wrong, there would have to be more than 2 million elementary grade students in bilingual programs to approach the percentage in 1900. (Our thanks to Annette Zehler for her help in making current estimates.)

5. See chapter 4 of James Crawford, Educating English Learners: Language Diversity in the Classroom (Los Angeles: Bilingual Educational Services, 2004).

6. Crawford, Educating English Learners.

7. Kloss, American Bilingual Tradition, 369.

8. Kloss, American Bilingual Tradition, 369.

9. Crawford, Educating English Learners.

10. Kloss, American Bilingual Tradition.

11. Thomas B. Parrish, Amy Merickel, María Pérez, et al., Effects of the Implementation of Proposition 227 on the Education of English Learners, K-12: Findings from a Five-Year Evaluation (Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research, 2006), ix.

12. Miren Uriarte, Nicole Lavan, Nicole Agusti, et al., "English Learners in Boston Public Schools: Enrollment, Engagement and Academic Outcomes of Native Speakers of Cape Verdean Creole, Chinese Dialects, Haitian Creole, Spanish, and Vietnamese," Gastón Institute Publications, no. 130 (2009): 73.

13. The data reported here were generated using the NAEP Data Explorer, available at www.nces.ed.gov/nations reportcard/naepdata.

14. Ilana M. Umansky and Sean F. Reardon, "Reclassification Patterns among Latino English Learner Students in Bilingual, Dual Immersion, and English Immersion Classrooms," American Educational Research Journal 51 (2014): 879-912.

15. For a discussion of transfer in the context of bilingual education, see Claude Goldenberg, "Teaching English Language Learners: What the Research Does-and Does Not-Say," American Educator 32, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 8-23, 42-44.

16. Robert E. Slavin, Nancy Madden, Margarita Calderón, Anne Chamberlain, and Megan Hennessy, "Reading and Language Outcomes of a Multiyear Randomized Evaluation of Transitional Bilingual Education," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 33 (2011): 47-58.

17. Amado M. Padilla, Lorraine Fan, Xiaoqiu Xu, and Duarte M. Silva, "A Mandarin/English Two-Way Immersion Program: Language Proficiency and Academic Achievement," Foreign Language Annals 46 (2013): 661-679; and Xiaoqiu Xu, Amado M. Padilla, and Duarte M. Silva, "Learner Performance in Mandarin Immersion and High School World Language Programs: A Comparison," Foreign Language Annals 48 (2015): 26-38.

18. Stephen Krashen, "Surveys of Opinions on Bilingual Education: Some Current Issues," Bilingual Research Journal 20 (1996): 411-431; and Leonie Huddy and David O. Sears, "Opposition to Bilingual Education: Prejudice or the Defense of Realistic Interests?," Social Psychology Quarterly 58 (1995): 133-143.

19. Shannon Krista Houvouras, "The Effects of Demographic Variables, Ethnic Prejudice, and Attitudes toward Immigration on Opposition to Bilingual Education," Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 23 (2001): 148-149. For an articulation of this fear, see Peter Duignan, Bilingual Education: A Critique (Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution, 1998).

20. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).

21. Kloss, American Bilingual Tradition, 367.

22. Kloss, American Bilingual Tradition, 367.

23. Olusola O. Adesope, Tracy Lavin, Terri Thompson, and Charles Ungerleider, "A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Cognitive Correlates of Bilingualism," Review of Educational Research 80 (2010): 207-245.

24. Ellen Bialystok, "Reshaping the Mind: The Benefits of Bilingualism," Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale 65 (2011): 229-235.

25. Rubén G. Rumbaut, "English Plus: Exploring the Socioeconomic Benefits of Bilingualism in Southern California," in The Bilingual Advantage: Language, Literacy and the US Labor Market, ed. Rebecca M. Callahan and Patricia C. Gándara (Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2014), 182-208.

26. Orhan Agirdag, "The Long-Term Effects of Bilingualism on Children of Immigration: Student Bilingualism and Future Earnings," International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 17 (2014): 449-464.

27. Joe Light, "Languages Needed, but No Plans to Learn," Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2011.

28. Amado Alarcón, Antonio Di Paolo, Josiah Heyman, and María Cristina Morales, "The Occupational Location of Spanish-English Bilinguals in the New Information Economy: The Health and Criminal Justice Sector in the US Borderlands with Mexico," in Callahan and Gándara, Bilingual Advantage, 110-137.

29. Fred Genesee and Patricia Gándara, "Bilingual Education Programs: A Cross-National Perspective," Journal of Social Issues 55 (1999): 665-685.

30. Stephen C. Wright and Linda R. Tropp, "Language and Intergroup Contact: Investigating the Impact of Bilingual Instruction on Children's Intergroup Attitudes," Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 8 (2005): 309-328.

31. Rob Manning, "Oregon Educators Prioritize Bilingual Education," Oregon Public Broadcasting, July 11, 2014, www.opb.org/news/article/bilingual-education.

32. Kavitha Cardoza, "Demand For Dual-Language Programs In D.C. Public Schools Skyrockets," WAMU, December 12, 2014, www.wamu.org/programs/metro_connection/14/12/ 12/demand_for_dual_language_programs_in_dc_public_ schools_skyrockets.

33. Michele Silbey, "World-Wise Northwest Parents Drive Demand for Bilingual Preschools," Seattle Globalist, September 2, 2014, www.seattleglobalist.com/2014/09/02/bilingual-preschool-seattle-french-....

34. Sarah Carr, "The Reinvention of Bilingual Education in America's Schools," education_the_promise_of_dual_language_programs_for_spanish_speaking.html; and Elizabeth A. Harris, "New York City Education Department to Add or Expand 40 Dual-Language Programs," Schooled (blog), Slate, January 5, 2015, www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2015/01/05/bilingual_ New York Times, January 15, 2015.

35. Jill Tucker, "S.F. Seen as Model in Bilingual Education over English Only," San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 2014.

36. Harris, "New York City Education Department."

37. See Barbara D. Acosta, Lottie Marzucco, Christiane Connors, and Charlene Rivera, Evaluation of Arlington Public Schools Programs for English Language Learners (Washington, DC: George Washington University Center for Equity and Excellence in Education, 2012). The San Francisco Unified School District also commissioned an evaluation. See Sean F. Reardon, Ilana Umansky, Rachel Valentino, Ritu Khanna, and Christina Wong, "Differences Among Instructional Models in English Learners' Academic and English Proficiency Trajectories" (presentation, Center for Education Policy Analysis, Stanford, CA, February 18, 2014), http://cepa.stanford.edu/news/differences-among-instructional-models-english-learners-academic-and-english-proficiency-trajectories.

38. Seal of Biliteracy home page, accessed July 7, 2015, www.sealofbiliteracy.org.

39. "History of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program," Hawaii State Department of Education, accessed July 7, 2015, www.hawaiipublicschools.org/TeachingAnd Learning/StudentLearning/HawaiianEducation/Pages/History-of-the-Hawaiian-Education-program.aspx.

40. Corey Mitchell, "Montana Governor Signs Laws to Promote, Preserve Tribal Languages," Learning the Language (blog), Education Week, May 7, 2015, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2015/05/montana_ap....

[illustrations by Paul Zwolak]

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In the United States, bilingual education continues to provoke fierce debate. It seems that nearly everyone-from educators to policymakers to parents with school-age children to those without children-has a strong opinion on whether children with little fluency in English should be taught academic content in their home language as they learn English.

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Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974

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Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974

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The crux of Lau v Nichols was codified into federal law though the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA)

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1981 - By the end of the (President Jimmy) Carter administration, the Lau Remedies had been replaced with the renamed Lau Regulations.

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 Proposition 227 (English for the Children Initiative)

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 Proposition 227 (English for the Children Initiative)

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By 1998,  Proposition 227 drastically changed the way Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students would be dealt with in the public schools.
From this point on, LEP would primarily receive  the majority of their instruction in special classes, taught almost entirely in English.
Additionally, the duration of time spent in special classes by the LEP students was shortened substantially, suggesting that the student should have a good handle on the English language after one year. With this process, students would be weeded out of the program within a few short years.

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Bilingual education's 26-year reign in California was supposed to end with the voters' passage of Proposition 227 in June 1998. The proposition declared:

All children in California public schools shall be taught English by being taught in English. In particular, this shall require that all children be placed in English-language classrooms. Children who are English learners shall be educated through sheltered English immersion during a temporary transition period not normally intended to exceed one year.

Of course, there is often a disconnect between a law and its implementation, especially with an issue as controversial as bilingual education. State officials can subvert the law through interpretations that don't conform to its intent; school districts can change their policies without making genuine changes in curriculum; or teachers can ignore the mandates, closing their classroom doors and doing as they please.

What happened in the wake of Prop 227? The answer should be of interest in Massachusetts, which is currently implementing a similar proposition, and in other states contemplating ending bilingual education or otherwise considering how best to educate students whose native tongue is not English. My research reveals that resistance to the new law was, in many schools and districts, quite intense, indicating the depth of support for bilingual education among teachers and principals. Of course, such opposition was to be expected after state officials and interest groups spent the past few decades aggressively promoting bilingual education. Yet gradually the intent of the legislation has prevailed in most places, apparently to the benefit of English Learners, at least judging by test scores. To explain these findings, however, I need to begin with some fundamentals about a much misunderstood topic.

Spanish speakers were virtually the only English Learners receiving authentic bilingual education because they were typically the only ones who fulfilled all the conditions for providing it efficiently.

Bilingual Education Before Proposition 227
During the past 25 years, essentially three different kinds of instructional programs have existed for students with limited English proficiency, also called English Learners. The first is English as a Second Language (ESL) tutoring mixed with regular classroom instruction, wherein both English Learners and English-speaking students are taught in English in the same classroom for most of the day. English Learners receive their supplementary ESL tutoring in a pullout setting for anywhere from an hour a week to several hours a day. The second program is sheltered English immersion, which involves teaching in English to a classroom filled only with English Learners. If all the children speak one language, the teacher may also speak in that language occasionally to clarify or explain a concept, but the children learn to read and write in English and they receive math, science, social studies, and other subjects in English. Teachers of children who function poorly in English will initially spend most of the day teaching them to read and write in English. Gradually, however, other subjects are introduced. For children in 1st grade or higher, it is usually just a matter of months before much of the day is devoted to these other subjects.

In the third instructional program, the only one that meets the definition of bilingual education in the theoretical literature, students are taught initial literacy and subjects like math and science in their native tongue as they progress toward fluency in English. English is taught as a separate subject for about an hour a day initially, although there may be almost no English at all in kindergarten. The amount of English is typically increased over time, but students are not taught entirely in English until they are literate in their native tongue.

The facilitation theory underlying bilingual education as just defined has two parts. The "threshold" hypothesis states that there is a threshold level of linguistic competence in the native language that all children must attain in order to avoid cognitive disadvantages, while the "developmental interdependence" hypothesis holds that the development of skills in a second language is facilitated by skills already developed in learning the first language. The implication is that children must first learn to read and write in their native tongue and should begin training in English literacy only after they have mastered their first language. Programs that deviate from this sequence violate the fundamental theory of bilingual education.

Yet observations I have conducted in more than 300 classrooms in California, Minnesota, New York City, and Massachusetts over the past 15 years indicate that local school systems have commonly used bilingual education as a generic term referring to all three types of language-instruction programs. Recall that sheltered English immersion consists of English instruction in a self-contained classroom of English Learners. However, school systems often call such programs bilingual education as long as the teacher is bilingual, the students are ethnically or linguistically similar, and the classes are formed with the stated intent of providing native-tongue instruction. For example, the program titles and descriptions for the Vietnamese, Russian, Khmer, and Chinese bilingual education programs in Minnesota, New York, California, and Massachusetts (before these programs were eliminated in the latter two states) often state that the children will be receiving native-tongue instruction. This is either completely false or a huge exaggeration. Children in these programs are always taught to read and write in English and receive subject-matter instruction in English.

In some Chinese bilingual-education classrooms, there may be some teaching in a non-English language, but it is neither a means of receiving subject-matter instruction nor of acquiring literacy. In some Chinese "bilingual" education programs, for example, the English Learners, all of whom are of Chinese origin, receive some instruction in Mandarin as a foreign language. (In fact, Mandarin could only be taught as a foreign language since it is only one of the many dialects spoken in China and is rarely the native tongue of Chinese immigrants to the U.S.) But these programs do not fit the theoretical model of bilingual education since the children learn to read and write first in English and the Mandarin is only a small part of their instruction.

Occasionally, even ESL pullout programs, where students spend most of the day learning in English in a mainstream classroom, are mistakenly characterized as bilingual education when the children in the ESL pullout class are of the same ethnicity. The fact that these classes are actually taught in English is ignored by administrators, policymakers, parents, and advocates of bilingual education. Indeed, the latter usually deny it, perhaps seeing a political advantage in categorizing many different types of programs as bilingual education.

In short, official statistics on bilingual-education enrollment consistently overestimate the number receiving native-tongue instruction. Nevertheless, California government figures indicate that in 1997-98, the year before Proposition 227 was implemented, only 410,000 students were enrolled in bilingual education statewide, while 1.14 million Hispanic English Learners were enrolled in California public schools. Even if the only children enrolled in programs labeled bilingual education were Spanish speakers, at most only 36 percent of Hispanic English Learners could have been enrolled in such programs. Thus critics of bilingual education most likely have exaggerated its aggregate harm and supporters most likely have exaggerated its aggregate benefits, since only a minority of English Learners were enrolled in programs that were even nominally bilingual. Moreover, the impact of bilingual education was concentrated almost exclusively on Hispanics.

Spanish speakers were virtually the only English Learners receiving authentic bilingual education because they were typically the only ones who fulfilled all the conditions for providing it efficiently. In order to provide authentic bilingual education, schools must have teachers who are fluent in the language and enough English Learners from the same language group to fill a classroom without combining students from more than two grade levels in one classroom. In addition, the students must all speak the same dialect (Spanish has no important dialects), and the native tongue must be a phonetic language with a Roman alphabet (otherwise few of the skills learned in the native tongue can be transferred to English). Finally, there must be published textbook materials in the native tongue that conform to the U.S. curriculum.

Predictably, then, I have not found any bilingual-education programs that actually teach initial literacy in native languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, that use ideographic characters. I also have not found any non-Roman alphabet bilingual-education programs that teach initial literacy in the native language, even if the alphabet is phonetic (as in the case of Hebrew, Arabic, the Indian dialects, Russian, Armenian, and Khmer). Teachers have told me that it is too difficult or confusing to teach initial literacy, particularly to young children, in a language with an alphabet different from English. These classes are therefore typically taught completely in English either as a pullout supplement to the mainstream classroom, in which case the emphasis is on teaching the English language itself, or as a substitute for the mainstream classroom, in which case all subjects, including math, social studies, and science, will be taught in English at a pace the children can understand. This does not prevent these programs from receiving official approval as "bilingual" education programs and whatever funding is associated with that label.

Critics of bilingual education most likely have exaggerated its aggregate harm and supporters most likely have exaggerated its aggregate benefits, since only a minority of English Learners were enrolled in programs that were even nominally bilingual.

Interpretations
Though most English Learners, in California and elsewhere, did not receive bilingual education, Prop 227 passed in June 1998 largely on the strength of the allegation that the low achievement and high dropout rates of immigrant children were caused by "costly experimental language programs." As a remedy, Prop 227 required all English Learners to be educated in sheltered English-immersion classrooms during a temporary transition period not to exceed one year. Once English Learners acquired a good working knowledge of English, they were to be transferred to English-language mainstream classrooms. Parents could request a waiver from these requirements, but only after their child had spent 30 days in a sheltered English-immersion classroom and only if the parent personally visited the school.

However, in practice Prop 227 has been dramatically changed by school districts, as evidenced by guidelines for school principals issued by Los Angeles Unified, San Diego Unified, and San Francisco Unified, apparently without protest from the state board of education. For one thing, the school districts have redefined a sheltered English classroom to include not only self-contained classrooms of English Learners taught in English, but also mainstream classrooms with ESL pullout instruction and self-contained classrooms of English Learners receiving up to 30 percent of their instruction in Spanish. Teachers have been permitted to recruit children for bilingual classrooms, even though the initiative says parents must initiate this process. Parents have been allowed to mail in their requests for waivers, when Prop 227 requires a personal visit. The school districts have also failed to require detailed documentation of the need for a bilingual education classroom, as the initiative requires, and they have changed the requirement of a year in a sheltered English-immersion classroom from a maximum to a minimum. In addition, children are being required to spend 30 days in an English-language classroom only when they first enroll in school-something the initiative says must happen each year.

San Diego's interpretation and practice come close to subverting the intent of the law. Spanish-speaking English Learners in many sheltered immersion programs in San Diego schools are being taught to read and write in Spanish. My visits to two San Diego schools in September 2001 revealed that kindergarteners who knew no English were being assigned to classrooms called "waivered bilingual" during the first 30 days of the school year and were being instructed almost entirely in Spanish.

Nevertheless, although implementation has been uneven, enrollment in bilingual education has dropped dramatically across the state (see Figure 1). The total share of English Learners in California enrolled in bilingual education plummeted from 29 percent in 1997-98 to 12 percent in 1998-99, with the implementation of Prop 227. By 2001-02, it had declined a bit further, to just under 10 percent. Among elementary schools, where bilingual education was most common, the decline was more dramatic, but again bilingual education was not eliminated entirely. The share of English Learners enrolled in bilingual education in elementary school dropped from 39 percent in 1997-98 to 13 percent in 2001-02. Among secondary students, 10 percent of English Learners were enrolled in bilingual education before Prop 227, and about 3 percent in 2001-02. In the post-Prop 227 world, bilingual education is essentially an elementary-school program.
In the Classroom
To further investigate the implementation of Prop 227, I observed 170 classrooms and interviewed teachers and administrators in 29 elementary and junior high schools in eight California school districts during the spring of 1999 and the fall of 2001. The districts included Oceanside, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, two small San Francisco Bay-area school districts, and two small school districts near Los Angeles. The schools in Oceanside, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco were selected randomly from among those with large numbers of Hispanic (in San Francisco, large numbers of Chinese and Hispanic) English Learners. Thus my observations are representative of the school districts where bilingual education once flourished and also of the few schools with nominally bilingual programs for Chinese English Learners. (As explained above, the latter are actually sheltered English-immersion programs for students of Chinese origin.)

Visiting the school to sign a waiver authorizing bilingual education is not an idea that typically originates with the parent. My interviews suggest that bilingual education is in this sense like medical care. Teachers, like doctors, create supply by the criteria they use to define a child as needing treatment and they create demand by telling the patient what treatment he or she needs. In every school that I visited in the spring of 1999, teachers explained that they had "worked very hard" to get parents to sign waivers. They held meetings during the first 30 days of school and called parents to persuade them that their child would be better off in the bilingual-education program.

Just as Hispanic students were the only ones receiving authentic bilingual education before Proposition 227, they are the only ones being waivered after 227. The number of waivered classrooms is not caused simply by the number of students whose parents initially seek waivers. It also depends on the total number of Hispanic English Learners in a school, the school's definition of eligibility for bilingual education, and the school's strategies for filling a bilingual-education classroom. The most important step a principal can take is to control classroom assignments so that students who had been recommended for bilingual education before Prop 227 are in the same classroom, making it easier to convert the entire classroom to bilingual education on the 31st day of school.

Then parents must be contacted to obtain approval for the waiver of their child. When a simple majority of waivered students is obtained for a given teacher and classroom, the other parents can be told by phone that their child would need to change teachers if they do not sign a waiver. Alternatively, telephone calls might not be made until a decisive majority of waivered students had been obtained. In either case, telephone calls are very effective in converting additional students; most parents simply do not want their child's education to be disrupted by changing classrooms, and many of them care more about that than they do about the language of instruction.

Thus the number of bilingual waivered students and bilingual waivered classes is not necessarily indicative of parental support for bilingual education. Rather, it seems to reflect staff support for bilingual education and, to some extent, parental deference to staff. Parents in schools with small numbers of Spanish-speaking English Learners, or in schools where a district-wide decision had been made to adopt sheltered English immersion, may not even have been aware of their right to apply for a waiver. In these districts, there was little or no likelihood of having enough students to maintain a bilingual-education program and thus no motive for the school to recruit parents. When pressure from above is absent, parental demand for bilingual education is low.

Interestingly, I also discovered that even the teachers of students still receiving Spanish bilingual education are using more English than in the past. The teachers of these classes offered two reasons. First, Prop 227 expressed the preferences of the electorate for a greater emphasis on English. Many teachers stated they were being responsive to their clients by increasing the English in bilingual education. Second, because there is no guarantee that a waivered class can be assembled for the next grade in the following year, teachers in bilingual-education classes told me they were preparing their students for the possibility that they would have to go into an English-language classroom because there were no bilingual-education classrooms available.

In the fall of 2001, I asked several former bilingual-education teachers who were now teaching in sheltered English-immersion classrooms whether they would ever go back to bilingual education. Not a single teacher said yes. All preferred sheltered English immersion, even though they thought it was harder work for them as teachers. A recurring theme was that "bilingual education was a good theory, but in practice it just didn't work very well." One practical problem facing bilingual education was the fact that many students change their residence from year to year, and even within a year. Thus they could find themselves in bilingual education in one school, all-English instruction in the next, and back to bilingual education in a third school. Another problem was the discontinuity between the bilingual-education curriculum and the curriculum in mainstream classrooms.

In general, my interviews indicate that, despite some uneasiness about the future and an unwillingness to renounce the theory of bilingual education, former bilingual-education teachers teaching in sheltered English-immersion programs now strongly support sheltered English immersion. They perceive themselves as giving their students the nurturing environment that they previously believed only a bilingual-education program could provide, while at the same time providing the exposure to English that they worried was lacking in the bilingual-education programs they used to teach in. As we will see below, early evidence of Prop 227's effect on the achievement of English learners seems to support this view.
Prop 227 and Achievement
One of the biases that evaluations of programs for English Learners must overcome is that a much smaller percentage of students are actually tested in bilingual education than in English-immersion programs. One reason given by advocates and administrators is that it is unreasonable to administer English-language tests to students who are learning literacy in their native tongue. This may be true, but it gives the bilingual-education programs an unfair advantage because schools and teachers tend to exclude the lowest-scoring students from testing.

This problem exists in California with English Learners as a group and with bilingual education in particular. According to state regulations, all English Learners must be tested on the statewide Stanford 9 tests first administered in 1997-98, the year before Prop 227. However, only 68 percent of English Learners were tested in 1997-98 in reading; the share increased to only 84 percent in 2000-01. Although math is less language-based than reading, the testing rates for English Learners in math are only a few points higher: 72 percent of English Learners were tested in math in 1997-98; 86 percent in 2000-01.

The cause of this in California is threefold. First, a loophole in the state law gives parents the right to remove their child from testing. Second, since special-education students may be excused from testing, an English Learner can be classified as special education and excused on that basis. Third, English Learners tend to have lower socio-economic status, making them more likely to be absent from school on the day tests are administered. These factors bring about considerable variation in testing rates among schools and school districts.

Valentina Bali of Michigan State University found that in 1997-98 the Pasadena school district in southern California tested only 50 percent of its bilingual-education students, versus 89 percent of those who were in ESL programs. A 1998 Los Angeles school district report showed that bilingual-education students scored higher than students in English-immersion programs after five years. But only 61 percent of the bilingual-education students were tested, versus 97 percent of the students in the all-English program. Under these circumstances, the kind of casual comparisons made by the media of achievement before and after Proposition 227 and across school districts are risky. Moreover, any trends in aggregate achievement can be obscured by increases in the testing rates of the target population, as has happened in the wake of Prop 227 for English Learners. Evaluating the effect of Prop 227 on achievement is also complicated by the lack of data on student achievement broken down by which program they participated in.

It is possible, however, to analyze the effect of Prop 227 indirectly by examining the relationship between the percentage of students enrolled in bilingual education and the achievement of English Learners across the more than 9,000 schools in California. A simple comparison, examining only those elementary schools with significant bilingual- education programs (more than 120 students enrolled before Prop 227), reveals that the schools that eliminated their bilingual education programs had a 10-point gain in reading and a 13-point gain in math, but those that maintained some form of bilingual-education program had only a 6-point gain in reading and a 14-point gain in math.

This comparison may underestimate the impact of eliminating bilingual education, since even the schools that kept more than 120 students in bilingual education still had a large reduction in bilingual-education enrollment. Moreover, even if a school maintained a scaled-down bilingual-education program, my interviews suggest that in many schools it is no longer the same program-more English is being used and students are being transitioned faster since there are fewer bilingual-education programs in the upper grades. Trying to isolate the true effect of a program that is no longer the same is difficult even at the individual level; it is even more difficult at the school level. Differences in testing rates by program introduce further bias. The percentage of English Learners tested in reading was four points lower in the schools that eliminated bilingual education, while the percentage of English Learners tested in math was three points lower. All else being equal, these lower testing rates should inflate the test scores of the schools that retained bilingual education.

Examining the relationship between the percentage of English Learners enrolled in bilingual education in a school and test scores for English Learners, taking into account differences in schools' pre-Prop 227 test scores and the percentage of schools' students eligible for free lunch, reveals another indicator of Prop 227's effect on achievement. This approach shows that the percentage of an elementary school's students enrolled in bilingual education is significantly and negatively related to a school's average test score for English Learners in both reading and math, even after accounting for the characteristics of its students. The results suggest that elementary schools with no bilingual-education enrollment score six points higher in reading and three points higher in math than schools with all their English Learners enrolled in bilingual education. The magnitude of the effect in reading is greater than one-half of a standard deviation-a large effect by the standards of education policy research. The effect on math is .21 of a standard deviation (see Figure 2). Moreover, as with the comparisons discussed above, these estimates may underestimate the true impact of English-language instruction, since Prop 227 has also changed bilingual education.

Data for individual students still suffer from the testing-rate bias favoring bilingual education, but where it is available one can at least determine which program the student is enrolled in. Valentina Bali also analyzed the achievement of individual English Learners in the Pasadena school district. In 1998, 53 percent of Pasadena's English Learners were enrolled in bilingual education, compared with less than 2 percent after Prop 227. Adjusting statistically for the lower testing rate among students in bilingual education, Bali found that the effect of being in bilingual education in 1997-98 was negative and statistically significant, but the magnitude was only 2.4 points in reading and 0.5 in math.

Using the same technique to examine the gains made by the two groups following the implementation of Prop 227, Bali found that putting these same students in a structured immersion classroom the next year eliminated the small gap between English Learners who had been in bilingual education and those not in bilingual education. The English Learners who transferred from bilingual education to structured English immersion made gains of four points in reading compared with gains of only two points for the students who had been taught in English previously. (There was no difference in the gains the two groups made in math.) In short, Bali's analyses suggest that putting English Learners who had been in bilingual education into structured immersion increased their reading scores by about two points (.18 of a standard deviation) and their math scores by about a half point or less (.03 of a standard deviation). These effects are somewhat weaker than those produced by my school-level analysis, but still indicative of substantial benefits.

Prop 227 appears to have had a positive effect on the achievement of English Learners, but it is not going to turn them into high-scoring students. Although bilingual education may be a relatively ineffective way of teaching English Learners, it was not the primary cause of their low achievement. The root problem is the way children are designated limited English proficient. An English Learner is not just a child from a non-English-speaking family. He or she is a child from a non-English-speaking family who scores low in English. Children from non-English-speaking families who score above a state-designated standard in English when they are initially tested are not designated limited English proficient. Therefore, English Learners must, by definition, be low scoring in English regardless of which program they are enrolled in.

Practically speaking, the movement away from bilingual education will not dramatically improve the performance of students of non-English-speaking background, in part because bilingual education, in the pure form theorists advocated, was not as widely practiced as generally believed and in part because no program can dramatically improve the achievement of a group that is defined by its low achievement. There is a ceiling effect, not on individual children, but on the group as a whole because children who improve ultimately disappear from the category. Prop 227's effects on student achievement have also been moderated by the fact that some schools and school districts are subverting the law's intent and assigning Spanish-speaking English Learners to classrooms taught largely or almost entirely in Spanish in the first 30 days of school.

Nevertheless, the law has had beneficial consequences. Test scores of English Learners appear to have risen considerably, if less dramatically than some of Prop 227's proponents had hoped. Even more impressive is the fact that Prop 227 changed the direction of California policy, reversing 26 years of aggressive support for bilingual education by advocates within the state department of education. It seems that when voters speak clearly, policy does change, if somewhat more unevenly than the stark phrasing of the law would require.
-Christine H. Rossell is a professor of political science at Boston University. This research project was funded by the Public Policy Institute of California.

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The Near End of Bilingual Education - Education Next

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Bilingual education's 26-year reign in California was supposed to end with the voters' passage of Proposition 227 in June 1998. The proposition declared: All children in California public schools shall be taught English by being taught in English.

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The Immigration Act of 1990 is the revised version of the Nationality Act of 1940, which was the revised version of the Naturalization Act of 1906.

Basically, the Immigration Act of 1990 gives the federal government the authority to act as arbitrator to any naturalization policy.

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In 1975, a Task-Force was put together to review findings of Lau v Nichols and to eliminate any/all past practices that had subsequently been deemed unlawful.
Another important aspect of the Lau Remedies was that it imposed that it would apply to all school districts, regardless of federal funding, and because of its wide berth, would be used as the compliance application standard.

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Task-Force Findings Specifying Remedies Available for Eliminating Past Educational Practices Ruled Unlawful under Lau v. Nichols
Office for Civil Rights

I. Identification of Student's Primary or Home Language

The first step to be included in a plan submitted by a district found to be in noncompliance with Title VI under Lau is the method by which the district will identify the student's primary or home language. A student's primary or home language, for the purpose of this report, is other than English if it meets at least one of the following descriptions:

A. The student's first acquired language is other than English.
B. The language most often spoken by the student is other than English.

C. The language most often spoken in the student's home is other than English, regardless of the language spoken by the student.

These assessments (A-C, above) must be made by persons who can speak and understand the necessary language(s). Then the district must assess the degree of linguistic function or ability of the student(s) so as to place the student(s) in one of the following categories by language.
A. Monolingual speaker of the language other than English (speaks the language other than English exclusively).
B. Predominantly speaks the language other than English (speaks mostly the language other than English, but speaks some English).

C. Bilingual (speaks both the language other than English and English with equal ease).

D. Predominantly speaks English (speaks mostly English, but some of the language other than English).

E. Monolingual speaker of English (speaks English exclusively).
In the event that the student is multilingual (is functional in more than two languages in addition to English), such assessment must be made in all the necessary languages.

In order to make the aforementioned assessments the district must, at a minimum, determine the language most often spoken in the student's home, regardless of the language spoken by the student, the language most often spoken by the student in the home and the language spoken by the student in the social setting (by observation).

These assessments must be made by persons who can speak and understand the necessary language(s). An example of the latter would be to determine by observation the language used by the student to communicate with peers between classes or in informal situations. These assessments must cross-validate one another (Example: student speaks Spanish at home and Spanish with classmates at lunch). Observers must estimate the frequency of use of each language spoken by the student in these situations.

In the event that the language determinations conflict (Example: student speaks Spanish at home, but English with classmates at lunch), an additional method must be employed by the district to make such a determination (for example the district may wish to employ a test of language dominance as a third criterion). In other words, two of the three criteria will cross-validate or the majority of criteria will cross-validate (yield the same language).

Due to staff limitations and priorities, we will require a plan under Lau during this initial stage of investigation when the district has 20 or more students of the same language group identified as having a primary or home language other than English. However, a district does have an obligation to serve any student whose primary or home language is other than English.

II. Diagnostic/Prescriptive Approach

The second part of a plan must describe the diagnostic/prescriptive measures to be used to identify the nature and extent of each student's educational needs and then prescribe an educational program utilizing the most effective teaching style to satisfy the diagnosed educational needs. The determination of which teaching style(s) are to be used will be based on a careful review of both the cognitive and affective domains and should include an assessment of the responsiveness of students to different types of cognitive learning styles and incentive motivational styles—e.g., competitive v. cooperative learning patterns. The diagnostic measures must include diagnoses of problems related to areas or subjects required of other students in the school program and prescriptive measures must serve to bring the linguistically/culturally different student(s) to the educational performance level that is expected by the Local Education Agency (LEA) and State of nonminority students. A program designed for students of limited English-speaking ability must not be operated in a manner so as to solely satisfy a set of objectives divorced or isolated from those educational objectives established for students in the regular school program.
III. Educational Program Selection

In the third step the district must implement the appropriate type(s) of educational program(s) listed in this Section (III, 1-5), dependent upon the degree of linguistic proficiency of the students in question. If none seem applicable check with your Lau coordinator for further action.1. In the case of the monolingual speaker of the language other than English (speaks the language other than English exclusively). A. At the Elementary and Intermediate Levels:
Any one or combination of the following programs is acceptable.

1. Transitional Bilingual Education Program (TBE).

2. Bilingual/Bicultural Program.

3. Multilingual/Multicultural Program.

In the case of a TBE, the district must provide predictive data which show that such student(s) are ready to make the transition into English and will succeed educationally in content areas and in the educational program(s) in which he/she is to be placed. This is necessary so the district will not prematurely place the linguistically/culturally different student who is not ready to participate effectively in an English language curriculum in the regular school program (conducted exclusively in English).
Because an ESL program does not consider the affective nor cognitive development of students in this category and time and maturation variables are different here than for students at the secondary level, an ESL program is not appropriate.

B. At the Secondary Level:

Option 1. Such students may receive instruction in subject matter (example: math, science) in the native language(s) and receive English as a Second Language (ESL) as a class component.

Option 2. Such students may receive required and elective subject matter (examples: math, science, industrial arts) in the native language(s) and bridge into English while combining English with the native language as appropriate (learning English as a first language, in a natural setting). Option 3. Such students may receive ESL or High Intensive Language Training (HILT) . . . in English until they are fully functional in English (can operate equally successfully in school in English) then bridge into the school program for all other students.

A district may wish to utilize a TBE, Bilingual/Bicultural or Multilingual/Multicultural program in lieu of the three options presented in this section (III.l.B.). This is permissible. However, if the necessary prerequisite skills in the native language(s) have not been taught to these students, some form of compensatory education in the native language must be provided.

In any case, students in this category (111.1.B.) must receive such instruction in a manner that is expeditiously carried out so that the student in question will be able to participate to the greatest extent possible in the regular school program as soon as possible. At no time can a program be selected in this category (III.l.B.) to place the students in situations where the method of instruction will result in a substantial delay in providing these students with the necessary English language skills needed by or required of other students at the time of graduation.

NOTE: You will generally find that students in this category are recent immigrants.
2. In the case of the predominant speaker of the language other than English (speaks mostly the language other than English, but speaks some English):

1. At the Elementary Level:

Any one or combination of the following programs is acceptable.

1. TBE

2. Bilingual/Bicultural Program

3. Multilingual/Multicultural Program

In the case of a TBE, the district must provide predictive data which show that such student(s) are ready to make the transition into English and will educationally succeed in content areas and the educational program in which he/she is to be placed.
Since an ESL program does not consider the affective nor cognitive development of the students in this category and the time and maturation variables are different here than for students at the secondary level, an ESL program is not appropriate.
B. At the Intermediate and High School Levels:
The district must provide data relative to the student's academic achievement and identify those students who have been in the school system for less than a year. If the student(s) who have been in the school system for less than a year are achieving at grade level or better, the district is not required to provide additional educational programs. If, however, the students who have been in the school system for a year or more are underachieving (not achieving at grade level) . . .the district must submit a plan to remedy the situation. This may include smaller class size, enrichment materials, etc. In either this case or the case of students who are underachieving and have been in the school system for less than a year, the remedy must include any one or combination of the following (1) an ESL, (2) a TBE, (3) a Bilingual/Bicultural Program (4) a Multilingual/Multicultural Program. such students may not be placed in situations where all instruction is conducted in the native language as may be prescribed for the monolingual speaker of a language other than English, if the necessary prerequisite skills in the native language have not been taught. In this case some form of compensatory education in the native language must be provided.

NOTE: You will generally find that students in this category are not recent immigrants.
3. In the case of the bilingual speaker (speaks both the language other than English and English with equal ease) the district must provide data relative to the student(s) academic achievement.
In this case the treatment is the same at the elementary, intermediate and secondary levels and differs only in terms of underachievers and those students achieving at grade level or better.
A. For the students in this category who are underachieving, treatment corresponds to the regular program requirements for all racially/ethnically identifiable classes or tracks composed of students who are underachieving, regardless of their language background.
B. For the students in this category who are achieving at grade level or better, the district is not required to provide additional educational programs.
4. In the case of the predominant speaker of English (speaks mostly English, but some of a language other than English) treatment for these students is the same as 111, 3 above.
5.In the case of the monolingual speaker of English (speaks English exclusively) treat the same as III, 3 above.
NOTE: ESL is a necessary component of. all the aforementioned programs. However, an ESL program may not be sufficient as theonly program operated by a district to respond to the educational needs of all the types of students described in this document.

IV. Required and Elective Courses

In the fourth step of such plan the district must show that the required and elective courses are not designed to have a discriminatory effect

A. Required courses. Required courses (example: American History) must not be designed to exclude pertinent minority developments which have contributed to or influenced such subjects.

B. Elective Courses and Co-curricular Activities. Where a district has been found out of compliance and operates racially/ethnically identifiable elective courses or co-curricular activities, the plan must address this area by either educationally justifying the racial/ethnic identifiability of these courses or activities, eliminating them, or guaranteeing that these courses or co-curricular activities will not remain racially/ethnically identifiable.

There is a prima facie case of discrimination if courses are racially/ ethnically identifiable.

Schools must develop strong incentives and encouragement for minority students to enroll in electives where minorities have not traditionally enrolled. In this regard, counselors, principals and teachers have a most important role. Title VI compliance questions are raised by any analysis of counseling practices which indicates that minorities are being advised in a manner which results in their being disproportionately channeled into certain subject areas or courses. The school district must see that all of its students are encouraged to fully participate and take advantage of all educational benefits.

Close monitoring is necessary to evaluate to what degree minorities are in essence being discouraged from taking certain electives and encouraged to take other elective courses and insist that to eliminate discrimination and to provide equal educational opportunities, districts must take affirmative duties to see that minority students are not excluded from any elective courses and over included in others.

All newly established elective courses cannot be designed to have a discriminatory effect. This means that a district cannot, for example, initiate a course in Spanish literature designed exclusively for Spanish-speaking students so that enrollment in that subject is designed to result in the exclusion of students whose native language is English but who could equally benefit from such a course and/or be designed to result in the removal of the minority students in question from a general literature course which should be designed to be relevant for all the students served by the district.

V. Instructional Personnel Requirements

Instructional personnel teaching the students in question must be linguistically/culturally familiar with the background of the students to be affected.

The student/teacher ratio for such programs should equal or be less than (fewer students per teacher) the student/teacher ratio for the district. However, we will not require corrective action by the district if the number of students in such programs are no more than five greater per teacher than the student/teacher ratio for the district.

If instructional staffing is inadequate to implement program requirements, in-service training, directly related to improving student performance is acceptable as an immediate and temporary response. Plans for providing this training must include at least the following:
1. Objectives of training (must be directly related to ultimately improving student performance)
2. Methods by which the objective(s) will be achieved

3. Method for selection of teachers to receive training

4. Names of personnel doing the training and location of training

5. Content of training

6. Evaluation design of training and performance criteria for individuals receiving the training
This temporary in-service training must continue until staff performance criteria has been met.
Another temporary alternative is utilizing para-professional persons with the necessary language(s) and cultural background(s). Specific instructional roles of such personnel must be included in the plan. Such plan must show that this personnel will aid in teaching and not be restricted to those areas unrelated to the teaching process (checking roll, issuing tardy cards, etc.)

In addition, the district must include a plan for securing the number of qualified teachers necessary to fully implement the instructional program. Development and training of para-professionals may be an important source for the development of bilingual/bicultural teachers.

VI. Racial/Ethnic Isolation and/or Identifiability of Schools and Classes

Racially/Ethnically Isolated and/or Identifiable Schools—

It is not educationally necessary nor legally permissible to create racially/ethnically identifiable schools in order to respond to student language characteristics as specified in the programs described herein.
Racially/Ethnically Isolated and/or Identifiable Classes—

The implementation of the aforementioned educational models do not justify the existence of racially/ethnically isolated or identifiable classes, per se. Since there is no conflict in this area as related to the application of the Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) and existing Title VI regulations, standard application of those regulations is effective. VII. Notification to Parents of Students Whose Primary or Home Language Is Other Than English
School districts have the responsibility to effectively notify the parents of the students identified as having a primary or home language other than English of all school activities or notices which are called to the attention of other parents. Such notice, in order to be adequate, must be provided in English and 19 the necessary language(s) comprehensively paralleling the exact content in English. Be aware that a literal translation may not be sufficient.

The district must inform all minority and nonminority parents of all aspects of the programs designed for students of limited English-speaking ability and that these programs constitute an integral part of the total school program.
VIII. Evaluation
A "Product and Process" evaluation is to be submitted in the plan. This type of evaluation, in addition to stating the "product" (end result), must include "process evaluation" (periodic evaluation throughout the implementation stage). A description of the evaluation design is required. Time-lines (target for completion of steps) is an essential component.

For the first three years, following the implementation of a plan, the district must submit to the OCR Regional Office at the close of sixty days after school starts, a "progress report" which will show the steps which have been completed. For those steps which have not been completed, a narrative from the district is necessary to explain why the targeted completion dates were not met. Another "progress report" is also due at the close of 30 days after the last day of the school year in question.

IX. Definition of Terms:

Bilingual/Bicultural Program

A program which utilizes the student's native language (example: Navajo) and cultural factors in instructing, maintaining and further developing all the necessary skills in the student's native language and culture while introducing, maintaining, and developing all the necessary skills in the second language and culture (example: English). The end result is a student who can function, totally, in both language and cultures.
English as a Second Language (ESL)

A structured language acquisition program designed to teach English to students whose native language is not English.
High Intensive Language Training (HILT)

A total immersion program designed to teach students a new language.
Multilingual/Multicultural Program

A program operated under the same principles as a Bilingual/Bicultural Program (X, 1)except that more than one language and culture, in addition to English language and culture is treated. The end result is a student who can function, totally, in more than two languages and cultures.
Transitional Bilingual Education Program (TBE)

A program operated in the same manner as a Bilingual/Bicultural Program, except that once the student is fully functional in the second language (English), further instruction in the native language is no longer required.
Underachievement

Underachievement is defined as performance in each subject area (e.g. reading, problem solving) at one or more standard deviations below district norms as determined by some objective measures for nonethnic/racial minority students. Mental ability scores cannot be utilized for determining grade expectancy.
Instructional Personnel

Persons involved in teaching activities. Such personnel includes, but is not limited to, certified, credentialized teachers, para-professionals, teacher aides, parents, community volunteers, youth tutors, etc.

Source:

Baker, K.A. & de Kanter, A.A. (1983). Bilingual Education: A Reappraisal of Federal Policy. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath.

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Task-Force Findings Specifying Remedies Available for Eliminating Past Educational Practices Ruled Unlawful under Lau v. Nichols Office for Civil Rights I. Identification of Student's Primary or Home Language The first step to be included in a plan submitted by a district found to be in noncompliance with Title VI under Lau is the method by which the district will identify the student's primary or home language.

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BILINGUAL EDUCATION TIMELINE: 1839 TO THE PRESENT:

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BILINGUAL EDUCATION TIMELINE: 1839 TO THE PRESENT:

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July 9, 1868

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Serna v Portales Municipal School District 

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Serna v Portales Municipal School District 

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(New Mexico, 1974)

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Aspira v Board of Education of the City of New York

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Aspira v Board of Education of the City of New York

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(New York, 1972)

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(California, 1931)

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There were several near insurmountable  deficits with this Act.  Some of the most detrimental problems were:
- Funding for BEA was inadequate at best and, was restricted to only those students between the ages of 3 and 8 years of age;
-  School participation was voluntary;
- Out of the 5 million students in need, participation in the Title VII funded program had dropped to only 100,391 students nationally .

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A multimedia judicial archive of the Supreme Court of the United States.