Bilingual Education History Chapter 9 by Julianna Brown

1963 - The First Publicly Funded Modern Bilingual Program

jbrown4college — 2025-10-12 15:45:49 UTC

In 1963, the first dual-language program was created in Florida by Cuban exiles. The program was created in order to maintain the Cuban children’s Spanish comprehension skills while also learning English in order to be able to participate in conversations with other Floridians. The Cubans were seen as hard workers and most Americans had sympathy for the Cubans as they had lived under a Communist rule and were refugees from the Communist rule. Thus, this dual-language program was supported by the general community politically and was given funding. This program gained the most attention out of any of the dual-language programs in the United States and ultimately paved the way for more schools to adopt dual-language programs. The event is important to Bilingual Education today because it was the first well-known dual-language program in the USA and the beginning of the dual-language approach being accepted since 1906 when the Nationality Act was enacted. This act required immigrants to speak English in order to become American and ultimately set back the expansion of dual-language programs by coloring the views of the American public to portray speaking languages other than English as a cultural deficit.

1970 - Lau v. Nichols

jbrown4college — 2025-10-12 15:46:11 UTC

Lau v. Nichols was a 1970 court case brought all the way to the supreme court in 1974 on behalf of students who spoke Chinese in the San Francisco School District. The case revolved around whether the students were receiving a quality education equal to that of their native English-speaking classmates. The students were only taught in English, a language they were still learning. The Chinese students were missing core content and were not being instructed on the English language because it was assumed they would simply pick English up if they were immersed. The prosecution asserted that this lack of quality instruction violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment in addition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The supreme court ruled in the students favor, stating that equal access to facilities, texts, and English instruction was not an equitable stance on education as it put non-English speakers at a severe disadvantage. This event is important today because this court case set the foundation for ENL programs to exist. This court case helped to establish a requirement for schools to consider their Emerging Bilingual students and come up with an educational framework to best support them. Though Lau v. Nickols did not create the framework for ENL education, the case required its creation.

2010 - Common Core State Standards

jbrown4college — 2025-10-12 15:47:35 UTC

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were developed in 2010 and were adopted in 42 states by the year 2016. They were originally crafted under the Obama administration and were intended to help create graduates who were college or career ready right out of high school. The CCSS focused heavily on measuring achievement through high-stakes testing. Though the state standards were adopted willingly by states, critics of the CCSS stated that this suggested framework created a national standard for education and impeded on the states’ rights to be in charge of their own educational policies. Many states adopted the standards because it made them eligible for Race to the Top grants and other federal funding initiatives. The CCSS especially impacted ELLs because these high-stakes tests were not written in languages other than English. Nowadays, many states have kept the CCSS or renamed them, but many have opted out of the testing consortia and have instead opted to create their own assessments to measure success with the CCSS. These standards are relevant to bilingual education today because they are the standards New York based their Next Generation Learning Standards (NGLS) on when they rewrote the state standards in 2017. Many of the CCSS and NGLS are similar as the NGLS were revisions of the original standards. Because the Common Core State Standards are still largely part of the curriculum used in New York and still apply to EBs.

2015 - Every Student Succeeds Act

jbrown4college — 2025-10-12 15:47:52 UTC

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) pivoted away from high-stakes testing that was utilized with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and instead allowed for states to have more flexibility for the goals of different populations in the school. It also allowed for schools to look at the whole picture of the child rather than just their standardized test scores when making decisions on additional resources that could become available to the student. Additionally, ESSA made it a rule to track the progress of different student sub-groups rather than the entire lump sum school population when considering growth. This is helpful for ELL students who had previously gone overlooked under NCLB. ESSA has experienced a slow implementation and disruptions due to Covid-19, but is the most recent act published in the Baker & Wright 2021 text pertaining to Emergent Bilinguals (EBs). This act is important because it is the most recent form of legislature regarding ELLs. Additionally, it is useful because it outlines the forms in which EBs will be tested and how their growth will be measured compared to their English-speaking peers.

1968 - The Bilingual Education Act

jbrown4college — 2025-10-13 14:56:00 UTC

The Bilingual Education Act (BEA) was enacted in 1968 and was used to assert that bilingual education was part of federal education policy, eroding away English-only policies which still existed in some states. The BEA also set aside federal funds only to be used on bilingual students or new English learners in order to enhance their education. The BEA was not necessarily beneficial for dual-language programs or maintaining the home language, but rather it identified students who were speakers of other languages should receive extra services via the federal funds in order to learn English. The BEA was reauthorized five more times in the years 1974, 1978, 1984, 1988, and 1994. The Bilingual Education Act was important for the history of bilingual education because it was the first designated act for bilingual children created in order to help them succeed in English-speaking classrooms. Additionally, the act was the nail in the coffin for English-only classrooms.