lack of bilingual education essay

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Events, news & press, bilingual education: a critique.

Bilingual education has been a subject of national debate since the 1960s. This essay traces the evolution of that debate from its origin in the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Bilingual Education Act (1968), which decreed that a child should be instructed in his or her native tongue for a transitional year while she or he learned English but was to transfer to an all-English classroom as fast as possible. These prescriptions were ignored by bilingual enthusiasts; English was neglected, and Spanish language and cultural maintenance became the norm.

Bilingual education was said to be essential for the purposes of gaining a new sense of pride for the Hispanics and to resist Americanization. The Lau v. Nichols (1974) decision stands out as a landmark on the road to bilingual education for those unable to speak English: bilingual education moved away from a transitional year to a multiyear plan to teach children first in their home language, if it was not English, before teaching them in English. This facilitation theory imprisoned Spanish speakers in classrooms where essentially only Spanish was taught, and bilingual education became Spanish cultural maintenance with English limited to thirty minutes a day. The essay discusses the pros and cons of bilingual education.

Criticism of bilingual education has grown as parents and numerous objective analyses have shown it was ineffective, kept students too long in Spanish-only classes, and slowed the learning of English and assimilation into American society. High dropout rates for Latino students, low graduation rates from high schools and colleges have imprisoned Spanish speakers at the bottom of the economic and educational ladder in the United States.

This revolt, the defects of bilingual education, and the changes needed to restore English for the Children are covered in the essay. The implications of Proposition 227 abolishing bilingual education in California are also discussed.

The Struggle for Bilingual Education

Whenever a teachers' convention meets and tries to find out how it can cure the ills of society, there is simply one answer; the school has but one way to cure the ills of society and that is by making men intelligent. To make men intelligent, the school has again but one way, and that is, first and last, to teach them to read, write and count. And if the school fails to do that, and tries beyond that to do something for which a school is not adapted, it not only fails in its own function, but it fails in all other attempted functions. Because no school as such can organize industry, or settle the matter of wage and income, can found homes or furnish parents, can establish justice or make a civilized world. 1 —W. E. B. Du Bois

No one better understood the true purpose of primary and secondary school education than the author of these introductory lines, W. E. B. Du Bois, perhaps the greatest black radical scholar in the United States. Yet, throughout the history of American education, Du Bois's sound assumptions have met with unceasing challenge. Throughout their history, Americans have attempted to use education for pragmatic aims of the most contradictory kinds: for the purpose of saving souls, turning out good citizens, turning the foreign-born into good American citizens, or--more recently--giving students a better understanding of their racial or ethnic background so as to resist Americanization and develop multiculturalism.

In addition to becoming a religious battleground, schools frequently became involved in ethnic issues as successive immigrant communities attempted to use the classroom to maintain their respective linguistic and cultural heritages. Germans, for instance, though supposedly an assimilable group, sometimes went to extraordinary lengths during the nineteenth century to use every conceivable institution--public schools, parochial organizations, churches, gymnastic associations ( Turnvereine ), and even glee clubs ( Liedertafeln )--for the purpose of strengthening Deutschtum on American soil, an issue of bitter controversy. 2

During the 1960s and 1970s a nationwide debate developed over bilingual education. In the eyes of orthodox educators, bilingual instruction--in the child's native tongue and in English--should be transitional. The child's home language should be used for teaching purposes, so that students will acquire cognitive skills and avoid academic retardation. English should be taught as a second language only until the student becomes proficient in English, at which time native-language instruction should end. In theory, attention would continue to be paid to the child's heritage and culture. But the basic purpose, at least of federal legislation, was to get students to transfer into all-English classrooms as fast as possible, without falling behind in other subjects.

But the English-speaking public generally insisted that English should remain the sole language of instruction in schools. The use of native languages was often resented by the descendants of earlier immigrants, whose forebears had struggled to learn English. Anglo-Americans feared it would usher in multilingualism and artificial attempts to preserve ethnic cultures. 3 Bilingual education, according to its critics, might turn into an instrument to increase ethnic employment in schools and to achieve the political, economic, and social goals of Hispanics. Bilingual education became for many Hispanics a civil rights issue and also a means of obtaining heightened respect for their culture, an instrument for fighting discrimination against non-English-speaking groups, and a device for obtaining jobs and increasing the Hispanics' political leverage. 4

Spanish-speaking Americans were in fact slow to emulate their European predecessors' demands for bilingual education. Organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican-American Political Association, and the American GI Forum, while not unmindful of their Hispanic heritage, stressed political, social, and economic equality for Mexican Americans and attempted to integrate Mexican Americans fully into American life. LULAC thus placed special stress on ending job discrimination and de facto segregation in school.

From the 1960s onward, the emphasis shifted from socioeconomic to broader and often contradictory objectives set by educational reformers. Some of them, making use of newly popular theories of "alienation," defended bilingual education for children reared at home in a language other than English by stating that its use in the classroom would prevent "inward maladjustment." The emotional fabric of the Mexican American child was said to be often overextended. In this view, the child was "disturbed, confused, and disoriented as the result of being pulled between two worlds," neither of which was capable of providing that "sense of security necessary for learning experiences" and of belonging. Coming from the love and warmth of his home into an unsympathetic school, the child supposedly underwent traumatic experiences that might lead him into anxiety, a retreat from society, or crime. 5

The demand for bilingual education came from many sources. Cuban immigrants, many of them highly educated, called for quality schooling for their children, an education that would preserve the Cubans' Spanish culture. Bilingual education also was said to be essential for gaining a new sense of self-pride for the Hispanic poor, this in a country where Spanish enjoyed low esteem and where too many authors of schoolbooks, teachers, politicians, professors, advertisers, and even producers of television programs supposedly conspired to demean Spanish speakers by casting them into stereotyped characters. The most radical attacks on the existing system--launched in the 1960s when student unrest was at its zenith throughout the country--came from members of La Raza Unida , which then advocated biculturalism as a political weapon in the struggle to set up a "third politics" for the purpose of gaining power in predominantly Chicano regions.

Bilingual education also came to be considered essential because of the relatively poor performance of so many Puerto Rican and Chicano students and because of their high dropout rate from schools and colleges. Spanish-speaking educators stated that there were at least five reasons why Hispanics dropped out. (1) Many Spanish speakers fell behind early in their education because they did not know much English; by the time they reached high school, they were discouraged. (2) Many complained of bad teacher attitudes toward Hispanic students because of the students' color, accent, and poor English skills. (3) Students did not hear enough English spoken at home or in the barrios and received little help in reading and writing English in the home. (4) Failing to see the relevance or economic benefits of further education, they left school to find a job as soon as they could. (5) Moreover, a high percentage of illegitimacy, concubinage, and abandoned mothers and children among Hispanic slum dwellers created a poor environment for learning and staying in school. 6

Hispanics, while better placed than blacks, also suffered more severely from unemployment than members of the so-called majority. Overall, Hispanic college graduates did best, followed by high school graduates; high school dropouts were at the bottom. 7 Clearly, argued the advocates of bilingual education, more suitable courses of instruction would help to improve the Hispanics' economic as well as educational position. Faith in education commonly went with a characteristically American creed in the combined power of cash, gadgets, and the correct pedagogical method taught at almost every school of education in the United States. As Manuel H. Guerra said, "There is nothing about the bilingual problems of the Chicano child which money, electronic laboratory equipment, and appropriately trained, understanding teachers cannot solve." 8 But time was to prove this assertion totally wrong, even though billions of dollars were devoted to bilingual education.

The call for educational reform fit the mood of the 1960s and early 1970s, when the ideals of the New Frontier and the Great Society seemed as yet untarnished, when educational expenditure in the United States had ballooned, and when there seemed to be no limit to what pedagogues, well supplied with funds, could accomplish for the betterment of mankind. Between 1952 and 1972, public expenditures for education in schools and colleges increased more than 700 percent, from $8.4 billion to $67.5 billion. The number of educational employees tripled, from 1,884,000 to 5,646,000. 9 If money alone could buy excellence, the United States should have entered a golden age of public instruction instead of seeing declining standards in many schools.

Commitment to upgraded education for the poor was accompanied by determined attempts to desegregate schools. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and, a year later, the Elementary and Secondary Schools Education Act (ESEA). The federal government, through the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, became actively involved in desegregating public schools throughout the United States. At the same time, both politicians and educators turned to "compensatory education" to uplift the children of the poor and to "Americanize" immigrants. The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 was designed as yet another means of facilitating the learning of English by youngsters with a different mother tongue.

The parallel campaigns to integrate schools and to raise the standards of Spanish-speaking and other students did not, however, easily run in harness. Both Hispanics and blacks had experienced widespread segregation. According to a report issued by the Civil Rights Commission in 1970, one-third of all Mexican American students were attending schools defined as "ethnically imbalanced." In some districts in Houston, Texas, for example, administrators used the argument that Mexicans were legally white in order to accomplish token desegregation through mixing Mexican American and black students. At the same time, Mexican Americans complained that using ESEA compensatory funds for improving the lot of "disadvantaged" Mexican Americans made Mexican American children feel inferior. The concept of "cultural deprivation," used widely in the educational reforms of the late 1960s, ran counter to the Mexican Americans' pride in their language and culture. Although the civil rights movement made conscious efforts to eliminate hostile stereotypes from textbooks and courses, there was little attempt to present minority cultures in a positive fashion.

Puerto Ricans were equally outspoken in their criticism. In New York City, ASPIRA, a Puerto Rican cultural organization, assisted by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), took the board of education to court several times. The first suit began in 1972; in 1974, Puerto Ricans gained the "ASPIRA Consent Degree." In 1975, the plaintiffs again took legal action for failure to implement the consent decree--specifically, for failing to develop a method for identifying children in need of bilingual education. The court ordered the board of education to carry out the 1976 decree; in 1978, the contestants arrived at an agreement whereby the board of education would report both to ASPIRA and PRLDEF--without, however, solving all the points at issue.

At the same time, educators of many different national origins, following the example of black ethnic studies leaders, built an extensive network of Chicano studies, Puerto Rican studies, Cuban studies, Latin American studies, ethnic studies, and bicultural or multicultural education programs at many northeastern, midwestern, and California colleges and universities. A new journal, the Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingue (1974), began to discuss language problems. All these efforts combined to form a powerful lobby to push for bilingual education and to mobilize more federal funds for this and related purposes.

The Hispanics' complaints became more outspoken as their political power increased and as the federal government unwittingly favored their cause through a new statistical definition. Until l1970, the definition "Hispanic" was limited to those born in Spanish-speaking countries or to U.S. citizens with Spanish surnames. The 1970 census broadened the term to include both racial origin and Spanish-language speakers, irrespective of their birthplace. This resulted in a dramatic increase in those officially defined as "Hispanic," from 3.1 million in 1960 to 9.1 million in 1970 to 12 million in 1978. (The latter figure seems too conservative because it did not take illegal immigrants into account.)

At the same time, the Hispanic cause acquired increased status within the federal bureaucracy. In 1967, the Inter-Agency Committee on Mexican-American Affairs was set up as a coordinating body for cabinet-level programs; in 1970, a permanent cabinet committee was formed to serve as a forum for Spanish speakers. Growing numbers of Hispanic Americans obtained appointments to the staff of the Civil Rights Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the U.S. Office of Education. By their philosophies and the composition of their personnel, these bodies were committed overwhelmingly to the liberal cause. Self-styled progressives among the federal bureaucrats, judges, college professors, journalists, and congressional members and staffers formed an informal but powerful lobby committed to institutional change.

The Lau v. Nichols case stands out as another landmark on the road to bilingual education. This major case, brought against the school district of San Francisco, alleged discrimination against Chinese schoolchildren; in 1974 the Supreme Court decided that the provision of equal facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curricula for youngsters unable to speak English did not mean equality of opportunities--and all school districts were thereafter required to take "affirmative steps" to rectify the deficiency. In the following year, the Office of Civil Rights issued a memorandum (cumbrously entitled "Task Force Findings Specifying Remedies for Eliminating Past Educational Practices Ruled Unlawful Under Lau versus Nichols") outlining procedures to be followed by school districts providing bilingual and bicultural education. The 1976 California Bilingual Bicultural Education Act, which followed a similar philosophy, represented a major policy shift: bilingual education would no longer aim simply at a transition into the American mainstream but would strive for the maintenance of separate ethnic cultures. Only those teachers with appropriate social and bilingual credentials were now deemed qualified to provide bilingual education. In 1978 the Ninth Circuit Appellate Court, covering California, clarified Lau v. Nichols through the Guadalupe v. Tempe decision, ruling that "bilingual education" was not required by federal law.

The call for bilingual education became louder as the number of foreign-born children unable to speak English rapidly increased in the public schools. (By the early 1980s, for example, the San Francisco Unified School District contained 27,786 children with only a limited command of English; 48 percent of all students came from non-English-speaking homes.) At the same time, Spanish-speaking intellectuals, widely supported by the universities, called for affirmative action programs in employment and bilingual programs in schools. The federal government responded sympathetically to this demand, and, by 1978, the Bilingual Education Act was funding 518 bilingual, bicultural projects in sixty-eight languages ranging from Spanish (about 80 percent of the total) to Chinese and Vietnamese. Separately, Health, Education and Welfare's Office of Civil Rights instructed 334 school districts to begin bilingual and bicultural classes or face a potential termination of all federal school aid. Altogether, more than $500 million had been spent on these various ventures. Yet not one cent of federal aid went to the large number of "Saturday Morning Schools," in which foreign-born parents, dissatisfied with the language instruction as well as the disciplinary standards in public schools, privately organized and financed classes in a broad variety of tongues (German, Russian, and Chinese) taught by volunteers along traditional lines and with traditional values.

Until recently, therefore, the only basis for bilingual education, for example, in California was a mixture of state and administrative decisions and fear of a political backlash from Latino voters if the program was ended. In fact, most Latino voters oppose bilingual education; thus the Californian Republican Party's failure to back the "English for the Children" initiative in 1997 was wrong-headed.

The Case for and against Bilingual Education

Bilingual education raised many troubling controversies--for example, in the field of Hispanic-black relations. Blacks and Hispanics for a time had collaborated in common campaigns against racial discrimination. The massive disbursement of public funds, however, naturally led to struggles over the allocations among different ethnic communities. Some Mexican American activists argued that they had gained less than blacks from the poverty programs of the 1960s or that Hispanics were less fairly represented than blacks in the state and federal bureaucracies. Equally controversial was the issue of desegregation. Assuming that Hispanic children should be taught in the parental home language, they would have to be separated from other students; this would lead to the separation they were decrying--at a time when public schools were in fact becoming more segregated with the increase of Hispanic children nationwide. (According to a study prepared by Gary Orfield for the U.S. House of Representatives, more than 60 percent of Hispanic students in the western United States were attending de facto segregated schools by the early 1980s.) 10 In addition, there were practical considerations. What was the value of bilingual education for the job market during a nationwide depression, when the larger issues involved not merely getting jobs for Hispanics but also protecting them against layoffs from jobs they already held?

Revisionist scholars broadened the campaign for bilingualism and biculturalism into a broad critique of American society. 11 The melting pot, in their view, had failed--or had never worked in the first place. "Americanization" had injured not only the Spanish-speaking peoples but also the many ethnic minorities whose history in the United States allegedly was one of continued cultural and economic degradation. Far from having served the newcomers, American schools always had been prone to reinforcing existing ethnic, racial, and social class hierarchies. Those immigrants who had succeeded in entering the middle classes during the early twentieth century had done so not because of, but in spite of, their schooling. 12

Bilingual education might have gained wider acceptance if its advocates had been content to describe bilingual education as no more than a transitional bridge to assimilation. Many academicians, however, went further. They linked bilingual education with bicultural education and bicultural education with cultural separatism, or "affirmative ethnicity," and "affirmative ethnicity" with a far reaching critique of traditional American values. By doing so, they alienated the great mass of conservative and middle-of-the-road voters who continued to constitute the overwhelming majority of the American electorate. The biculturalists, like their liberal and left-wing political allies, misjudged the temper of the nation as a whole. They assumed, as did President Carter in a well-publicized speech delivered in 1979, that the United States was in a state of spiritual malaise, that a sense of disenchantment had struck at the very heart, soul, and spirit of the American people, and that public opinion was ready for a fundamental change. A widespread "ethnic revival"--one transcending the Hispanic community--supposedly reflected a wider disenchantment with the white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon establishment by the white ethnics and their descendants.

These assumptions, in fact, were mistaken. The bulk of Americans liked their country and its institutions. 13 The so-called ethnic revival did not, for the most part, represent a serious challenge to American patriotism. A delight in Oktoberfests and zithers, tartans and pibrochs, and Swahili names and bongo drums did not necessarily signify nationalist yearnings for blacks, Lithuanians, Estonians, or Latvians. Much of the ethnic revival represented a further step toward Americanization. Foreign-descended Americans with names like Wieruszowski, Gregoriades, and Katzenellenbogen demanded parity with their fellow citizens. The ethnic revival had little to do with serious efforts to study a foreign literature or language. For all practical purposes, the ethnic revival was apt to end where the irregular verbs began.

Bilingual education encountered criticism not only on patriotic but also on more narrowly technical grounds. For instance, the General Accounting Office in 1976 issued a report, Bilingual Education: An Unmet Need , which charged that the U.S. Office of Education (USOE) had failed to specify how effective bilingual education should be provided, how to train teachers, and how to produce suitable teaching materials. The USOE itself commissioned a critical report in 1978 that concluded that "most of the children did not need to learn English, [and] that those [who] did were in fact acquiring it; and that to the degree that children were already alienated from school, they remained so." 14

This report led to the amended Bilingual Education Act of 1978, which limited the number of English-speaking children in the program to no more than 40 percent, involved parents more, required bilingual proficiency in both languages, and expanded programs to include not only speaking but reading and writing as well. By 1986, twenty-six states required bilingual education. The goal was to improve the programs, concentrate on teaching English, and teach the native language only in transitional, not maintenance, programs, thereby gaining more local support and better-trained teachers. But this did not happen, and by 1997 bilingual education was judged a failure by many experts and an expensive one, at that.

By 1983 the National Association for Bilingual Education was pushing for transitional bilingual programs, not for language maintenance. It accepted the primacy of English but wished to treat the native tongue as a second language. The American Federation of Teachers opposed maintaining the native language because, it claimed, this would keep the child from becoming proficient in English and from becoming assimilated.

When Ronald Reagan secured the presidency in 1980, his administration did not embark on as radical a shift in policy as its right-wing supporters had hoped. There was, in many fields, a good deal of continuity between the Carter and Reagan administrations. The Reagan administration, for instance, did not attempt to put an end to bilingual education, but Washington's previous sense of commitment declined. The political tide moved in the opposite direction, as officials such as Virginia attorney general J. Marshall Coleman criticized proposed federal rules on bilingual education as unwarranted intrusions on states' rights. Bilingual education came under heavy fire because of its costs, the expected growth of new financial burdens, the paucity of basic research in the field, the lack of qualified teachers, and the programs' real or supposed lack of success.

In 1982, as part of Reagan's "new federalism," the Department of Education announced that school districts in the future would not be held accountable for federal bilingual agreements that required native-language instruction for children speaking little or no English. The states, according to the new theory, knew best how to spend federal education dollars. The new administration also attempted to change existing tests for civil rights compliance, particularly in the field of equal educational opportunity. Henceforth, the bilingual program initiated by any state would no longer be judged by its results but by its intentions. A number of states began to modify existing laws. In 1982, for example, Illinois--for long the bellwether state in the field of bilingual education--was considering such far-reaching changes as eliminating the requirements to teach bilingual history and culture as part of the bilingual program, having local school boards decide the means and extent of parent and community involvement in bilingual programs, and giving school districts the power to set their own standards. 15 The Twentieth Century Fund, in a report published in 1983, came to similar conclusions. Instead of bilingual education, the report favored "language immersion." The report called for an end to teaching in any language except English and said that U.S. government support should be limited to training in English.

The Reagan administration, in drawing away from bilingual education, took account of this profound shift of opinion in Congress, among educators, and in the public at large. Hostility to bilingual education had many sources: resentment at falling standards of education and discipline in many of the nation's schools; disenchantment with changing fads and fashions in education; growing resistance to an ever-increasing tax burden; growing unemployment, which resulted in enhanced competition for jobs; and concern about continuing foreign immigration. (By the early 1980s, two-thirds of the American public wanted fewer, rather than more, immigrants.) 16

Opposition to bilingual education was accompanied by growing hostility toward multilingual ballots. The legislature in 1975, amending the Voting Right Act of 1967, required multilingual ballots and election information to be printed for non-English readers. Advocates of the change argued--giving little or no evidence for their contention--that minority-language groups were discriminated against by having to use English-language ballots. In fact, the overwhelming majority of voters in the country can read English; under existing legislation, foreigners must be proficient in English to acquire U.S. citizenship. The experiment turned out to be costly and divisive. In 1981, Senator S. I. Hayakawa introduced legislation to make English the only official language, thereby in effect abolishing multilingual balloting, but the amendment failed to pass. Hayakawa then founded U.S. English to push for a constitutional amendment to make English the official language on the federal and state levels. (In 1997 an English-language bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate.)

U.S. courts also have had to take notice of bilingualism. California and New York lead in the numbers of court interpreters who serve Spanish speakers. (In California, since 1978, interpreters have also been required in Arabic, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.) The California Court Interpreters Association, founded in 1971, has more than eight hundred members and is the largest organization of its kind in the United States. One-fourth of all federally certified interpreters work in California. A National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators has seven hundred members.

In 1982, the Bilingual Education Act was due for renewal. Hearings were held in 1982 and 1983. The Reagan administration wished to change part of the act to fund a greater variety of educational programs, to be determined by the local authorities, but designed to concentrate on training in English. Senate bill S 2002 ensured "that an extensive course of English instruction is an integral part of the bilingual education program and that participation in the bilingual education program will in most cases be limited to one year and for other purposes." 17 The administration opposed the one-year limitation on bilingual education programs but supported other aspects of the bill. Secretary of Education T. H. Bell remarked that government support for bilingual education grew from $7.5 million in 1969 to $134 million in 1982 and provided help for between 1.2 million and 3.5 million children. (By 1997, 2.6 million students were in bilingual education at a cost of $12–$15 billion to the federal and state governments.)

Numerous pressure groups have continued to lobby for bilingual education, including the American Coalition for Bilingual Education, the National Advisory Board for Bilingual Education, and the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Administrators of several state bilingual education programs have continuously opposed the one-year limitation on the program and attacked the "total immersion in English" approach. But there have been doubts all along about bilingual education, not only among Anglo-Americans but also among some Hispanics. A good many Mexican Americans have come to believe that the new programs might retard the progress of immigrant children in American society. Richard E. Ferraro, president of the Los Angeles School Board, was one of their number. "When you're talking about language," he argued, "English is essential for success in this country." John Alvarez, a young Californian of Hispanic descent, put it more graphically: "Many of our people prefer to speak English. They get pissed off when you speak to them in Spanish." 18

Conditions differ widely, of course, from one Hispanic group to another, from one part of the country to another, and even from one city to another. By stressing linguistic skills, bicultural programs may have diverted Hispanic students from making their way in such fields as engineering and computer science, seriously neglected by Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, nearly half of whom graduate in fields that are less financially remunerative. 19 Many Mexican Americans understand little or no Spanish; but, according to Gallup pollsters, by 1982 English was widely spoken in many Hispanic homes, and nearly half of Hispanic children spoke English with their friends. 20

Bilingual education, with its inherent critique of the melting-pot theory, became part of the educational system at the very time that the melting pot had begun to work. Television, radio, advertising, automobiles, rock music, sports, and fashions in clothes all transcend ethnic divisions. Intermarriage for most races, including Mexican Americans, was on the increase, especially for second-generation immigrants (Puerto Rican New Yorkers forming the main exception). By the early 1980s, about 25 percent of all Mexican American marriages in California were mixed, and by 1997 more than 50 percent were. 21 Even the Hispanic media employed English, with Spanish as a second language. By the 1980s, 54 percent of Spanish speakers preferred to read and speak in English. The editors of the magazine Caminos claimed that 85 percent of their readers read articles in English first. 22 (But with massive Latino immigration, legal and illegal, since 1986, knowledge of English may have seriously decreased.)

Bilingual educators were accused of disregarding such developments; they often admitted children who were proficient in English to bilingual programs and kept them there too long. A U.S. Office of Education–sponsored investigation of thirty-eight bilingual projects for Hispanic Americans judged that about 70 percent of the pupils involved used English rather than Spanish for the purpose of taking tests.

Bilingual education also met with massive criticism from those who did not object to bilingualism as such but who argued that bilingual programs often interfered with the proper teaching of English. These critics (including experts working on a 1983 Twentieth Century Fund study) considered bilingual education an ineffective teaching tool. It was a mistake to assume, they argued, that there was no alternative between the "sink-or-swim method," on the one hand, and bilingual education conducted in a foreign tongue, on the other. There was an answer: teach English to the foreign-born in English, and provide this instruction in special courses adjusted to the students' special needs. Students would then be forced to use the new tongue immediately. They would more readily answer a question in English if they knew that the teacher might not speak their first language or might not speak it well. Despite massive expenditure on bilingual education, there was no evidence that it had been more effective than the old-fashioned way of teaching English through English, a method used in Los Angeles and many other major cities during and even before World War II. This method, one might add, had also proved its utility in Israel, where ulpanim (special language schools) effectively taught Hebrew through Hebrew to Israel's polyglot immigrants.

As it was, the critics went on, bilingual education had turned into a massive political pork barrel. During the mid-1960s, to give a specific instance, Los Angeles managed with only two language consultants, paid on the same modest scale as ordinary teachers. By the mid-1970s, Los Angeles had engaged a director of bilingual education, two assistant directors, and eleven advisers, all of whom received much higher salaries than the best-paid classroom teachers. Bilingual education therefore was apt to accentuate the besetting weakness of American public education: the disproportion in pay, power, and prestige between the classroom teachers and the administrators. Bilingual education, moreover, had created a new political lobby of bilingual supervisors, aides, counselors, instructors, publishers of textbooks, producers of films, tapes, and other aids, and professors in education providing courses in bilingual education. 23

The concept of bicultural education raised further difficult questions. How should any ethnic culture be identified? What was German culture? Goethe's or Dr. Goebbels's, Marx's or Bismarck's? Should the schools try to transmit Hispanic, Mexican, Mexican American, or Chicano culture, a question far from theoretical for members of a community who have defined themselves in many different ways. A survey conducted by Carlos Arce at the University of Michigan's School of Social Research found that 46 percent of the Mexican-descended respondents chose to be called Mexicans, 21 percent Mexican Americans, and only 16 percent Chicanos; the remainder picked a variety of other labels or none at all. Corresponding figures elicited by the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project for San Antonio and Los Angeles for Mexican American voters were, respectively, 20 percent, 50 percent, and 7 percent. 24

Biculturalism seemed to entail additional disadvantages. Well-qualified bilingual teachers were hard to recruit, particularly in the "hard sciences" and especially when U.S. schools were suffering a grave shortage of science instructors. This deficiency was all the more serious during a period when the United States was lagging behind Japan and other industrialized countries in the teaching of languages, mathematics, and scientific courses in high school.

Much to its disadvantage, bilingual and bicultural education came to be linked, for many of its academic defenders, with the assumption that the classroom should provide therapy as well as instruction. But, as Mary Ellen Goodman and Alma Beman pointed out in their investigation of a Houston slum in 1970–71, Mexican American working-class children were well adjusted. 25 They appreciated their grandparents, they respected their fathers as the family's money-earner and supreme court of discipline, and they loved their mothers. Mexican children had a realistic appreciation of their chances in future life. They aspired to better jobs than their parents held, but they were not seduced by the glamor and riches they saw on television. The mood of Mexican American working-class people in Houston was expansive and optimistic. They found that "Anglo" prejudice had lessened and that industrialization had improved the workers' lot.

I too see no merit in theories that turn "Anglo" color and racial prejudice into a single-cause explanation of social ills. Racial prejudice assuredly exists in the United States, as it exists everywhere else in the world. Racial prejudice, however, is crisscrossed by class prejudice and, above all, by prejudice linked to the facts of ethnic succession. The most unpopular people in America are those who have arrived in some numbers and last in this country--not necessarily the most dark-complexioned. 26 Racial prejudice alone does not explain why the children of some immigrant groups--Chinese, Vietnamese, Jews, and Cubans--do better, at school, on average than the children of others, including blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans. The explanation for their performance differential derives from a variety of social factors that are difficult to disentangle. One of them is family size: parents who have only a few children can spend more time and money on their individual upbringing. Equally important is the content of education, both at home and at school. In Wilhelminian Germany, for example, Protestants were more likely to explore the sciences than Catholics and therefore enjoyed a natural advantage in an economy apt to pay better salaries to engineers and scientists than to teachers of Latin. A similar distinction has now arisen in the United States between Asian students on the one hand and Chicano and Puerto Rican students on the other. There are proportionately more Asian than Chicano or Puerto Rican graduates in computer sciences, engineering, and other scientific pursuits; hence, the Asians enjoy a natural advantage in the struggle for well-paid jobs. Puerto Ricans and Chicanos would profit financially by being guided into the sciences.

Above all, learning begins at home; the parents' values are more important than the pedagogues'. People of Mexican heritage do not on the whole appear to be as distressed by low educational achievement as are blacks and whites. 27 Moreover, children from a middle-class family, or from a family aspiring to middle-class norms, enjoy educational advantages: mother and father will help with the homework, buy books, and lavishly praise good grades; they will censure a boy when he comes home, blood stained but proud, from a fight on the school grounds. Such children will have a better chance than youngsters from a home where the television and stereo blare, where books are scarce, and where a man is thought a man for occasionally coming home drunk or brawling in a bar. Teachers can help to reinforce the values of the home, but they cannot be expected to do the parents' work. Nevertheless, schools can play a major role in creating an environment that supports high expectations and has a clear focus and a strong instructional leadership that can help the poor as well as the rich student.

Overall, one of the tragedies of bilingual and bicultural education has been that its growth coincided with the spread of educational norms that many parents dislike--permissiveness, submission to peer pressure, hostility to "elitism," and enforced busing. The disenchantment with education was accompanied by a major demographic shift: by the 1980s, only one-third of the students in big-city schools were "white." The middle class had attempted to fashion the schools in its own image. After 1920, the high schools attempted to include all American youths within their scope; the educators achieved this objective during the 1950s. In doing so, they sought to prepare children primarily for white-collar jobs or for employment in skilled trades; but, as the school system expanded, its achievements all too often contracted.

The growth of the educational establishment and the educational bureaucracy--and their seeming loss of purpose--has accordingly coincided with public disillusionment with the schools, evidenced by the growing number of school bonds, once popularly supported, that are now often rejected by the voters. (Between 1957 and 1967, the electorate approved 73 percent of school bonds; between 1968 and 1976, the number dropped to 48 percent.) There was bitter and sustained criticism of U.S. educational performance. According to the National Commission on Excellence in Education, only about one-fifth of all seventeen-year-olds in the United States were able to write a persuasive essay; no more than one-third could solve a mathematical problem requiring several steps. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a survey in 1983 found that 35 percent of the corporations investigated had to provide remedial training in basic skills for new employees. 28 If schools are to serve the special interests of the poor, they must get away from courses in "life adjustment," driver education, and "family living." They must restrain widespread antipathy to "elitism" in academic subjects. They must instead offer incentives to learning and promote academic excellence.

Multilingual and Multicultural Education: A Positive Approach

How is excellence best obtained? The schools' achievements ultimately must depend on well-qualified teachers who are well paid and who are not burdened by paperwork extraneous to the classroom. And they must enjoy the public's respect. Education also needs a sense of purpose. As I see it, the supreme object of education should be to turn out citizens who can take a worthy part not only in earning a living but also in governing and defending the republic.

The foreign born and their children must be encouraged to learn the national language, an indispensable means to success. Given the enormous diversity of the U.S. population, there is no single formula for attaining linguistic competency. The children, say, of a foreign-born professor who teaches in an all-English-speaking college town require no bilingual education program. Their parents will know English and probably will help with the children's homework. The youngsters will pick up spoken English on the playground, as well as in the classroom. The theory of linguistic immersion works at its best with such people.

The position, however, is quite different in a multilingual city like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Miami, where a large proportion of the students are "limited-English-proficient" (LEP). Such students are looked down on by their Anglophone schoolmates for "talking funny," are apt to associate only with their own kind, are unable to make use of the instruction offered to them in a regular public school, and thereby waste both their own time and the taxpayers' dollars. According to the National Institute of Education, the limited-English-proficient students aged five to fourteen numbered about 2.5 million in 1995; within twenty years, their number might rise to 3.4 million. Altogether they spoke more than eighty languages (about two-thirds of them use Spanish); they came from every conceivable socioeconomic background; and their cultural and education backgrounds varied enormously. They professed almost every religion known on earth. They presented a most difficult linguistic problem to educators. The Santa Clara School District in California, to give one example, in 1983 provided education in an astonishing variety of tongues, ranging from Spanish to Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog, Japanese, Portuguese, Cambodian/Khmer, and Lao. A 1980 report from the Los Angeles schools stated that non-English-speaking pupils, or students with a poor knowledge of English, between them numbered 110,000 and spoke eighty-seven different languages. Los Angeles at the time spent almost $46 million to furnish these youngsters withbilingual education.

San Francisco, traditionally one of the nation's most polyglot cities, is another case in point. At the end of 1982, the city contained 27,786 students speaking twenty-seven home languages other than English. San Francisco's record has been a troubled one. Students unable to converse in English had been sent to a special Continuation High School, where they mixed with truants and delinquents and learned to use drugs and get into trouble. It was the deficiencies of the San Francisco school system that in 1974 caused the Lau v. Nichols case to go to the Supreme Court.

San Francisco thereafter developed a system remarkable for its intelligence and effectiveness, one that could serve as a model for other cities with a polyglot immigrant population, whether in the United States or Europe. Students incompetent in English were tested for academic competency and ability to speak English and were then placed in appropriate schools; they also received help with immunization and other services. The Bilingual Education Department developed a variety of programs to meet different needs, including programs for students unable to read or write in any language, handicapped students, and gifted students.

In addition to setting up special programs in the public schools, San Francisco established special education centers for members of particular ethnic communities in which children were taught in their own language until they were sufficiently proficient in English to transfer to public schools. The syllabus was practical and "success oriented," with classes in reading, writing, hygiene, nutrition, social studies, and English on the primary level, to which were added mathematics, history, geography, art, and music in the intermediate daily program.

San Francisco took another step of major consequence in 1979, when the city opened Newcomer High School to provide a transitional education program for foreign-born youngsters (grades nine through twelve; ages fourteen to seventeen) unable to speak sound English. The new high school provided thorough instruction in English as a Second Language (ESL), bilingual classes in such fields as social studies and mathematics, and also such electives as art, cooking, typing, and office management. After spending a year or less at Newcomer High School, students transferred to a district public high school or an appropriate vocational school or college. Youngsters sent to district high schools received continued ESL instruction and bilingual "support" classes in other subjects until they were able to profit fully from all-English-speaking classes.

On the surface, the staff at Newcomer faced an almost impossible task. Their students included youngsters from all over the world: Asia, Latin America, the Near East, and Europe. Many students had gone through experiences that might cause anyone's hair to turn gray. The following are entries in the Newcomer High School Yearbook (1981–82):

Noraworg Phuovieng is 16 years old and he comes from Laos. He arrived in this country only 3 months ago. Noraworg's father was a soldier with the Laotian army but as the Communist regime became more and more oppressive, he and his family decided to defect to a free country. Noraworg still remembers where they managed to take a boat to Thailand.

Ever Gomez is 14 years old . . .. He was born in El Salvador, now being torn by a bloody civil war. Ever and his mother fled their native country because his father disappeared after he had been to a political rally. 29

For these youngsters and others like them, Newcomer High School turned out to be a haven where they benefited from small school size (about five hundred students), from the efforts of a highly qualified and gifted staff, and from the experience of meeting other youngsters from all over the world. I was impressed by what I saw: an elderly Chinese-born instructor teaching history in the manner of a traditional storyteller; a chef simultaneously imparting a knowledge of cookery and practical English; and a teacher who had fled from Southeast Asia explaining, in a social science class, the significance of the words refugee and immigrant by a mixture of simple English and enjoyable ham-acting. There were no serious disciplinary problems. Attendance figures were outstanding, ranging from 93.8 percent in 1979–80 to 97.3 percent in 1982–83. Test scores also were good. Newcomer turned out to be exactly what a well-run school should be.

Many American cities have had to accommodate themselves to immigrants and refugees, most of them poor. They strain city budgets for housing, education, and health care. In 1983, Los Angeles authorities estimated that 27.1 percent of the city was foreign born. Sixty-two percent of its children in kindergarten and more than 40 percent of the children in the first five grades were Hispanic. By the 1990s a majority of the students in Los Angeles schools were Hispanic. Hundreds of millions of dollars were being spent in bilingual education in the United States, with the federal and state governments providing most of the money.

Los Angeles worked under great pressure as early as 1983 to provide bilingual education to some 110,000 students who spoke eighty-seven languages. There was no separate school for non-English speakers; bilingual classes were taught in local schools. Ninety percent of the students in bilingual programs were Hispanic. The goal was transitional instruction--not language maintenance or bicultural education, as it had been in the late 1970s. (Lack of money and bilingual teachers made language maintenance impractical.) As in San Francisco, Los Angeles administrators pointed to better attendance figures and test scores for bilingual students. But by the 1990s the bilingual program had reverted to bicultural education and, according to the consul-general of Mexico in Los Angeles, hundreds of Mexican teachers had to be imported to maintain a good level of Spanish. And hundreds of untrained people who spoke Spanish were rushed into service as teachers in cities like Los Angeles and New York.

By 1986, in New York City, 70,000 out of 900,000 students were in bilingual education programs. Most language training was in Spanish; but 52,611 students were taught some subjects in their native language, and 17,000 or so received instruction in all subjects in English. To support this program, New York City obtained $16 million from the federal government. By contrast, there was little bilingual education in the Denver school system; teaching was done primarily in English, even though one-third of Denver's sixty-two thousand students had Spanish surnames. Only about four thousand students receive bilingual training (and that in English); only a few schools provided tutoring in Spanish.

Texas has experienced a massive increase in immigration since the late 1970s, with about 260,000 children in bilingual programs, costing $50 to $75 million a year, by 1983. Poor border communities were overwhelmed as children illegally crossed the border to be educated. Tests showed that the majority of these children did not develop even minimal skills in English. The federal government had to assist local schools suffering from large immigration. Federal courts insisted that children of illegals should be educated and that the federal government should pay the bill. Local communities along borders were mostly poor; forced to dilute their education resources to include illegals, the children of citizens found themselves disadvantaged through poor education. But by the 1990s Texas was prospering and had better relations between Anglos and Spanish speakers than did California.

Miami, in contrast, had one of the most advanced bilingual programs in the country. More than 95,000 out of 220,000 students were in bilingual education programs in 1983. English speakers learned some Spanish, and Spanish speakers received intensive English instruction, plus training in basic academic courses in their native language. Dade County was and is heavily populated by Spanish speakers (40 percent); Miami has 56 percent. In the school system, 39 percent of the students were Hispanic. There was much public discussion about bilingual training in the schools, especially its slow pace. But the debate was less heated than in the past, and there was less opposition to bilingual education. Also one school, Coral Way in Dade County, had achieved a truly outstanding bilingual program.

In 1983, there were more than 660 teachers in the program, with a budget of $17 million. The average school day for those not proficient in English was two hours of instruction in English through English, thirty minutes in Spanish (or other first languages) through Spanish, ninety minutes in academic subjects (math, social studies, etc.) through Spanish, and the remainder of the day through English. Once the students became proficient in English, they did one hour a day in Spanish at the high school level and thirty minutes at the primary school level.

Generalizations are hard to make because standards of bilingual education, like those of education throughout the United States, differ enormously: some schools are deplorable, some mediocre, and some superb. No single formula can be applied to every community, but there should be a commonsense direction. Some critics of multilingual education fear that, by encouraging it, the American taxpayer may unwittingly turn the United States into another Lebanon, Cyprus, Belgium, or Canada--countries torn by ethnic-linguistic strife.

Up to 1986 we had no cause to fear bilingualism. American society, as we saw it, was too mobile and assimilative in character to be frozen into permanent ethnic molds. There were indeed great ethnic aggregations, but these were in constant flux as families continued to move out of ethnic neighborhoods and new ethnic groups move in. (For instance, Vietnamese and Chinese replaced once-solid Spanish-speaking neighborhoods in Los Angeles or San Jose.) No immigrant group in American history has ever succeeded in forming its own "Quebec." But such linguistic enclaves become possible when bilingual education, multiculturalism, and affirmative action for ethnic groups begin to divide America and when the majority of legal and illegal immigrants are Spanish speakers.

The Franco-American example is instructive in this respect. Unlike immigrants from Europe, Franco-Americans from Canada possessed a territorial base adjacent to the United States--the province of Quebec. Between 1870 and 1929, about one million French-speaking immigrants made their way from Quebec to New England. French clergymen, journalists, educators, and politicians dreamed of permanently entrenching French civilization in New England. They created their own schools, newspapers, trade unions, and religious congregations--to little avail. The men and women from Quebec became "Franco-Americans" and thereafter Americans. Not until the 1970s did Franco-Americans cautiously tried to reidentify themselves ethnically. They succeeded in creating bilingual education programs; for instance, the University of Maine at Orono set up a Franco-American studies program. 30 But for all the New England bumper stickers showing a frog and the legend le francais--je le parle par coeur ("French--I speak it by heart"), New England will never join Quebec. In the same way, Spanish would die out in time if the border were closed and bilingualism ended. Hispanics will remain an ethnic group but not a language group, according to Calvin Veltman, a sociolinguist at the University of Quebec who has studied Chicanos.

Bilingual Education since 1986

The legalization of illegal immigrants in 1986 brought millions of Asians and Spanish speakers to the United States. Schools became more crowded in big cities that had large Spanish-speaking populations. The flood of illegals continued as well, further inundating the schools and public services.

In the previous peak years of immigration (1900–1910), the old immigrants, however diverse, all derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition. The new immigrants include not only Hispanics, but also Muslims, Confucians, Buddhists, adherents of Shinto, and votaries of Voodoo. Given such cultural multiplicity, and bilingualism and cultural maintenance programs--anti-immigrationists argue--the United States may split linguistically and spiritually in future.

Immigration has had numerous unintended consequences. The old-style immigrant was usually a European. Since 1965, the new-style immigrant mostly comes from Asian, Latin American, or Caribbean countries whose political and social traditions greatly differ from those of the United States. The new immigrants (much like previous immigrants), moreover, have higher birthrates than the natives. Hence immigrants have a disproportionately powerful impact on the United States' demographic composition and school population. The post-1970 population growth, according to demographer Leon F. Bouvier, is nearly all due to immigration. (Immigrants now account for 37.1 percent of all new population growth, compared with 27 percent at the peak years of immigration.)

Does this matter? Did not the United States, in the olden days, successfully absorb Irish, Germans, Poles, and many other nationalities? True enough, argue the anti-immigrationists. But the position has changed. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States had a confident core culture. The United States insisted that newcomers should assimilate and learn English--and so they did; there was little or no bilingual education. By contrast, the new immigrants come at a time when the cultural self-reliance of the United States has eroded. Mexican and Asian activists have learned from the civil rights struggles conducted by black Americans and thus demand bilingual education and seek group rights, "brown pride," and restoration of "brown dignity," while rejecting assimilation and Western culture. The new immigrants, or rather their self-appointed spokespeople, now desire official recognition as groups and proportional representation--requirements incompatible with the operation of a free market. Group rights are demanded in the makeup of electoral districts, in employment, in the awarding of official contracts, in education, in every sphere of public life. Opposition to such programs, it is falsely claimed, is yet one more proof of white America's inherent racism. 31

Multiculturists want to preserve immigrant cultures and languages, not absorb or assimilate the American culture. (The melting-pot metaphor is rejected by multiculturists.) The United States, the anti-immigration argument continues, therefore must restrict immigration and at the same time promote cultural assimilation. Otherwise multiculturalism will lead to political fragmentation and disaster. Imagine the United States as a Bosnia of continental proportions--without a sense of common nationhood, a common language and culture, a common political heritage, with dozens of contending ethnic groups and a population of half a billion! These problems will become even harder to face because immigration has exacerbated income inequalities within the United States, worsened the economic prospects of poorly educated black Americans and recent Hispanic immigrants, disrupted local communities, and--through sheer force of numbers--further injured the environment. The United States, argue critics such as Peter Brimelow, will in the long run cease to be a mainly white nation; its ethnic character will be transformed--this without proper policy discussion and against the declared will of America's overwhelming majority. Nativists are accused of hysteria when they talk about a threatened Mexican reconquista of California. Nativists incur equal censure when they charge foreign-born activists with scorning the anglo-sajones and their values. But nativist fears merely reflect the ethnic propaganda common in campus rallies held by ethnic militants.

Critics of immigration such as Brimelow ( Alien Nation ) doubt that assimilation can work today as it once did. The number of Hispanic immigrants is growing; affirmative action, bilingual education, and multiculturalism are roadblocks to assimilation and Americanization. The new immigrants are less well educated than previous immigrants, are not forced to learn English, and enter a labor market ill equipped for well-paying jobs. Wages for the unskilled have actually declined in the 1980s and 1990s, and new illegal immigrants will work for lower wages, thus replacing earlier immigrants.

In the field of public education the Americanizing of immigrant children has fallen into disrepute. The method of teaching English by the immersion method has been widely replaced by bilingual education (now required by nine states in all school districts with a designated number of limited-English-proficient [LEP] students). In Massachusetts twenty LEP students in one language group in a district will trigger native-language instruction, even if there are only two students in each grade in a separate classroom taught by a certified bilingual teacher. As a result, forty thousand students in fifty-one Massachusetts school districts received bilingual education in 1993–94. Spanish-speaking students, who represent more than half of the LEP population in Massachusetts, are taught to read and write Spanish and also are instructed in Spanish in other academic subjects. But thousands of Cape Verdeans are instructed in a pidgin Portuguese-Crioulo--though the majority do not know the language; indeed in Cape Verde only Portuguese is taught since Crioulo is a spoken language, not a written one. Teachers in Massachusetts had to invent and print up Crioulo materials. Such examples have intensified the debate on bilingual education.

A recent study by the National Research Council, however, found that the arguments in favor of bilingual education were based on a number of myths. There was no evidence of long-term advantages in teaching LEP children in their native language. Further, teaching these children to read in English first, not in their native language, did them no harm. In contrast, emphasizing cultural and ethnic differences in the classroom was counterproductive. It caused stereotyping, did not improve the self-esteem of minority children, and reinforced the differences of these children from the others. Nor was there any research support for the idea that teachers who were themselves members of minority groups were more effective than others who worked with children from those same groups. The study concluded that the U.S. Department of Education's management of bilingual education research had been a total failure, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, using the research agenda for political purposes to justify a program that had not proven its worth, and keeping its research from educators who could use it to improve their school programs.

I agree with Charles L. Glenn, a bilingual specialist, who insists that there is no reason to spend more years searching for a "model" teaching program, while another generation of language-minority students is damaged by inferior schooling. And there is certainly no reason to put any future research in the hands of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA). 32

I would leave considerable latitude to local authorities to determine their own needs in public education. But I reject "cultural maintenance" as a legitimate object of public education. U.S. citizens and residents alike have an indefeasible right to speak whatever language, and practice whatever customs they please in their own homes. But the aim of public education should be to assimilate the immigrants- not to preserve their status as cultural aliens. (Assimilation means to learn English, become part of American society, follow American laws, values, and institutions, and know American history--in short, become Americanized.) Bilingualism not only divides Americans but also limits Latinos' job and education opportunities because of their poor English and low graduation rates.

The high school graduation rate has been rising for whites and blacks but not for Latinos, whose dropout rate remains very high--30 percent--only slightly less than it was twenty-five years ago. The high rate for Latinos is not fully explained by their immigrant status or their limited English proficiency. Studies show that a high dropout rate persists among Latino students even if they were born in the United States and speak fluent English--21.4 percent of them did not finish high school, and 17.9 percent born in the United States did not finish. Both these figures are higher than the dropout rates of 8.6 percent for whites and 12.1 percent for blacks. (See appendix.)

Latinos: A Profile

California, because of its large Latino population, has a higher dropout rate than the rest of the country (21 percent to 12 percent). In Los Angeles County, where most Latinos live, the rate is 28 percent. In California 10 percent of Asians, 12 percent of whites, 28 percent of Latinos, and 33 percent of black students do not complete school. As a result of this high dropout rate, many Latinos do not have the level of education necessary for good jobs in the U.S. economy.

But the reason Latinos drop out at such a high rate is disputed. Latino organizations claim it is because of a lack of bilingual education and courses in English as a second language. If this is so, how can the low level of Asian dropouts be explained? Although most California schools are bilingual in Spanish and English, only a few teach Asian languages. Hispanic students, it is charged, feel isolated and neglected and go to school in high poverty areas. A fact seldom admitted, however, is that Latinos have low expectations about the benefits of education. And Latino culture appears not to place as high a value on schooling as do Asians and whites, for example.

Socioeconomic status, not race, can help explain the difference in dropout rates between whites and blacks, some experts insist. When you control for income, the dropout difference in rates disappears between whites and blacks but not Latinos. The Latino rate is much higher in all income levels. Although black and white rates have dropped significantly since 1972, Latino rates while lower--34 percent to 30 percent--are still much higher than for blacks and whites. Blacks are now within 3.5 percent of the white rate. 33

Latinos appear to have become the poorest ethnic minority in the United States. The 1995 Census Bureau statistics show that median household income rose for all America's ethnic and racial groups but declined for the twenty-seven million Latinos by 5.1 percent. For the first time in our history, the poverty rate was higher among Hispanics than among blacks. Spanish speakers, in 1997, represent 24 percent of America's working poor--up 8 percent since 1985. (Part of this increase resulted from the 1986 amnesty of 1.3 million illegals, who then brought in their relatives, two million or so, who were also poor, uneducated, unskilled, and with little or poor English.) By 1993, 30 percent of Latinos were considered poor; that is, they earned less than $15,569 for a family of four, and 24 percent were in the poorest class, earning income of $7,500 or less. (These figures, however, do not measure Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamp transfers, or indeed income in the underground economy.) Still, the drop in income for Hispanics since 1989 has been significant--14 percent, or from $26,000 to $22,900. At the same time black income was slightly rising.

The influx of illegal and family reunification immigrants since 1986 has, therefore, worsened Latino income. But even American-born Latinos have experienced "an almost across-the-board impoverishment." 34 Arturo Vargas, head of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in Los Angeles, admits that a Latino middle class is growing but claims that most Spanish speakers are trapped in jobs like gardener, nanny, and restaurant worker, which will never pay well and from which they are unlikely to advance. 35 Others deny this and say most people move out of these low-paying jobs and are replaced by new immigrants who in turn move on to higher-paying jobs. This has been the experience in agriculture in California, for example, and in restaurant work in Washington, D.C., for people from Central America.

The declining income among Latinos is not well understood by researchers, but Thomas Sowell, a Hoover Institution economist, has explained that low income for many groups is caused by lack of education and large young families in which the mother seldom works. Furthermore, Latinos (like black Americans) are very diverse; there are middle-class Cubans in Miami and poor Puerto Ricans in New York, and poorest of all are the newest immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Scholars also point to structural changes in the U.S. economy, for example, the loss of jobs for unskilled and blue-collar workers. There are plenty of jobs in the high-tech economy, but these require greater education than most Latinos can attain, given their high school dropout rate--which now exceeds that of blacks. In 1990 census figures showed that, even among American-born Latinos, only 78 percent finished high school, compared with 91 percent of whites and 84 percent of blacks. In addition, some employers may discriminate against Latinos who often speak English poorly, have few marketable skills, and are seen as "disposable" workers. Certainly the presence of millions of new immigrants keeps wages down and incomes lower because the newest Latino immigrants are young, poor, and unskilled, so take jobs in low-paying industries such as agriculture, poultry processing, and janitorial services. This hurts earlier Latino immigrants who must move on to other unskilled jobs if they can find them.

For many scholars, such as Frank D. Bean, a demographer at the University of Texas, the main reason for the plight of Latinos is education or the lack of it. Even some Mexican Americans whose families have lived here for at least three generations have less schooling than their parents. Latinos have been steadily falling behind non-Latinos in college attendance rates. (In 1994 only 9 percent of Hispanics over twenty-four years of age had college degrees, while 24 percent of non Hispanics had degrees. Disturbingly, Latinos were doing better in 1975 when 5 percent had college degrees compared with 11.6 percent of non-Latinos.)

In 1997, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, 70 percent of the students are Latinos, and education levels are low because of underfinancing, overcrowding, busing, and bilingualism. Lack of skill in English, in particular, is a critical barrier to Latino success. Most Spanish-speaking immigrants who come to the United States have low education and skill levels and speak little or no English. But even the children of immigrants born here do not always acquire proficiency in English, and they drop out at an earlier rate than others. Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California at San Diego, put it starkly: "Limited English proficiency is the single most important obstacle to upward mobility among Mexican immigrants." Hard work is not enough; only instruction in English, not Spanish and English but English primarily, will give Latinos a chance to climb up the economic ladder.

The predicament of Latinos emerges more starkly when Latino immigrants are compared with other immigrant groups. Latino immigrants know less English than earlier European or Asian immigrants did. Asians, who have not as yet pushed for bilingual education, excel in high school and frequently graduate from college. Yet some Latino elected officials and multiculturalists still insist on bilingual-bicultural instruction.

Although some Texans support bilingual education, more support making English the official language--two-thirds of those polled would conduct government business in English only. Even in immigrant-hostile California, attitudes are changing. Asian and Hispanic immigrants are creating a new California, writes Patrick Reddy, a California pollster. In 1996, Anglos were half of the state's population with Hispanics at 32 percent, Asians 11 percent, and blacks 7 percent. If this trend continues, by 2000 California, Hawaii, and New Mexico will all be non-Anglo states. The new ethnics have profoundly influenced the workforce: 80 percent of Hispanics are working, and, by 2025, two-thirds of California workers will be Hispanic. By 2020 Hispanics are projected to be a majority in California and will change the state's social profile. Asians and Hispanics have more durable families, a strong work ethic, and thus a healthy lifestyle. But Hispanics in the United States, because they are urbanized and have more children, have a higher crime rate than Asians and Anglos. And Hispanics in the United States, who on average have less than ten years of schooling and a high dropout rate, have lowered California's ranking in educating its citizens. Asians are better educated than Anglos and have shown strong business skills, while the Hispanics have demonstrated a strong work ethic. California, therefore, will be a better, more prosperous place because of the new ethnics, says Reddy. 36 Others argue the opposite, especially if bilingual education continues.

Bilingual education expenditure under a Republican-controlled House and Senate increased from $117 million in 1995 to $157 million in 1997 (an increase of 34.2 percent), even though most objective analyses show bilingual education is a waste of time for Latino Hispanic students, reducing their mastery of English and access to better-paying jobs. (For 1998 the budget will have $199 million for a million LEP children and to provide training for four thousand teachers. There is also $150 million for the Immigrant Education program to help more than a thousand school districts provide supplemental instructional services to 875,000 recent immigrant students.)

In the 1996 elections many voters perceived the Republicans as an anti-immigrant, mean-spirited, right-wing party dominated by white males. The party lost two governorships and eleven seats in Congress to Latino voters, pollsters claim. It lost many Hispanic votes especially among the new citizens (1.2 million) rushed to citizenship by President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. (New Latino voter registration was only 11 percent for the Republican Party in the 1990s, and turnout of self-identified Latino Republicans declined 36 percent in 1996.) In 1997 another 1.6 million applications for citizenship were received, and 80 to 85 percent are expected to vote for the Democratic Party as they did in 1996.

How to win back Latino voters remains a major question for the Republicans. One plan called for ending bilingual education in California by pushing the "English for the Children" initiative sponsored by Ron Unz and educator Gloria Motta Tuchman, which qualified for the June 1998 ballot. But efforts to end bilingual education could be risky for Republicans. Even though some polls show that more than 80 percent of Latino parents want their children educated in English rather than Spanish, other polls show that 86 percent of state and Latino voters support bilingual instruction and more than 58 percent oppose eliminating bilingual education. The Republicans must be careful to get the right message across, that is, that English-language competency aids Latinos and gives them access to well-paying jobs in the state's economy. The "English for the Children" initiative must not be seen as a threat to Latino immigrants and should emphasize Spanish-language instruction while opposing bilingualism. The Republicans, however, are divided on the issue and failed fully to support "English for the Children", although it passed 60 to 40 percent in June 1998.

Bilingual Education: Yes or No?

Some members of the education bureaucracy, guided by the principle of "cultural maintenance," want Hispanic-surnamed children to continue to be taught Spanish language and culture and English only as a second language. The extremists among them even want Spanish to be a second national language. The Center for Equal Opportunity's president and CEO, Linda Chavez, accuses these advocates of bilingual education of being politicized and manipulated by cultural activists. The programs they favor, she claims, have failed and have undermined the future of the Latino children they were meant to help. 37 Chavez's criticisms are supported by the evidence. Latinos, Hispanics, or Chicanos taught in bilingual programs test behind peers taught in English-only classrooms, drop out of school at a high rate, and are trapped in low-skilled, low-paying jobs.

As noted earlier, the problem began in 1974 when the Supreme Court in Lau v. Nichols ignored two hundred years of English-only instruction in America's schools and said that students who did not speak English must receive special treatment from local schools. This allowed an enormous expansion of bilingual education. Advocates of bilingual education in the U.S. Office for Civil Rights had begun a small program in 1968 to educate Mexican American children, but by 1996 it had expanded from a $7.5 million to an $8 billion a year industry. The initial objective to teach English to Spanish speakers for one or two years was perverted into a program to Hispanicize, not Americanize, Spanish speakers. The federal program insists that 75 percent of education tax dollars be spent on bilingual education, that is, long-term native-language programs, not English as a second language. Asians, Africans, and Europeans are all in mainstream classes and receive extra training in English-as-a-second-language programs for a few hours a day. Hispanic students, in contrast, are taught in Spanish 70 to 80 percent of the time. New York is especially irresponsible in this regard, forcing children with Spanish surnames, even those who speak no Spanish at home, to take Spanish and to spend at least 40 percent of the class time in Spanish classes. New England schools are about as bad, forcing Spanish- and Portuguese-surnamed children to take Spanish or Crioulo!

Some critics of bilingualism claim that the vast majority of Spanish speakers want their children to be taught in English, not Spanish, and do not want the U.S. government to keep up Hispanic culture and language. The bilingual bureaucracy at local and federal levels wants to Hispanicize and to capture federal funds for schools. Meanwhile, other ethnic groups achieve higher academic scores, in part because they are not wasting time on bilingual classes and culture and failing to master the language of the marketplace and higher education--English. Since there are seldom enough bilingual teachers, Arab, Asian, and European students go right into classes with English-speaking students. They achieve higher scores and more of them graduate than the bilingually taught. The Center for Equal Opportunity in its reports shows the dangers of bilingualism and demands its reform. Otherwise the United States will become deeply divided linguistically and be stuck with a Latino underclass that cannot meet the needs of a high-tech workplace because its English is poor.

Since Latino immigration--legal or illegal--is likely to continue in the future and since Latino fertility levels are high, the Latino population will grow. According to Hoover economist Edward Lazear, the economic costs of not adequately educating Hispanics will be great, and their economic well-being will be lower than if they were to stay in school longer and focus on English, not on bilingualism. 38 Lazear argues that much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in America is generated by government policies that reduce the incentives to become assimilated and emphasize the differences among ethnic groups in the population. Examples are bilingual education and unbalanced immigration policies that bring in large numbers of Asians and Hispanics who move into large and stable ghettos.

Rosalie Pedolino Porter, a bilingual education teacher for more than twenty years, is convinced that all limited-English-proficiency students can learn English well enough for regular classroom work in one to three years, if given some help. The old total immersion system still works best; the longer students stay in segregated bilingual programs, the less successful they are in school. Even after twenty-eight years of bilingual programs, the dropout rate for Latinos is the highest in the country. In Los Angeles the Latino students dropped out at double the state average (44 percent over four years of high school). Special English-language instruction from day one gets better results than Spanish-language instruction for most of the day.

Latino activists now call for limited recognition to be accorded to Spanish-- inglés y más ("English and more") runs the slogan. (Official documents of various kinds are now printed in Spanish and other languages as well as English. At the Democratic convention of 1996 speeches were given in Spanish as well as English.) If this course continues, the demand for recognition of Spanish will inevitably change into a demand for recognition of Spanish as an official language. Such a transformation would give great benefits to Spanish speakers in public employment but leave others at a disadvantage. Bilingualism, or multilingualism, imposes economic transaction costs; the political costs are even higher. I do not wish to see the United States become a bilingual country like Canada or Belgium, which both suffer from divisiveness occasioned by the language issue.

I also would like to insist on a higher degree of proficiency in English than is at present required by applicants for naturalization in the United States. A citizen should be able to read all electoral literature in English--no more foreign-language ballots! For similar reasons, I oppose those educators in publicly funded high schools who believe that their task is to maintain the immigrant's cultural heritage. Such endeavors should be left to parents, churches, "Saturday schools," and the extended family. The role of the public schoolteacher is to instruct students in English and American culture and political values. English plays a crucial role in cultural assimilation, a proposition evident also to minority people. (In Brooklyn, for example, the Bushwick Parents Organization went to court in 1996 to oppose the Spanish-English education of Hispanics in the local public schools, arguing that this instruction would leave their children badly disadvantaged when they graduated.) As Ruth Wisse, herself a distinguished educator, puts it, before we encourage ethnic-language revivals in the European manner, "we should recall what millions of immigrants instinctively grasped: that English is the most fundamental pathway to America's equal opportunities." 39 (The European experience is likewise clear. "In general, mother-tongue education is unrealistic and unsuccessful. The children of immigrant parents rapidly acquire the language of their country of residence, and are often less comfortable and successful in their parents' mother-tongue.") 40

A Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder (April 1996) asks the question, "Are immigration preferences for English-speakers racist?" The Center answers in the negative because one-third of humanity has some knowledge of the English language and most of these people are nonwhite. Although the 1996 immigration bills in the House and Senate had an English requirement for certain employee-based categories of immigrants, it was removed lest it discriminate against nonwhites.

Knowledge of English is an acquired, not an inherent, skill--anyone, white, black, or brown, can learn English. Immigrants line up to learn English because they believe that learning English will improve their prospects--and it does, significantly. English is the most widely used language in history. English is the language of science, technology, diplomacy, international trade, and commerce. Half of Europe's business is carried out in English, and more than 66 percent of the world's scientists read English. Eighty percent of the world's electronically stored information is in English. The world's forty million Internet users mostly communicate in English. Experts conclude that one-third of mankind speaks or understands some English. Selecting immigrants on the basis of some command of the language therefore cannot be discriminatory.

Bilingual education in California is a vast industry--about 1.3 million children attend bilingual classes at a cost of more than $5 billion a year. (In the United States 2.6 million students are enrolled in bilingual classes. There is, therefore, a financial incentive to keeping the system.) Schools that provide bilingual education are able to get numerous federal and state grants. Yet bilingual education is a bizarre and unsuccessful program. Only about 5 percent of children in bilingual classes ever make it into English-speaking classes each year. And large numbers of children, mostly Spanish speakers, leave school unable to read or write English, the official language of their adopted country. Shockingly, the federal legislation calling for bilingual education "expired a decade ago," yet bilingual education persists. 41

Bilingual education was on the California ballot in 1998 thanks to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Unz. He launched a drive to get 433,000 signatures to put an end to bilingual education in California schools. Some polls show that most Latino parents prefer their children to learn English as soon as possible. They believe, correctly, that English literacy is the key to success in the United States. Bilingual teachers are paid more, and schools with bilingual programs get large grants from federal and state programs. Nevertheless, most studies by independent researchers charge that bilingual education is unnecessary and a failure. Most student never really learn to read or write English well, and Spanish speakers leave school at the highest rate of any ethnic group. Bilingual education also defeats efforts to assimilate children into U.S. society and is against the wish of most parents. The solution, Unz and others insist, is one year of sheltered English immersion, then into regular classrooms. Most people seem to agree except bilingual teachers, administrators, and multiculturists who want not only language training but also cultural maintenance or, in other words, want to create little Quebecs in states like California, New York, Texas, and Florida. The evidence is overwhelming: bilingualism does not work, is expensive, is divisive, and ill serves Spanish speakers to advance and compete in American society.

The "English for the Children" ballot initiative called for stopping the teaching of non-English-speaking children in their mother tongue, unless their parents request it. Instead a year of "sheltered English immersion" should be required before placing them in English-only classrooms. Ron Unz, the initiator of the ballot, also mandates $50 million a year for ten years for adult literacy programs. Although the ballot measure passed, opposition to the new law has already begun at local school levels.

Advocates of bilingual education reluctantly concede the system does not work. But political infighting in the California legislature has prevented rational reform. Large numbers of children each year are forced into bilingual classes even if their parents don't want it. Bilingual teachers, moreover, are in short supply, so some teachers are hired who have no teacher training but speak Spanish or some language other than English. This results in poor teaching and little or no English-language teaching.

Bilingual Education Advocates

Some children are forced into Spanish-speaking bilingual classes because they have Spanish surnames, even though they understand and speak English well and do not speak or read Spanish. As a result they are held back and do not improve in English. Time and again, because they have Hispanic surnames, they are put in classes with immigrant children who speak little or no English.

Parents have complained bitterly for some time that all day long their children are exposed to Spanish and only for a few minutes to English. Efforts to get their children transferred are resisted--"We know best" the teacher or principal says. In some cases it has taken as much as a year to remove a child from bilingual education even if the child speaks no Spanish when he/she enters the class. Teachers would say, "Isn't it a shame your child doesn't know his native language." Even the Mexican consul-general in Los Angeles justifies supplying native-born Spanish teachers to the county system in order to protect Latino children's Spanish heritage.

Why is bilingual education able to continue this way against the wishes of many parents and the almost total failure of bilingual education in most schools in the United States? Bilingual education began about 1967 as an effort to help immigrants, mostly Spanish speakers, learn English. Unfortunately "it has become a multi-billion dollar hog trough that feeds arrogant education bureaucrats and militant Hispanic separatists." 42

White Hispanic parents have been protesting for some time, but only in the past few years have they been occasionally successful. Parents in a Los Angeles elementary school had to go on strike to get their children taught English. One hundred and fifty Hispanic families in Brooklyn's Bushwick district had to sue New York State to get their children out of bilingual classes. An affidavit to the court said a child was put into the bilingual program because he had a Spanish surname even though he spoke no Spanish. By the seventh grade such children could not read in either English or Spanish. Denver schools are set to limit students to three years in bilingual programs instead of six years because so many of their students have been performing below grade level. In Las Lunas, New Mexico, students protested against the lack of English tutoring. In Dearborn, Michigan, the school board was forced to reject $5 million in federal funds for bilingual programs when parents complained. Across the country the story is the same: parents reject bilingualism and want their children to learn English. A Los Angeles Times poll in October 1997 showed California voters favored limiting bilingual education four to one; Hispanics opposed it by 84 percent. The most impressive opposition to date is the ballot initiative in California--"English for the Children"--which was passed in June 1998 by a 60 to 40 percent vote. Of course, bilingual teachers and administrators reject opposition to their programs: "We know better, we're the teachers," said Cochairman Joseph Ramos of the New Jersey Bilingual Council. 43

Misunderstandings abound over bilingual education: it is not about speaking two languages; it is not about learning two languages at the same time; it is not a program conducted mostly in English. Bilingual education is not structured English immersion or English as a second language when the children are expected to move into English quickly after a year or two of bilingual classes. Transitional bilingual education (TBE) was supposed to have students take most courses in their native languages while they learned English. This way they would not fall behind in other courses--this was the rationale in the highly successful Newcomer school in San Francisco and other places. But TBE fell victim to theorists of language education--"facilitation theorists"--who claim that children cannot learn a second language until they are fully literate in their first. This process supposedly takes six or seven years, during which the students are supposed to be taught their native language. Slowly English is worked into the curriculum until the "threshold" is crossed and then the student can go into English. In other words, children are to learn English by being taught in Spanish. As the principal of a Los Angeles school said, " loco, completamente loco. " 44

Since the Bilingual Education Amendment passed in 1968, Hispanic activists, especially militant Chicanos, have seized the chance to get Spanish-language instruction. The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) started sending out guidelines making school districts set up bilingual programs. The Supreme Court then ruled in Lau v. Nichols (1974) that non-English speaking children had a right to special language programs. HEW then expanded the concept to mean bilingual programs for all children from homes where English was not a primary language. So children with perfect English would have to go to bilingual classes if their parents preferred to speak Spanish or Chinese at home! As early as 1980, there were five hundred school districts in the nation with bilingual programs.

Yet no one could show that bilingual education was working. That is why "facilitation theory" was introduced; it claimed to show that children needed six years or so to be taught in their native language before they could learn English. Children would be cognitively deprived if they were not taught in their native tongue. In practice, this meant Spanish speakers because no school system could provide bilingual programs for the scores of languages existing in many states--New York has 121 different languages. Nor are teachers available. In 1993 California had a shortfall of twenty thousand bilingual teachers.

And then there was "Spanglish," an attempt in the 1970s to force a combination of Spanish and English on school children. Such absurdities abound in bilingual education. So desperate are bilingual educators to target students that, in one documented case in San Francisco, 750 black children were put into Spanish or Chinese classes even though not one spoke either language at home.

TBE has been a failure, has kept many students too long in the program, and has retarded the students' ability to learn either Spanish or English. Immersion programs do much better--80 percent who enter in kindergarten are mainstreamed after three years whereas only 22 percent of TBE are moved out of the program after the second grade. Most students stay in the TBE program for six years and are not competent in either language when they leave. After six years of TBE one student wrote: "I my parens per mi in dis shool en I so I feol essayrin too old in the shool my border o reri can gier das mony putni gire and I sisairin aliro sceer." This is incomprehensible in either Spanish or English. The parents say the school district claims the boy is doing fine and is nearly ready to leave bilingual classes. 45 Typically students in TBE classes get less than an hour's instruction a day in English.

Even though poll after poll in Los Angeles, Houston, San Antonio, Miami, and New York shows that parents want their children taught in English, not Spanish, Hispanic activists keep insisting on bilingualism, as do academic supporters of bilingualism. The debate has overtones of ethnic politics; it is about Latino power and culture, ethnic pride, so-called victimhood, and preferential treatment through affirmative action. Money and grants are involved; to trigger funds a minimum number of students is required. There is a huge bureaucracy of administrators, bilingual teachers, psychologists, and textbook publishers at the funding trough! Money flows from state, local and federal levels. 46 The issue has been seized by the Democrats to bash the Republicans and picture them as anti-Latino.

Once again California was at the center of a big, national debate--this time on the bilingual education ballot initiative set for June 1998. The Unz campaign, however, had a fair chance of success. Latinos, even more than whites, favored ending the program. In the Los Angeles Times poll, Latino voters favored the initiative by 84 percent to 16 percent. 47 Most Americans, even recent immigrants, felt schools should make students proficient in English, the language of the country and marketplace. This support remained solid even though the debate became politicized.

Mexican American activists reject assimilation, insist on bilingualism and multiculturalism, and lay claim to Southwest America as belonging to Mexico! Wave after wave of illegals push inexorably into the United States and find refuge in Spanish ghettos. Many Mexican American politicians and activists claim to speak for these new immigrants. Their message is not pushing assimilation but rather the protection of Spanish language and culture and the theme that the Southwest United States belongs to the descendants of Mexicans who lost the war of 1848.

Thus Rodolfo Acuña's Occupied America claims the Southwest for Mexicans. Chicano activists (Chicanismo) push not only for civil rights for illegal Mexicans but also for the return ( reconquista ) of the lost provinces to form Aztlán. Chicanismo demands Spanish language and culture education, not English or American cultural schooling. The Movimiento Estudiante Chicano de Aztlán (MECHA) in 1970 formed a political party, La Raza Unida, won control of Crystal City, Texas, and tried to make it into a Chicano city. The party split and has had little political impact since but could easily revive in California or Texas. MECHA survives in dozens of Chicano studies programs in the western United States. Chicano leaders have been courted by the Democratic Party and appear to have a bright future there. Add the newly made Spanish-speaking citizens of 1996 to Chicano activists and Latino politicians, and the situation becomes explosive. For example, 30 percent of the population of California is Latino; by 2000, the number will be 40 percent.

Mexican American leaders are split; on the one hand they emulate African Americans and see themselves as an aggrieved racial group demanding group rights and preferment, but on the other they boast of how they are like previous ethnic groups. The Mexican American leadership is certainly ambivalent: Chicano nationalists claim to be the inheritors of Mexican civilization and want to restore Aztlán, but others want to assimilate, have their children learn English, and become Americans as other immigrants did. Unfortunately a few Mexican American politicians such as Art Torres, a former California state senator, play the race card often. MECHA accused the Republican Party of being made up of racist/fascist European settlers. 48 The virulent, antiwhite high school textbook, Five Hundred Years of Chicano History in Pictures , boasts of Chicano "resistance to being colonized and absorbed by racist empire builders." Throughout Chicano studies programs in college and universities, one sees " a process of racialization and reawakening ethnic consciousness." These feelings are "reinforced and given a political twist by organizations like MECHA, by Chicano Studies departments, by the intrusions of Mexican politicians, and above all by an unceasing flow of new immigrants." 49 Both parties court the Latinos, the Anglos even sang Viva Mexico! at a meeting of the National Council of La Raza. No criticism was made when the executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials boasted of the rising Latino demographics, "We will overwhelm."

At present, therefore, the only basis for bilingual education in California is a mixture of state and administrative decisions and politicians' fear of a backlash from Latino voters if the program is ended. In fact, most Latino voters oppose bilingual education so the Republican Party's failure to back "English for the Children" was politically inept. Opposition to the Unz initiative came from the National Association for Bilingual Education, the California Teachers' Association, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Trust, which claimed that one year of English immersion for LEP would not be enough.

A poll in November 1997 showed less support for ending bilingual education--57.6 percent--but the outcome of the bilingual initiative depended heavily on how the issue was framed. The Unz group was careful to spell out that "English for the Children" would not throw LEP children into regular classes where they would have to "sink or swim," nor would it cut special funding for children learning English nor bar all "bilingual education programs."

In regard to the best manner of teaching English, my approach is eclectic. There are several ways in which a language can be taught--the United States does not have to tie itself down to any one of them. The variety and flexibility of U.S. education has in fact always been its strength. There is a case for the "sink-or-swim" method (one from which most immigrants benefited until 1968). There is a case for special instruction in English for a year or so for students not proficient in English. There is also a case for transitional, well-run bilingual classes. The choice among the different methods should be left to parents, most of whom do not want bilingual education, and to the local education authorities, who should heed local desires and needs.

The maintenance of foreign immigrant cultures, however, should be a matter of private, not public, endeavor. I do wish to stress, however, the value of maintaining the intellectual capital represented by the foreign-born students' existing language skills. I also wish to enter a plea for improving the teaching of foreign languages and the geography of foreign countries. All too often in the United States, the best--or the only--geography teaching is done by travel bureaus with their posters.

English is the most widely used language in history. English is the language of science, technology, diplomacy, international trade, and commerce. Half of Europe's business deals are carried out in English, and more than 60 percent of the world's scientists read English. Eighty percent of the world's electronically stored information is in English. Immigrants lineup to learn English because they believe that doing so will improve their prospects--and it does significantly.

Nevertheless, cultural considerations aside, the United States has become far more dependent than in the past on foreign trade. There is increasing need for merchants, bankers, diplomats, and soldiers able to communicate in foreign tongues, yet this country has been remiss in educating a sufficient number of men and women with the requisite linguistic skills. Yielding to demands for "relevance" and students' pressure for easy grades, American schools, colleges, and universities have long ignored language requirements. (Between 1966 and 1979, the percentage of U.S. colleges and universities insisting on a foreign language as a qualification for admission dropped from 34 percent to 8 percent--at a time when America's foreign commerce continued to increase as a proportion of the gross national product, from 6 percent in the 1940s to 17 percent in 1982.) U.S. schools and colleges contain too many youngsters who cannot speak, read, or write any language correctly--regardless of their national origin or native language. This deficiency is deplorable, as is the mind-set that assumes competence in one language to be incompatible with the command of another. On the contrary, a student fluent in Spanish can more easily acquire good English than a student who is incompetent in either tongue.

The United States must seek to turn the tide of linguistic ignorance. Compared with such countries as Switzerland or Holland, the United States is poorly equipped to teach foreign languages, often with deplorable, and sometimes even tragicomic, results. (To give one example: sales of the Chevrolet Nova automobile were said to have dropped in Latin America because "Nova" [ no va ] signifies "no go" in Spanish.) Far from spending less on maintaining linguistic proficiency, Americans should spend more. Spanish, in particular, has an important part in this country's educational future, given America's stake in the Latin American world. Spanish might well be encouraged as the first foreign-language elective in schools and universities in such states as Texas, New York, California, and Florida. But Spanish, like all other languages, can best be taught if students are given a grasp of grammar and orthography, those traditional skills frequently derided by experimental education theoreticians.

Unfortunately, "English-only" on the job is becoming more prevalent. Companies says it is for reasons of safety and employee unity. Yet it seems excessive to many to prevent people speaking their native language when on breaks or on the telephone to family members. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are filing discrimination suits over the new English-only rules. More than twenty-four states have now declared English as the official language. Meanwhile other businesses (telephone companies in Texas and California) are encouraging and seeking out bilingual employees, even though unions refuse to allow differential pay for people with second-language skills. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has been filing lawsuits over dismissals because of second-language use. The EEOC claims that English-only is discriminatory, that it is illegal to require all employees to speak English at all times, and that it is justified to require English-only when it is a business necessity. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the English-only rules of a local meatpacking plant against EEOC guidelines. (But five other companies have agreed to end their English-only policies.) 50

Similar considerations apply to the teaching of history. U.S. schools on the whole have grossly neglected history, especially world history. American culture is in many ways antihistorical; too many research institutions are concerned with public policy; too many government departments and educators act as if history began last week. Students at every level, whether English or Spanish speaking, quickly get the message. Few students of any linguistic background can intelligently explain why Mexicans celebrate Cinco de Mayo as a national holiday or why, for that matter, Ulstermen once a year act as if the Battle of the Boyne (1690) had been fought yesterday. Chicano nationalists may be justly criticized for some grotesque distortions; they are fully justified, however, when they call for a better understanding of history--not only of the numbers of minorities that have enriched the United States but of the countries from which they came.

Overall, American schools should seek to preserve our multifarious heritage and extend it; and they should endeavor to blend traditional with innovative skills in education. In regard to methods for attaining this goal, conservative and liberal educators alike can do no better than to learn from W. E. B. Du Bois, whose introductory observations at the beginning of this essay may also serve as the conclusion for this section.

I reiterate that assimilation through English-only should be the United States' national object--not bilingualization and the ethnicization of America. I observe with pleasure that assimilation and intermarriage are ongoing processes. I am pleased that ethnic separatists at U.S. universities have not had much success in converting to their own viewpoints those popular masses for whom the ethnic elites profess to speak. Compared with any other multinational state on this globe--be it Nigeria, Russia, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Bosnia, or whatever--the United States has been the most successful society. The United States can rightly demand that immigrants be loyal to its language, its laws, its flag, its constitution. Only those who accept this proposition merit welcome. The biggest challenge facing the United States and the new immigrants is adaptation because conditions are so different from those faced by previous immigrants, who came from Europe. The acceptance of immigrants by native-born Americans is crucial to their adaptation. The current rise of an immigrant-baiting mood does not bode well for a quick, peaceful integration of the new immigrants.

To conclude, affirmative action and bilingual programs should be terminated; "English-only" should be required in the law, in government, in schools, and in the political system; no long-term bilingual education programs should be mandated; a transition year or two can be provided for those who do not speak English, then "English-only" in all academic courses (training in foreign languages as a second language to English should be encouraged.) "Becoming proficient in the language of America is a price that any immigrant should want to pay" and so should their children. 51

1 W. E. B. Du Bois, cited in Kenneth James King, Pan-Africanism and Education: A Study of Race, Philanthropy, and Education in the Southern States of America and East Africa (Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 257.

2 For a highly readable account of the Germans, see, for instance, Richard O'Connor, The German-Americans (New York: Little, Brown, 1968). The fullest recent history is LaVern J. Rippley, The German-Americans (Boston: Twayne, 1976).

3 See the Immigration History Newsletter 14, no. 1 (May 1982), for a bibliographic essay on bilingual education in American schools.

4 For a defense of bilingual education, see, for instance, Manuel H. Guerra, "Bilingualism and Biculturalism: Assets for Chicanos," in Arnulfo D. Trejo, ed., The Chicanos: As We See Ourselves (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980), pp. 121–32.

5 Ibid., p. 126.

6 According to the 1971 report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, only sixty of every hundred Mexican Americans who entered first grade graduated from high school, compared to eighty-six "Anglos." The situation was no better for Puerto Ricans. Whereas Puerto Ricans in 1965 constituted twenty-five percent of New York's public school students, they formed barely 4 percent of the city university's enrollment. According to the 1980 census, the educational standards of Hispanic New Yorkers still left much to be desired. (Only 5.9 percent of Hispanics twenty-five years old and over had completed four years of college; 9.7 percent had attended college for one to three years; 23.9 percent had four years of high school; 20.3 percent had been at high school for one to three years; and 40.2 percent had only an elementary school education.) Hispanics not only have a low rate of college enrollment (4 percent) but also a low rate of receiving a degree (only 2 percent in 1976–77). Between 1976 and 1981, the percentage of public school professional staff in New York State had increased slowly (from 4.4 percent to 5.1 percent).

7 The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Unemployment and Underemployment among Blacks, Hispanics, and Women (Washington, D.C.: Clearing House Publication 74, 1982), pp. 5, 43. The figures for 1980 stood as follows: 6 percent of majority males and 5.6 percent of majority females were unemployed; corresponding figures for blacks were 13 percent for both men and women; for Hispanic men and women they were 8.1 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively. "Majority" college graduates had an unemployment rate of no more than 1.6 percent for males and 2.4 percent for females. Corresponding figures were 5.5 percent and 3.1 percent for black males and females, respectively. For Hispanics, the corresponding percentages stood at 3.8 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively.

8 Guerra, "Bilingualism and Biculturalism," in Trejo, Chicanos , p. 128.

9 Roger A. Freeman, The Growth of American Government (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1975), p. 15.

10 Cited by MALDEF (organ of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) 12, no. 3 (fall–winter 1982):3.

11 For these controversies, see, for instance, Ellwyn Stoddard, Mexican Americans (New York: Random House, 1973); Thomas P. Caner and Roberto D. Segura, Mexican Americans in School: A Decade of Change (New York: College Board Publications, 1979); and N. Epstein, Language, Ethnicity, and the Schools: Policy Alternatives for Bilingual-Bicultural Education (Washington, D.C.: George Washington University, Institute for Educational Leadership, 1977).

12 Colin Greer, The Great American School Legend: A Revisionist Interpretation of American Education (New York: Basic Books, 1972).

13 See Public Opinion 4, no. 3 (June–July 1981):20–36. Eighty-three percent of all respondents said that they were extremely proud to be Americans; 65 percent of the black respondents said that they were "extremely proud" to be Americans. Eighty-five percent of whites thought that the United States had a special role to play in the world; 80 percent of the black respondents agreed. Ninety-four percent of the whites thought that the United States was the very best country in which to live; 86 percent of the black respondents agreed. Ninety-one percent of white respondents considered that the private business system in the United States worked better than any other system; 85 percent of black respondents agreed. Seventy-nine percent of all respondents (no separate racial breakdown given for this answer) opposed any measure that would place a top limit of $100,000 on all incomes.

14 Quoted in Immigration History Newsletter , May 1982, p. 5.

15 See, for instance, James Ylisea, "Bilingual Bellwether at Bay," Christian Science Monitor , October 18, 1982, for a critique of Ronald Reagan's policy.

16 Public Opinion 5, no. 3 (June–July 1982): 1–10.

17 U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, hearing, April 23–26, 1982.

18 David Hoffman and Lorenzo Romero, "Spanish Current Flows into the English Mainstream," San Jose Mercury , "Mercury Special Report," November 4, 1981.

19 Abdin Noboa-Rios, "An Analysis of Hispanic Doctoral Recipients," Metas 2, no. 2 (winter 1981–1982):95.

20 Gallup Poll 1982, summer, pp. 463–64.

21 Milton L. Barron, ed., The Blending American: Patterns of Intermarriage (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1972). For intermarriage figures of first- and second-generation Hispanics in New York, see Office of Pastoral Research, Hispanics in New York (New York: Office of Pastoral Research 1982), vol. 2, p. 133, table 13. All Hispanic groups increased their rate of outgroup marriage, except the Puerto Ricans.

22 See Christian Science Monitor , August 25, 1983, p. 12.

23 Robert E. Rossiter, "Bilingual Education: Training for the Ghetto," Policy Review 25 (summer 1983): 36–45.

24 Ibid., p. 467.

25 Mary Ellen Goodman and Alma Beman, "Child's Eye Views of Life in an Urban Barrio," in Nathaniel Wagner and Marsha J. Haug, eds., Chicanos: Social and Psychological Perspectives (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby Co., 1971), pp. 109–19.

26 According to a survey carried out by the Roper Organization in 1982, 66 percent of respondents thought that the English immigrants had been "a good thing" for the United States, 59 percent thought so of the Jews, 46 percent of the blacks, 25 percent of the Mexicans, and 9 percent of the Cubans (the latter mainly a "white group"). Conversely, 59 percent of respondents thought that Cubans had been "a bad thing" for the United States, 34 percent thought so of Mexicans, 16 percent thought so of blacks, 9 percent thought so of Jews, and 6 percent thought so of the English. See Public Opinion 5, no. 2 (June–July 1982): 34.

27 See John Mirowsky II and Catherine E. Ross, "Minority Status, Ethnic Culture, and Distress: A Comparison of Blacks, Whites, Mexicans and Mexican Americans," American Journal of Sociology 86, no. 1 (July–November 1980):479–95.

28 Time , May 30, 1983, p. 64.

29 Newcomer High School Yearbook , 1981–1982 (San Francisco); see also Newcomer High School pamphlet, "General Information," and San Francisco Unified School District, Lau Consent Decree Progress Report 1982–1983 (San Francisco: Office of the Superintendent of Schools, 1982). I am indebted to personal information from Newcomer High.

30 Jacques Portes, "The Franco-American Reawakening," November 29, 1982, The Guardian (London), January 3, 1982, p. 18, reprinted from Le Monde .

31 Lawrence Auster, "Massive Immigration Will Destroy America," Insight , October 3, 1994, p. 18.

32 Rosalie Pedalino Porter, Introduction, Charles L. Glenn, "Improving Schooling for Language Minority Children: A Research Agenda," review of the National Research Council Study, in Read Abstracts Research and Policy Review , May 1997, pp. 1–2.

33 See article in Los Angeles Times , August 1, 1997, Al 6.

34 Carey Goldberg, "Hispanic Households Struggle as Poorest of the Poor in the U.S.," New York Times, January 30, 1997. See also the Census Bureau's figures for 1996; median household income in 1996 were for Asian-Americans, $43,276, for African-Americans, $23,482, for Hispanics (of any race) $24,906, and for whites, $37,161. These figures were roughly the same in 1995, except for Hispanics, who were up 5.8 percent in 1996.

35 Goldberg, "Hispanic Households."

36 See his article in the San Francisco Chronicle , September 17, 1996.

37 See Jorge Amselle, ed., The Failure of Bilingual Education, 1996 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Equal Opportunity, 1997.)

38 Edward P. Lazear, Culture Wars in America , Essays in Public Policy series (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1996).

39 Ruth Wisse, "Shul Daze," New Republic, May 27, 1996, p. 19. According to the 1990 U.S. Census, the U.S. population stood at 253,451,585. In 1975 the total number of legal immigrants admitted amounted to 386,194. By 1993 this figure had more than doubled, to 904,922 (not counting illegals). An annual immigration rate of two per thousand would still let in more than half a million every year. Reduced immigration would facilitate the assimilation of immigrants in this country. In case of need, the number of legally admitted newcomers could be increased.

40 Zig Layton-Henry, The Politics of Immigration: Immigration, "Race" and "Race" Relations in Post-War Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), pp. 223–24.

41 The Economist , August 30–September. 5, 1997, p. 16. California has half the country's 2.6 million public school students who are labeled "limited-English-proficient" (LEP). Massachusetts, New York, and Florida are the other states with large numbers of LEPs, and they too are planning antibilingual initiatives so they will watch California closely.

42 Glen Garvin, " Loco, Completamente Loco ," Reason , January 1998, p. 3.

43 Ibid., pp. 5–6.

44 Ibid., p. 7.

45 Ibid., p. 14–15.

46 Ibid., pp. 15–20.

47 See Los Angeles Times , October 15, 1997, p. 1.

48 See Scott McConnell, "American No More," National Review , December 31, 1997, pp. 30–35, for an excellent survey of this topic.

49 Ibid., p. 35.

50 Shelley Donald Cooledge, "Language Rules," Christian Science Monitor , January 15, 1998.

51 See Issues '96 (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1996), p. 355; for reforms of the U.S. immigration, see chap. 11, pp. 333–57.

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September 16, 2013

The Bilingual Education Debate: A Hindrance to Learning Language or Enriched Learning Experience?

Reviewed by Mary McLaughlin, Ma-TESOL; M.S. SpEd

Defining Bilingual Education

Onlookers tend to have extreme reactions to the topic of bilingual education. However, different people understand bilingual education differently, and educators have a number of different methods for providing bilingual instruction.

In Sharon Cromwell’s “ The Bilingual Education Debate ,” she observes that schools incorporate a variety of approaches, among them:

• English Immersion: This setting mainstreams ESL students with native English speakers, while aiming to avoid the use of students’ primary languages.
• Transitional Bilingual Education: Like the English immersion model, this type of program focuses on English as the target language but also integrates a limited level of support and instruction in students’ native languages. The goal in transitional settings is that students gradually move to a mainstream or immersive English classroom.
• Developmental Bilingual Education: In this approach, also known as maintenance bilingual education, teachers work with students at their current levels in their native languages, while at the same time providing instruction in English so the students can ultimately achieve fluency in both languages.

Another model is Dual-Immersion Bilingual Education. In this model, while fluency in two languages (one typically being English in the United States) is still the goal, the difference lies in the classroom population. According to the California Department of Education’s guide to Two-Way Immersion, this model combines English language learners (ELLs) with native English speakers and sets the goal for each group to master the other group’s language.

The 40-Year Debate Over Bilingual Education

In “ Bilingual Education in the United States: An Analysis of the Convergence of Policy, Theory and Research ,” bilingual scholar Andrea Grooms observes that policy-makers, educators, and other stakeholders have debated about the existence, goals, and outcomes of bilingual education for four decades.

Grooms finds the principal arguments of bilingual education’s critics to be that it hinders students’ ability to speak, read, and write in English, and even worse, to assimilate culturally. Proponents of bilingual education, however, argue that it enriches educational experiences for both ELLs and native English speakers.

Quality vs. Quantity of English Language Instruction

A more nuanced discussion arising from the bilingual education debate concerns the speed of language acquisition for ELLs versus their potential for deep mastery of linguistic and cultural knowledge.

Proponents of various bilingual models point to the research and practices advocated by University of Southern California professor and language acquisition expert Stephen Krashen . Krashen views immersive English instruction without primary language support as ineffective. He argues that it is the quality of target language instruction, not the quantity, which determines a student’s language acquisition and fluency.

Krashen’s research finds that comprehensible input is essential for students in bilingual education programs. Most English immersion settings have too much academic and conversational language, placing them beyond the understanding of a beginning ELL.

Some critics of bilingual education point to programs in which students take a long time to learn English, or situations in which students seem to lag in both their native and target languages. Supporters say, however, that it is not the bilingual education model that is faulty, but rather the lack of systemic support for it. A successful bilingual education program must have quality resources and well-trained teachers who can model fluency in both home and target languages.

Current Bilingual Education Practices and Trends

Over the years that the bilingual education debate has continued, the model itself has undergone changes. Some bilingual programs have existed long enough to produce evidence-based outcomes. Based on these outcomes, the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) website has observed desirable qualities in bilingual education programs, among them:

• teaching ELLs English
• promoting success in core curricular areas
• acculturating newcomers
• acknowledging and integrating ELLs’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds into the instruction

In Libia Gil and Sarah Bardack’s paper, “Common Assumptions vs. the Evidence: English Language Learners in the United States,” the authors observe that many people, including educators, assume that good English-language instruction is enough for all students, regardless of their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The authors cite evidence indicating the contrary: to experience success, ELLs require additional supports, differentiated instruction, targeted instruction in academic language, and teachers knowledgeable about second-language acquisition.

These observations echo the work of NABE, which has formulated a list of teaching practices in the country’s top bilingual education delivery models:

• targeted, individualized ESL instruction
• sheltered English instruction during core curricular classes
• quality instruction in students’ primary languages
• instruction in students’ first languages

Expert ESL and Bilingual Education Teaching Practices

In “ Unlocking The Research on English Learners ,” Claude Goldenberg reviews evidenced-based research regarding systems of delivery to ELLs, and he highlights bilingual and ESL instructional practices that have been found successful in United States classrooms. Among the paper’s recommendations are to:

• Provide ELD support in all subjects, as well as devoting a block of instructional time to it.
• Integrate frequent, strategically planned opportunities for interaction using English.
• Focus first on listening and speaking activities, then on reading and writing.
• Conduct direct teaching of the elements of the target language (English), including vocabulary, grammar, and syntax.
• Support English with students’ primary languages in a targeted way.
• Model and teach conversational as well as academic English.
• Deliver personalized and customized ELD support.

No matter which side of the debate educators find themselves on, the universal truth is that bilingual education can always improve. Proponents of bilingual education assert that access to improved materials in students’ primary languages as well as in English are key issues.

Top Schools That Certify Bilingual Educators

The best certification programs for bilingual education reflect the effective teaching strategies delineated above. If you are already a classroom teacher or hold valid certification, then you can enter a short-term program to earn a bilingual certificate or an endorsement on your current credential. If you hold a bachelor’s degree, you can enter a certification or master’s program in a university’s education department. If you opt for a master’s degree in an area of bilingual education, check current state requirements to ensure you meet the prerequisites for bilingual teacher certification. You will also need to pass fluency tests in English and the foreign language you wish to use in teaching.

According to The College Board’s guide to becoming a bilingual educator, several schools offer majors and certification programs in the field. It is preferable to attend a college in or near a city that contains linguistically diverse populations, as your course of study will include teaching internships or other fieldwork. Some options include:

• University of California, Los Angeles
• Boston University
• California State University at Long Beach
• City University of New York: Brooklyn College
• Loyola University Chicago
• Northeastern Illinois University
• SUNY College at Brockport
• Texas A&M International University
• University of Minnesota: Twin Cities
• University of Missouri: Kansas City
• University of the Southwest

Politicians and educators might take contentious stances on the topic of bilingual education, but the fact is that they share the same principal objective. In essence, participants in the controversy are speaking “different languages, [with the] same goal,” that of helping students achieve spoken and written proficiency in English.

Commentary: Being multilingual is no longer a liability for students. That’s good for the U.S.

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The Netflix show “Emily in Paris” portrays a young Midwesterner struggling to adapt to a new culture after a serendipitous promotion sends her to France. She got the job despite not speaking French, a highly unlikely scenario in real life.

The plot might have been more believable to me if the character were multilingual because I speak English, Spanish and French. Speaking and writing a second language are skills that U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona frequently touts as a superpower that can beget success in an increasingly global workforce. Encouraging students to become multilingual is one of his six focus areas, and he is pushing an initiative to transform the U.S. education system.

Such a national focus on boosting bilingualism is unusual, considering that 78% of U.S. residents speak only English . But it would mean finally encouraging millions of students whose first language is not English to retain their fluency while learning English. It would also emphasize the idea that native English speakers can expand career opportunities by learning a second language. However, it also would require making some radical changes in both attitudes and curriculum if the dream of churning out more bilingual students is to become a reality.

“We must evolve our schools,” Cardona said during a press call earlier this month, adding that the White House is proposing about $125 million in the upcoming budget to support bilingual programs that include expanding the pipeline for language teachers and grants to states for more foreign language instruction.

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Aug. 8, 2022

These funding commitments are a good start for ambitious proposals that are quite a departure from what we’ve seen from past Education secretaries. It’s taken educators far too long to see the benefits of multilingualism when so many U.S. students speak a second language at home that could be formally taught in conjunction with English for full proficiency in both languages.

Cardona’s tone is also strikingly different from that of educational leaders in the recent past. For decades, students whose first language isn’t English have been viewed as a liability, and were discouraged from using any language but English in the classroom. Nativists decried bilingual education as watering down of U.S. culture.

Such sentiments prompted the passage of Proposition 227 in California in 1998, eliminating bilingual education and requiring public schools to teach students whose first language is not English in English. It was repealed in 2016.

Now, Cardona is asking that we look at these students who speak multiple languages as “gifted with assets.” Such a shift in perspective is long overdue and comes at a time of increasing interest in teaching U.S. students to become proficient in a second language, as shown by the popularity of dual language immersion programs. In 2010, there were about 1,000 dual language programs in U.S. public schools, which grew to more than 3,600 by 2021, according to the American Councils Research Center.

Thanks in large part to dual immersion programs, California leads other states when it comes to foreign language instruction, with more than 57,500 students considered literate in at least two languages in the 2021-22 school year. The state Department of Education has set a goal of enrolling half of K-12 students in programs to become proficient in two or more languages by 2030 and 75% by 2040.

Cardona wants the nation to go much further: to the point where every K-12 student is expected to become literate in a second language.

It’s not surprising that Cardona, whose first language is Spanish, raves about the benefits of bilingualism. He says it helped propel him to become Connecticut’s youngest school principal, and, years later, to his current post overseeing the U.S. education system. It wasn’t easy. Cardona’s Puerto Rican parents spoke their native language at home and he struggled to learn English as a kindergartner.

Bilingual education has been absent from California public schools for almost 20 years. But that may soon change

Ricardo Lara was in college when California voters approved a law that required public school students to speak and learn only in English.

Oct. 12, 2016

Undoubtedly, the biggest obstacle in helping more students achieve proficiency in a second language is the lack of bilingual teachers, who are considered foreign language instructors and typically must earn bilingual certification. Forty-four states could not fill all their foreign language teacher vacancies, a 2017 study commissioned by Congress found. Schools nationwide have struggled to fill vacancies in recent years, especially those for foreign language teachers.

Under the Global California 2030 initiative, the state has a goal to hire about 2,000 additional credentialed bilingual language teachers by 2029, which would mean about double what it had in 2019 . In addition, the state Department of Education is looking at increasing partnerships with programs such as the Migrant Education Mini-Corps Program to expand the pipeline of bilingual teachers.

Clearly, it will take years to create and staff bilingual programs in every public school. But multiplying the number of multilingual students as Cardona envisions will take more than just a shift in public view about the benefits of bilingualism.

The U.S. is one of the few countries considered monolingual, in comparison with most European countries where students begin learning a second language by the age of 9, according to the Pew Research Center . In 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense sponsored the National K-12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey to determine the state of foreign language instruction in K-12 public schools. It found that only 11 states required foreign language study to graduate.

The fact that most Americans speak only English puts our country at an economic disadvantage and threatens national security if we cannot understand and analyze potential threats such as terrorism or contagions. A lack of multilingual speakers in the U.S. has prompted the Department of Defense to partner with eight states to develop bilingual instruction programs . Certainly, English-only speakers cannot expect to obtain jobs like the one that took Netflix’s Emily to Paris if they don’t have the necessary language skills. That’s a fantasy that exists only in Hollywood.

More to Read

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Minerva Canto is a former editorial writer who focused on education, healthcare and other social issues for the Los Angeles Times. She is a longtime journalist whose work explores the places where politics, policies and people converge.

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Impact of bilingual education on student achievement

Language development programs should focus on quality rather than the language in which instruction is provided

University of Houston, USA, and IZA, Germany

Elevator pitch

More than 4.4 million students enrolled in US public schools participate in English language learner programs because of linguistic barriers to learning in regular classrooms. Whether native language instruction should be used in these programs is a contentious issue. Recent studies, using credible research designs for estimating causal impacts, find that bilingual education programs (which use some native language instruction) and English-only programs are not significantly different in their impact on standardized test performance. This finding suggests that it is time to change the focus from use of the native language to program quality.

Key findings

Bilingual education may help limited English proficient students keep up in other subjects while they learn English.

Bilingual education helps limited English proficient students develop language skills in their native (non-English) language.

Skills in students’ native language may facilitate their development of skills in English.

Bilingual education supports cultural inclusion and diversity.

By reducing exposure to English, bilingual education may slow the acquisition of English language skills.

A shortage of certified bilingual education teachers makes it difficult to implement bilingual education programs as intended.

Appropriate teaching and learning materials may not be available in all native languages.

Bilingual education segregates limited English proficient students from other students, which may have social and academic impacts.

Author's main message

Discussions about how to educate limited English proficient students often focus on the language of instruction. However, convincing recent evidence that bilingual education programs and English-only programs in US public schools are similarly effective in their impacts on student achievement suggests that it could be more productive to shift the focus from the language of instruction to the quality of instruction. Instruction should be of adequate intensity, provided by teachers qualified to teach limited English proficient students, and supported by appropriate teaching and learning materials, regardless of the language of instruction.

Many children attend schools that teach in a language in which they are not proficient, and this trend is growing due to rising international migration. Linguistic barriers to learning in regular classrooms put these students at risk of poor education outcomes. A variety of education programs are proposed to improve outcomes. Evidence on their effectiveness can guide parents, educators, and policymakers. The US has many limited English proficient students, and several rigorous evaluations of bilingual education exist for US programs, which is why the US is the focus here.

Enrollment of limited English proficient students in US public elementary and secondary schools (as measured by number of students participating in English language learner programs) reached 4.4 million in 2011/2012, or 9% of total enrollment, and is growing much faster (6.6% between 2002/2003 and 2011/2012) than enrollment of other students (2.4%). Enrollment was flat in California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, and Arizona (the top six states by number of limited English proficient students) but grew 29% in the other states over the decade, reflecting the increasing geographic dispersion of immigrants. In 2011/2012, 74% of US public schools had at least one limited English proficient student. Many schools are making decisions about how to educate their limited English proficient students.

Discussion of pros and cons

Scores on the grade 4 mathematics test on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the largest nationally representative assessment of what American students know) show a persistent achievement gap between limited English proficient students and other students ( Figure 1 ). At 25 points, the gap is large (0.8 standard deviations) and greater than the gap between poor and non-poor students. Other measures of academic performance show a similar gap. Lower test scores indicate that limited English proficient students are less proficient in core academic skills, which may make later classes more difficult, cause placement in less rigorous tracks of study, and raise dropout rates, lowering eventual educational attainment and human capital.

Because lack of proficiency in English is a barrier to learning in regular classrooms, US civil rights laws require schools to offer additional instructional services to limited English proficient students. Programs fall into two broad categories: those that use the student’s native language for at least some of the instruction (bilingual education), and those that use only English for instruction. As the emphasis of all these programs is English language development, both programs devote time to this, typically using English as a second language (ESL) methods. Also, there is considerable variation in how much the native language is used in bilingual education programs. Thus, the contrast between bilingual education programs and English-only programs is less stark in practice than in theory.

Potential effects of bilingual education on student outcomes

Potential benefits of bilingual education.

When limited English proficient students are still learning English, it may be better to teach other subjects in their primary language. To the extent that the course content is more accessible when taught in the native language, limited English proficient students will not fall (as far) behind in these other subjects while they are catching up in English.

Receiving instruction at school in the native language may also improve students’ skills in their native language. Additionally, parents of limited English proficient students, who themselves typically lack proficiency in English, may be better able to assess their children’s school progress, help with schoolwork, and communicate with teachers in a bilingual education setting.

Instruction in the native language might develop general language skills that facilitate learning new languages. For example, some strategies developed for reading in the native language may be applicable for reading in English.

Potential drawbacks of bilingual education

Because some instruction is in the native language, bilingual education students receive less exposure to English at school than students in English-only programs. This might delay and weaken their acquisition of English language skills, which could in turn affect the academic tracks they can pursue later.

Sometimes the inputs needed for bilingual education programs are not available. First, it is difficult to recruit enough certified bilingual education teachers for some districts, languages, and grades. While teaching in English-only programs also requires special training, there is a larger pool of candidates since proficiency in a non-English language is not necessary. Second, teaching and learning materials are not available in many native languages, subjects, and grades. Thus, implementing bilingual education programs as intended becomes more difficult.

Because bilingual education programs provide some content instruction in the native language, limited English proficient students with the same native language and in the same grade tend to be grouped together in self-contained classrooms, unlike in most English-only programs. On average therefore, limited English proficient students placed in bilingual education programs have less exposure to other students as well as to limited English proficient students of other native languages, and there could be peer effects associated with this.

Who receives bilingual education?

Although more than 200 home languages are reported among limited English proficient students in US public schools, in practice bilingual education programs are available only for a few languages, with Spanish–English programs by far the most common. This is primarily because Spanish-speaking limited English proficient students are the most numerous (they made up 77% of limited English proficient students in 2001/2002; the next largest group was Vietnamese speakers, at 2.4%) [1] . Moreover, Spanish-speaking limited English proficient students are more likely than other limited English proficient students to be placed in bilingual education programs: 38% compared with 17% [1] .

This highlights that student placement in bilingual education is not random. Whether a student participates in bilingual education depends on many variables, including characteristics of the student (such as home language, grade, English proficiency), parents (such as income, education, whether they take up the program if it is offered to their child), neighborhood (such as community preference for bilingual education, having enough limited English proficient students with the same native language and in the same grade), and state (some states mandate bilingual education while some ban it). Researchers do not have data on all the variables that affect participation, and because some of these variables also affect student achievement, conventional estimates of participation in bilingual education will suffer from omitted variables bias. Besides the problem of non-random selection into bilingual education, there are also complications in measuring education outcomes for limited English proficient students . Thus, estimating the causal impact of bilingual education on student achievement is a challenge.

Empirical evidence on the impacts of bilingual education

Studies can be cited to support either side of the debate on whether bilingual education programs work better than English-only programs; early meta-studies are [2] , [3] . Many of the studies fail to deal with the non-random selection of limited English proficient students into bilingual education programs. Students who participate in bilingual education are systematically different in observed and unobserved characteristics from students who do not, so the achievement difference between participants and non-participants could not be causally attributed to bilingual education. In addition, some of the studies are limited in sample size or several decades old. In the past few years, however, several large-scale studies have used experimental or quasi-experimental methods to obtain convincing estimates of causal impact.

Evidence from a recent randomized experiment

A recent study that randomly assigned limited English proficient kindergartners in six schools to bilingual education or structured English immersion finds no statistically significant differences in English skills by grade 4 as measured on standardized tests [4] . In earlier grades, though, difference in English test scores between students in the two programs were larger and sometimes statistically significant. In grade 1, the deficits for bilingual education students were over one-third of a standard deviation and statistically significant. By grades 2 and 3, the deficits had diminished, and only two of the eight scores (four for each grade) were statistically significant. On the other hand, in all four grades, students randomly assigned to bilingual education had significantly better performance on the tests measuring Spanish skills.

The treatment effects, estimated as far out as five years after the randomization of treatment status, are not confounded by attrition bias as the attrition rate, and the baseline test scores of those who left the study, did not differ significantly between students in bilingual education and those in structured English immersion. Thus, although students in bilingual education initially had worse English skills than students in structured English immersion programs, their later English skills did not differ significantly [4] .

These estimates of the causal impact of bilingual education relative to structured English immersion have internal validity, but external validity is limited by the small number of students and schools. Thus, it is of interest to look at studies covering more students and in other contexts.

Evidence from analyses of the impact of policy changes

The official evaluation of Proposition 227, a California voter referendum banning bilingual education, finds that the share of limited English proficient students receiving bilingual education dropped from 30% in 1997/1998 (the last year before implementation) to 8% in 2003/2004, with limited English proficient students shifting to structured English immersion programs [5] . A comparison of the change in mathematics and reading test scores for limited English proficient students with the change for students who had never been identified as limited English proficient (difference-in-differences analysis) finds a small, statistically insignificant change in the gap between the groups.

Under the assumption that in the absence of the policy change, the gap would have been unchanged, this finding suggests that bilingual programs are as effective as English-only programs for limited English proficient students. However, the authors point out that there were other policy changes around the same time that might make the assumption less plausible, including changes in national accountability standards (such as fewer exemptions from state assessments) and the introduction of the California English Language Development Test in fall 2001 to measure the English proficiency of limited English proficient students. It is likely that these other policy changes affected limited English proficient students and other students differently, making it difficult to disentangle the effect of Proposition 227 from these other changes using a difference-in-differences method with non-limited English proficient students as a comparison group.

Two other studies also use Proposition 227 to learn about the effect of bilingual education, but with a different comparison group. Their insight is that schools in California with a higher prevalence of bilingual education before Proposition 227 would have to move a larger share of limited English proficient students out of bilingual education to comply with the ban on bilingual education than would schools with lower prevalence. Comparing changes over time for limited English proficient students in schools with higher pre-policy prevalence to changes in schools with lower prevalence gives an alternative difference-in-differences estimate of the impact of a reduction in bilingual education. Since this analysis uses data on limited English proficient students only, other policies that differentially affect limited English proficient students are controlled for (because everyone, even the comparison group, is exposed to them).

One study using 1990 and 2000 US Census microdata finds that Proposition 227 increased the self-reported English-speaking ability of children aged 5−18 who immigrated to the US within the past three years from a non-English-speaking country, who are likely to be placed in programs for limited English proficient students [6] . The post-policy year of 2000 is only two years after Proposition 227 was implemented, so the finding is consistent with English speaking ability developing faster when children are placed in structured English immersion instead of bilingual education programs. Left unanswered are impacts on academic English skills and longer-term English language skills.

The other study uses scores from the California English Language Development Test, a richer measure of English proficiency [7] . Because these scores were available beginning only in 2001, there are no pre-policy data; however, the broad intuition behind the empirical strategy is similar. It uses the change in a school’s bilingual education prevalence predicted by perfect compliance with Proposition 227 as an instrumental variable for a student’s actual participation status in bilingual education and controls for a rich set of school characteristics to address the concern that schools with higher and lower pre-policy bilingual education prevalence rates differ systematically. For Spanish-speaking limited English proficient students in grades 1 and 2, bilingual education, relative to English-only approaches, has significant large negative associations with English listening and speaking proficiencies, but the associations are small and positive in grades 3–5 (and insignificant in grade 5). English reading and writing proficiencies are measured in higher grades, and there is no evidence of significant differences in grade 5, with mixed results in grades 3−4.

Massachusetts voters passed a similar initiative banning bilingual education beginning in 2003/2004. A difference-in-differences analysis compares the cohort difference (between the post-policy cohort that took the grade 3 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam in spring 2006 and the pre-policy cohort that took the exam in spring 2003) for limited English proficient students with the cohort difference for students who had never been identified as limited English proficient students [8] . The study finds small, statistically insignificant differences in reading scores. The finding of no effect of the policy reducing bilingual education holds for both Spanish-speaking and other native language-speaking limited English proficient students.

Evidence using policy rules

Texas requires school districts to offer bilingual education when 20 or more limited English proficient students are enrolled in a particular grade and speak the same native language. A study using a regression discontinuity design exploiting this policy rule finds no statistically significant difference in state standardized mathematics and reading test scores for grade 3–5 students whose native language is Spanish in districts that are above the 20-student cutoff (more likely to be exposed to bilingual education) and those in districts that are below the cutoff (more likely to receive only ESL instruction) [9] . Since most of these students would have been limited English proficient students in an earlier grade, this finding suggests that bilingual education programs and ESL programs, as implemented in small, less urban schools in Texas, have similar impacts on later student achievement. However, these effects of bilingual education may not necessarily generalize to larger, more urban districts or to limited English proficient students whose native language is not Spanish.

A study in a large north-eastern urban district also uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of bilingual education [10] . It finds little difference in achievement between students who scored just below the English skills assessment cutoff (and are eligible to participate in bilingual education or ESL programs according to the district policy rule) and those who scored just above (ineligible and placed in mainstream classrooms) [9] . Thus, instruction that uses some native language is no more effective than the all-English instruction occurring in mainstream classrooms. Because the study focuses on students near the cutoff score, the results for the impact of limited English proficient programs apply only to the most English-proficient among limited English proficient students.

Evidence outside the US

A few studies estimate the effect of changes in language of instruction policies. In Morocco, a reform that changed instruction from Arabic in grades 1–5 and French in grades 6–12 to Arabic only is found to decrease French writing skills but not to affect French reading, Arabic, and mathematics skills [11] . In Latvia, a reform that changed instruction from Russian only to 60% Latvian and 40% Russian in secondary schools lowered the high school exit exam scores of ethnic Russians [12] . In South Africa, instruction is in the native language in early grades, and English or Afrikaans in later grades, and a reform increasing the grades providing native language instruction has led to higher literacy and educational attainment [13] . These studies emphasize that school quality changes are coupled with the changes in the language of instruction, and all the studies find that student outcomes are better when quality is higher (which is sometimes with native language instruction and sometimes not).

Limitations and gaps

There are several limitations and gaps in the work evaluating US bilingual education programs. The studies discussed here reflect mainly the impacts of transitional bilingual programs, the most common type in the US. However, their impacts may well differ from those of programs that have bilingualism as a goal, such as maintenance bilingual education and dual language immersion programs.

The literature focuses on English language skills and standardized test scores in English and mathematics as outcomes. These are important in that the main goal of limited English proficient programs is to help limited English proficient students to close the achievement gap. However, it would also be of interest to measure a broader set of outcomes, including native language skills, degree of bilingualism, non-cognitive skills, high school dropout rate, and educational attainment.

A final limitation is that the literature focuses on impacts on limited English proficient students and ignores the possibility that these education programs might have spillover effects on other students. The one study that considers this possibility finds that achievement for non-limited English proficient students is higher in districts that began to offer bilingual education as a result of a Texas administrative rule [9] . While this finding is consistent with non-limited English proficient students benefiting from lower exposure to limited English proficient students, this interpretation is speculative, and more research is needed on spillover effects.

Summary and policy advice

Collectively, a set of recent studies using experimental and quasi-experimental variation in exposure to bilingual education to estimate its causal impact suggests that while receiving some instruction in the native language might lower English-language skills initially, its impact on later English proficiency and achievement is not systematically better or worse than that of English-only approaches. This finding does not mean that school programs for limited English proficient students are not helpful—the studies compare one type of limited English proficient program with another type, not with no program at all. Rather, the implication is native language instruction is not essential to program effectiveness. This may be because bilingual education and English-only programs, as implemented in US schools, have more similarities than differences—both focus on English language acquisition and both use English as the main language of instruction. Moreover, this finding does not preclude the possibility that some bilingual education programs might raise achievement among limited English proficient students more effectively than English-only programs do—or vice versa.

The national debate on how to educate limited English proficient students has focused too much on language of instruction. It would be productive to shift the focus to the quality of instruction [4] . Local communities should be able to choose a program that can be staffed with qualified teachers, have appropriate teaching/learning materials, deliver an adequate number of hours per day of English language development services, and meet broader community goals without first tying their hands about using or not using native language instruction.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks an anonymous referee and the IZA World of Labor editors for many helpful suggestions on earlier drafts.

Competing interests

The IZA World of Labor project is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity . The author declares to have observed these principles.

© Aimee Chin

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Bilingual Education and America’s Future: Evidence and Pathways

This paper looks at the next 25 years of education and policy making regarding students classified as English learners (EL). Given the strong research evidence on the benefits of bilingual education and need to address barriers to opportunity experienced by English learners, this paper strengthens the case for federal, state and local education policy and action that looks toward the implementation of bilingual education as the standard service--rather than exception--for EL-classified students.

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Cognitive study shows lack of bilingual education adversely affects English language learners' writing skills

Wed, 10/13/2021.

Mike Krings

LAWRENCE — As the number of Spanish-speaking English learners has increased in U.S. schools, research and attention have focused on how to boost students' reading and speaking skills. A first-of-its-kind study from the University of Kansas has examined three key cognitive functions and their role in learning to write, showing that a lack of focus on bilingual education has contributed to Hispanic English learners falling behind.

The KU study showed specifically how important word retrieval skills, verbal language skills and ability to store information in memory are key in the population’s writing ability. The research, co-written by Anqi Peng, doctoral student in educational psychology at KU; Michael Orosco, associate professor in educational psychology at KU; Hui Wang, doctoral student in educational psychology at KU; H. Lee Swanson of the University of New Mexico; and Deborah Reed of the University of Iowa, was published in  the Journal of Educational Psychology , which is currently ranked No. 1 in  Google Scholar Metrics for Educational Psychology & Counseling journals .

Using structural equation modeling with Software R, KU researchers analyzed a battery of tests given to 374 students in grades 3-5 in both Spanish and English and an assigned writing task in English for the study. 

“We found all three variables had a significant predicting effect on students’ English writing ability,” Peng said. “In the English model, phonological awareness had a moderate effect, while oral language development and working memory had larger effects. In the Spanish model, oral language development had a negative effect.”

In other words, phonological ability, or word retrieval skills in both languages, positively predicted English writing performance. English oral language development, or verbal language skills (e.g., vocabulary) was also a positive predictor, but those who were proficient Spanish speakers were less likely to be proficient English writers. Working memory of both languages positively affected English writing. Taken together, the researchers said the findings show that only instructing EL students in English presents difficulties to learning to write in the language.

The students in the study speak Spanish as their first language. Yet in school, they receive academic instruction in English only. 

“You’re asking these kids to write academically in a second language, but they’re not getting any academic instruction in their native language. We’re seeing students struggling in writing, largely because we’re not emphasizing it enough early,” Orosco said, noting the skill is more difficult to teach and assess than the more popular measures of reading and math. “It is difficult assessing writing. Students need to write to a comprehensive test of written expression designed to measure a broad range of skills such as spelling, grammatical conventions, vocabulary and development of characters. A basic standardized test can’t assess these skill sets. Also, grading a comprehensive writing test is labor-intensive. This is the largest writing study ever taken on this population.”

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which annually tests proficiency of U.S. students in key areas, does not regularly assess writing, largely because it is labor intensive. However, the authors argue that, in addition to showing which cognitive functions are key in teaching writing to early adolescent English learners, U.S. education needs to focus more on teaching writing as a whole. In classroom observations, Orosco said he commonly notes teachers focusing heavily on teaching mechanical and technical writing skills in English without academic writing skills and concepts instruction at the elementary level. In addition, a bigger emphasis is put on reading development than writing during literacy time.

The results also support better understanding of brain function and how children learn. The effects of phonological awareness and oral language development (e.g., vocabulary) on writing proficiency suggest more attention should be paid to brain sciences when preparing future generations of teachers. To that end, Orosco has spearheaded the Mind, Brain and Education graduate certificate in KU’s School of Education & Human Sciences, designed to incorporate neuroscience, psychology and cognitive science to boost research in those fields for new approaches in teaching.

The study also demonstrates the negative effects of the nation's lack of bilingual education. Research has long showed the benefits of bilingualism, yet the U.S. is one of the few first world countries that does not emphasize bilingual education. Politics and English-first initiatives have hampered the education of English-learner students, as evidenced by the negative relation between Spanish oral language development and English writing. It has also affected the students’ native language skills as they age and deprived English-native students of the benefits of learning second languages, Orosco said, indicating the importance of education policy that supports bilingual education for all students.

“This study has the potential to change the practice of teaching writing across the U.S. and impact future research in this area,” said Rick Ginsberg, dean of KU’s School of Education & Human Sciences. “Documenting the importance of instruction in both Spanish and English through such a carefully designed study should sound an alarm for schools not taking a bilingual education approach in teaching writing with the growing population of Hispanic students in this country.”

The authors also said that more research is necessary to better understand how students learn and how teachers can better instruct writing. Very little evidence is available on writing development of English learners at any level, and better understanding of cognitive processes will only help ensure better education on a vital academic skill, they said.

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Bilingual education for young children: review of the effects and consequences

Ellen bialystok.

Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Bilingual education has been an educational option in many countries for over 50 years but it remains controversial, especially in terms of its appropriateness for all children. The present review examines research evaluating the outcomes of bilingual education for language and literacy levels, academic achievement, and suitability for children with special challenges. The focus is on early education and the emphasis is on American contexts. Special attention is paid to factors such as socioeconomic status that are often confounded with the outcomes of bilingual education. The conclusion is that there is no evidence for harmful effects of bilingual education and much evidence for net benefits in many domains.

In the US, bilingual education has been a controversial topic almost since the founding of the nation, and from the beginning, the discussions were imbued with political rhetoric (for reviews see Nieto 2009 ; Ovando 2003 ). The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 recognized the situation of minority children with limited proficiency in English and created funding for programs that would assist these children to succeed in American schools and develop their proficiency in both English and their home language. The act was largely focused on Spanish speakers, but subsequent groups, such as Chinese speakers, brought about amendments to the act to expand its scope ( Lau vs. Nichols, 1974 ). Other countries have had a different experience with bilingual education and a different set of political and social associations with these programs. A prime example is Canada, where the social, demographic, and political situations were different from those in the US. Although Canada is officially a bilingual country, there is not a single language that defines most bilinguals as there is in the US, because the majority of bilinguals in Canada speak one of the official languages (English or French) and a heritage language. Surprisingly, few citizens are actually proficient in both official languages. In the 2011 census, about 17% of respondents stated they could conduct a conversation in both English and French, a considerable increase from the estimate of 12% who could achieve this in 1961 ( Lepage and Corbeil 2013 ), although still below what would be expected in a bilingual society. One factor that may be responsible for the growth in French-English bilingualism over the 50-year period is the impact in the past generation of popular French immersion programs in which children who would otherwise have had little exposure to French became very proficient and in many cases, fully bilingual.

In Europe, attitudes to languages, educational systems, and bilingualism in general, to name a few factors, are very different from those in North America. Garcia (2011) makes a strong case for the widespread appropriateness of bilingual education globally, but the context in which education takes place is crucial; there is no universal prescription for bilingual education and no universal outcomes. As Baker (2011) points out, the perspective on bilingual education depends largely on the point of view, and studies conducted in one context may have little relevance for bilingual education in another context. Therefore, this review will focus primarily on North American contexts and address some of the central issues regarding the efficacy of bilingual education for that region, in particular for the US.

Finally, the review will focus on the early school years because they are the foundation for academic outcomes. Education is a long-term process and results continue to influence outcomes throughout life. However, the early years are crucial for establishing basic skills and attitudes toward education, so the examination of bilingual education in the present review will focus on the first three years of schooling. To summarize, the review is restricted in that it selectively reviews studies whose empirical properties are considered sufficiently reliable to form conclusions, with a focus on primary education in the context in the US, and addressing specific questions, namely, language outcomes, cognitive outcomes, and generalized appropriateness of the programs.

Bilingual education is an umbrella terms that encompasses a range of education programs that have been designed for an even wider range of children and a host of special circumstances. Essentially, bilingual education refers to any school program in which more than one language is used in the curriculum to teach non-language academic subject matter or the language of schooling does not match the language of the home or community, but the reasons for incorporating the languages, the specific languages chosen, the structure of the program, and the relation between the school languages and the community vary widely and influence educational outcomes. Over-riding all this is the distinction between ‘bilingual education’ and the ‘education of bilingual children’, concepts that are importantly different from each other. Consider the following two definitions for bilingual education. Genesee (2004 , 548) defined bilingual education as ‘education that aims to promote bilingual (or multilingual) competence by using both (or all) languages as media of instruction for significant portions of the academic curriculum’. In contrast, Rossell and Baker (1996 , 7) defined bilingual education as ‘teaching non-English-speaking students to read and write in their native tongue, teaching them content in their native tongue, and gradually transitioning them to English over a period of several years’. Clearly these definitions are describing different situations and carry different goals.

This distinction between bilingual education and the education of bilingual children is part of the historical difference between the development of bilingual education in the US and elsewhere. For bilingual education of minority language students in the US, the motivation was to create an educational program for children who were at-risk of academic failure because of low proficiency in English, the language of schooling, by engaging them in the education process through the use of their home language (e.g. including Spanish in the education of Hispanic children). The success of these programs was judged primarily by proficiency in English (the majority language), with the main criterion being English language literacy. For bilingual education in Canada, in contrast, the motivation was to offer an educational alternative designed to make majority language children (i.e. English speakers) bilingual. Thus, success of these programs was judged by the extent to which children mastered the minority language while maintaining proficiency in the majority language. Similar immersion programs were developed for children to gain proficiency in both national (e.g. children of Finnish immigrants in Sweden, Troike 1978 ) and heritage languages (e.g. Hawaiian programs in the US, McCarty and Watahomigie 1998 ; Navajo programs in the US, Rosier and Holm 1980 ; Maori programs in New Zealand; Durie 1998 ; May and Hill 2005 ). All these programs fall under the general rubric of bilingual education but are importantly different from each other. A more complete range of the diversity of bilingual education programs is described by Fishman (1976) and more recently by Mehisto and Genesee (2015) .

In spite of substantial differences between them, the two goals of educating bilingual children and creating programs to make children bilingual are interrelated. In the US, there is large overlap between them because the largest number of bilingual education programs was developed to educate bilingual or limited English proficient (EP) students, primarily Spanish-speaking, who were otherwise at-risk for school failure. The present review will focus on bilingual education in general and not on the specific issues involved in the education of this particular group of children (for a detailed discussion of this issue, see August and Shanahan 2006 ). Ultimately, it is important to know if education through two languages is viable, if young children can learn in this kind of an environment, and if the outcomes of these programs meet the needs of all children. The present paper reviews evidence relevant for those judgments.

Development of language and literacy in bilingual education

Evaluation of the effectiveness of bilingual education on language and literacy outcomes requires well-controlled research. The clearest evidence for the unique contribution of bilingual education programs to these outcomes would come from randomized control trials, but such a design is almost impossible to achieve (but see Genesee and Lindholm-Leary 2012 , for discussion). The closest design to this methodological ideal is in studies that investigate bilingual education programs for which spaces are allocated by lottery because of over-demand so that comparisons can be made between children who were admitted to the program and those who were not. Children in this latter group generally enter regular classrooms and may remain on a waiting list. Even here, however, there is the possibility of bias in terms of who enters the lottery. The results of the few studies that have had the opportunity to compare these populations (e.g. Barnett et al. 2007 ) are largely consistent with the majority of the literature in which children in bilingual or single language programs are compared on critical outcome measures.

The primary goal of early schooling is to establish the foundational skills upon which children will build their educational futures. The most important of these abilities are language and literacy competence. Not surprisingly, therefore, the majority of research that has evaluated bilingual education programs has focused on children’s development of these crucial linguistic abilities. The research is complicated because the type of education program is only one of many factors that shape these emerging abilities so clear evidence for the role of the education program as distinct from other sources of variance in the child’s background requires carefully controlled designs. For example, children who are Hispanic but are native speakers of English have education outcomes in terms of dropout rates and academic failure that are similar to Hispanic children who are Spanish-speaking, ruling out English proficiency as the explanation ( Forum for Education and Democracy 2008 ). Just as English proficiency alone cannot explain school outcomes, neither can the educational program.

In part for this reason, conclusions regarding the development of language and literacy through bilingual education in the US is complicated by the confounding of ethnicity and social class with Spanish proficiency and bilingualism (for discussion see Francis, Lesaux, and August 2006 ). Nonetheless, two studies by Lindholm-Leary and colleagues have provided reasonably clear results on these issues. In one study, Lindholm-Leary and Block (2010) assessed the English and mathematics achievement of 659 Hispanic students attending either mainstream English or various types of bilingual programs in California. In the bilingual schools, the proportion of instruction shifted from predominantly Spanish to predominantly English over the period from kindergarten to fourth grade. Students were classified as EP or English Language Learner (ELL) prior to the study. The main result was that standard scores on the English proficiency test were higher for both ELL and EP students who were in the bilingual programs than they were for children in the mainstream English programs. Similar results were found for scores on the mathematics test. Overall, students in the dual language program in this low socioeconomic status (SES) community achieved at least as well and in some cases better in both English and mathematics than did comparable students in a program in which all instruction was in English. Students in the bilingual programs also made more rapid progress across the grades in these tests than did students in the English program and, therefore, were more advanced in their trajectory to close the achievement gap with statewide norms for these tests.

In a similar study that included children in kindergarten through second grade, Lindholm-Leary (2014) assessed 283 low SES Hispanic children in either English or bilingual programs. Children entering the English kindergarten programs had higher language scores than those entering the bilingual programs, but these differences disappeared within one or two years and then reversed, with children in the bilingual program outperforming the English-only instruction group in both English and Spanish test scores by the end of second grade. Not surprisingly, children in the English program showed significant loss of Spanish proficiency, making them in fact less bilingual, a topic that will be discussed below.

Barnett et al. (2007) compared performance of low SES preschool children (3 and 4 years old) in bilingual or English-only programs, but importantly, children were assigned to these programs by lottery, thereby controlling to some extent for pre-existing differences among the children or their families. The programs were in a school district in which 76% of the children qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. The outcome measures were largely experimental tasks that assessed phonological awareness and language knowledge (primarily vocabulary), but the results were consistent with those reported in other studies. Specifically, children in both programs made comparable progress in skill development in English, but children in the bilingual program also developed these skills in Spanish, indicating that dual language instruction did not impede development of English, the L2.

In these examples, bilingual instruction had long-term benefits for children’s language and literacy proficiency in both languages. In a review and meta-analysis of this literature, Francis, Lesaux, and August (2006) concluded that ‘bilingual education has a positive effect on English reading outcomes that are small to moderate in size’ (392). Thus, overall, bilingual education for Hispanic children in the US leads to English outcomes that are equivalent to those found for children in mainstream English programs, with better outcomes for Spanish.

These results are broadly consistent with those found for bilingual education programs serving other communities, with other languages, in other countries, where students are more likely to belong to majority language groups than minority language, as in the US. Thus, the outcomes obtained with children at risk for educational failure produce patterns of results similar to those found for children with entirely different linguistic and demographic backgrounds. The most studied of these programs is Canadian French immersion in which Anglophone children in Canada are educated through French. Results of studies over the past 50 years have shown that English outcomes are equivalent to or better than those found for children in English programs (even though most instruction is in French in the primary grades) and French outcomes are moderate to high, although below levels found for native-speaking French children ( Genesee 1983 , 2004 ; Hermanto, Moreno, and Bialystok 2012 ; Swain and Lapkin 1982 ).

Three further examples with similar results come from bilingual programs operating in Italian and English, Mandarin and English, and Hebrew and Russian. Assessment of the Italian-English program was a small-scale study in which 60 children attending this program in California were evaluated from first through third grades for language and literacy ability in English and Italian ( Montanari 2013 ). Results showed that these children developed strong literacy skills in both Italian and English by first grade, even though instruction was exclusively in Italian. The second program, also implemented in California, provided instruction through Mandarin beginning in kindergarten to children who either had Mandarin exposure at home or were only English speaking ( Padilla et al. 2013 ). Like the Italian-English program, this was a small-scale study. The results showed that all children gained proficiency in both English and Mandarin and importantly achieved at least equivalent and sometimes greater than state levels on standardized tests of English, math, and science in spite of being educated through Mandarin. Finally, two studies investigated language and literacy development in Russian-Hebrew bilingual 4-year-olds who were attending either bilingual Hebrew-Russian or Hebrew schools in Israel, where Hebrew is the majority language. Again, the results showed that children in the bilingual programs developed language proficiency ( Schwartz 2013 ) and narrative skills ( Schwartz and Shaul 2013 ) in Hebrew, the majority language, at least as well as did children in the Hebrew only programs and at the same time maintained higher levels of Russian. Across all these studies, therefore, the majority language of the community was mastered whether or not it was the primary language of instruction, but the minority language required environmental support to reach high proficiency levels.

The studies that compared English-only and bilingual education in Hispanic children were generally conducted with low SES populations, but that is not the case for the non-Spanish programs: children in the Italian-English program were described as ‘middle class’; children in the Mandarin-English program were described as ‘upper middle class’; and children in the Hebrew-Russian program were described as ‘mid-level socioeconomic’. Thus, even though none of the students was at-risk in the manner generally understood for Hispanic children in Spanish-English bilingual programs, the patterns of language and literacy outcomes were similar, even if the absolute levels of achievement were different. Therefore, there is no evidence that education through two languages impedes progress in the development of language and literacy skills in the majority language and has the added benefit of developing and sustaining these skills in the minority language. This generalization about positive outcomes is confirmed by a study in which at-risk low performing children attending bilingual education or majority language English-only programs were compared for their English language and literacy performance ( Lopez and Tashakkori 2004 ). There was no evidence of additional burden on the development of English skills for children in the bilingual program.

Other academic and cognitive achievements

However important language and literacy are for children’s development, they are not the only outcomes that need to be considered in evaluating educational options for children. The impact of education through a weak or non-proficient language on children’s academic success has long been a concern. Dire warnings about harmful effects of these programs were expressed by Macnamara (1967) in his evaluation of children attending an Irish immersion program in Ireland. He reported that children in the Irish program performed more poorly in mathematics than did children in regular English programs, but he neglected to point out that the differences were found only in mathematics ‘word’ problems and not in mathematical operations. Unsurprisingly, children’s knowledge of Irish at that point was weak and interfered with their comprehension of the test questions; in tests of arithmetic calculations, there were no differences between groups. These challenges have been known for a long time (e.g. Cummins and Macnamara 1977 ) but the research remained influential. More recent research demonstrates that even simple arithmetic calculation is faster and easier in the language in which it was taught ( Spelke and Tsivkin 2001 ) and engages different parts of the brain than when the same calculations are performed in the non-school language ( Mondt et al. 2011 ), but the Irish proficiency of the children in Macnamara’s (1967) study may have been too weak to show this effect.

Other studies have generally found no academic cost for children studying in a bilingual program. In the Mandarin-English bilingual education program described above ( Padilla et al. 2013 ), for example, children in the dual language immersion and the English programs performed equivalently on standardized tests of mathematics until third grade, but immersion children began outperforming non-immersion children in fourth grade. Thus, these program effects sometimes take time to demonstrate. For tests of science achievement, there were no differences between children in the two programs.

There is evidence that bilingualism alone, aside from bilingual education, may be beneficial for aspects of academic achievement. Han (2012) conducted a longitudinal study in the US of a national cohort of over 16,000 children in kindergarten and followed their academic progress until fifth grade. Because of national education policies requiring standardized testing on English literacy and math scores, large data bases are available for such investigations. In the study by Han (2012) , the children included in the analyses were Hispanic, Asian, or non-Hispanic native-born White and outcome variables were results on standardized reading and math achievement scores. Although the analyses did not explicitly control for the effect of education program, the quality of education was defined in terms of the resources and interventions for English support available in the school program, quality of the teachers, and other such factors and included in the analyses. The results were based on a complex classification of children according to their language abilities. Most relevant is a group called ‘mixed bilingual’, referring to children who spoke a non-English language at home to a high degree of fluency. Although these children entered kindergarten with limited English proficiency and obtained initial scores on both English and math tests that were lower than native English-speaking children, they fully closed the math gap by fifth grade, an achievement that the Han attributes to bilingualism. Nonetheless, English scores still lagged by fifth grade. The focus of the analyses were on quality of school programs, availability of resources, and quality of school personnel, all of which contributed significantly to children’s success. The study was not designed to evaluate the effectiveness of bilingual education but the results are consistent with the conclusion that children’s bilingualism can be a positive factor in school achievement.

Much of this research has focused on children in low SES environments, but Marian, Shook, and Schroeder (2013) extended the question to investigate whether these results would be similar for Spanish-speaking low SES children and monolingual English-speaking middle-class children who were in Spanish-English bilingual programs and were instructed through Spanish from kindergarten. The numbers of children in each of the relevant groups defined by language and social background, grade, and education program were vastly different (ranging from 6 to 624), so non-parametric analyses were used and results need to be interpreted cautiously. The analyses of children’s performance on standardized tests of reading and mathematics showed better outcomes for children in bilingual programs than monolingual programs for both minority Spanish and majority English-speaking children, although there were differences in the size and timing of these effects for children from the two language backgrounds. Thus, all children profited from the bilingual education program, although not surprisingly their progress depended as well on other factors known to affect education outcomes.

One explanation that Marian and colleagues offer for the better mathematics outcomes for children in the bilingual programs is that the bilingualism achieved in these programs led to higher levels of executive function and that better executive function was the mechanism for the improvement in math performance. Several studies of young children in the early grades have demonstrated a direct relationship between children’s executive functioning and mathematics achievement ( Blair and Razza 2007 ; Bull, Espy, and Wiebe 2008 ) and a large body of research has established that bilingualism promotes the development of executive function in young children (see Barac et al. 2014 for review; Adesope et al. 2010 for meta-analysis). Importantly, children’s level of executive functioning predicts academic success ( Best, Miller, and Naglieri 2011 ; McClelland, Morrison, and Holmes 2000 ), and academic success predicts long-term health and well-being ( Duncan, Ziol-Guest, and Kalil 2010 ). Therefore, bilingual education may have a serendipitous effect in that it not only promotes bilingualism but also enhances a crucial aspect of cognitive performance.

There is a large and growing literature investigating the relation between bilingualism and executive functioning in young children, but three studies are particularly relevant. The first study is interesting because the results were unexpected. Mezzacappa (2004) used the children’s Attention Network Task ( Fan et al. 2002 ) to assess executive functioning in 6-year-old children who varied in SES (middle-class or low) and ethnicity (White, African-American, or Hispanic). In addition to expected effects of SES, he found that Hispanic children outperformed the other groups, particularly on the most difficult condition. Although he did not collect information about children’s language proficiency or level of bilingualism, he noted that 69% of the Hispanic children spoke Spanish at home, making them at least somewhat bilingual. Mezzacappa proposed that this bilingualism was responsible for the superior executive function performance by children in that group.

The second study was a relatively small-scale study that examined children from low SES communities in which about 90% of children received free or reduced-price lunch. Esposito and Baker-Ward (2013) administered two executive function tasks to children in kindergarten, second grade and fourth grade who were in a bilingual education or English-only program. Their results showed that children in second and fourth grades in the bilingual program outperformed children in the English program on the trail-making task, an executive function task that has previously been shown to be performed better by bilingual than monolingual 8-year-olds ( Bialystok 2010 ). There were no differences between children in the two kindergarten programs, but all these children found the task to be difficult. Because of the small sample size, the results need to be considered more suggestive than definitive, but they point to the possibility that even limited exposure to bilingual education improves children’s executive function.

Another small-scale study conducted with a population of middle-class children from kindergarten through second grade produced somewhat different results. Kaushanskaya, Gross, and Buac (2014) examined the effects of classroom bilingualism on executive functioning as measured by task shifting as well as measures of verbal memory and word learning. For task switching, they used the Dimensional Change Card Sorting Task ( Frye, Zelazo, and Palfai 1995 ), a task previously found to be performed better by bilingual than monolingual preschool children ( Bialystok 1999 ). There were no performance differences between children in the two programs on the executive function shifting task, but the task was arguably too easy for the children since it is typically used with younger children, or on a test of verbal short-term memory. However, tests of verbal working memory and word learning were performed better by the children in the bilingual education program.

In these three examples, children who were assigned to groups either because of ethnicity ( Mezzacappa 2004 ) or education program ( Esposito and Baker-Ward 2013 ; Kaushanskaya, Gross, and Buac 2014 ) were compared to controls for their performance on executive function tasks. A different approach is to use exposure to bilingual education as a scaled variable to determine if it is associated with executive function performance and thereby avoid between-groups comparisons. Two studies by Bialystok and Barac (2012) investigated the relation between the amount of time young children had spent in an immersion program and performance on executive function tasks. Children from monolingual English-speaking homes who were attending schools in which instruction was either in Hebrew (Study 1) or French (Study 2) were administered executive function and metalinguistic tasks. The tasks were different in both studies, but the results were the same: performance on the metalinguistic task was related to children’s verbal ability and intelligence but performance on the executive function task was related to the length of time children had spent in the bilingual program and their degree of bilingualism. Similar results were reported in two studies by Nicolay and Poncelet (2013 , 2015 ) showing better performance on executive function tasks for children in French immersion programs. In these studies, children were followed longitudinally, ruling out initial differences in ability. Thus, the results show that children’s level of executive function performance is related to their degree of bilingualism and experience with bilingual education.

Is bilingual education for everyone?

There have always been questions about whether bilingual education programs were appropriate for all children or whether they were an exclusive option best suited for high-achieving students with strong family support (see review and discussion in Cummins and Swain 1986 ). Equally, some have argued that bilingualism itself is difficult and should be reserved as a ‘privilege’ for children who face no additional burdens from linguistic or other cognitive challenges, a position strongly disputed by Kohnert (2007) . Unsurprisingly, the answer is not simple, but the evidence that exists supports Kohnert’s view that bilingualism adds no further cost to children’s achievement regardless of their initial levels of language and cognitive ability.

Consider first the role of intelligence, a variable on which all children differ. In one of the first studies on this issue, Genesee (1976) examined the role of IQ as measured by a standardized test on the development of French second-language abilities for children who were learning French either through immersion or foreign language instruction in school. The main result was that IQ was related to reading ability and language use for all children, but there was no association between IQ and overall communication ability; children at all levels of intelligence communicated with similar effectiveness. Importantly, there were no interactions with the type of program in which children were learning French: low IQ children in the immersion and foreign language program performed similarly to each other on all language and cognitive measures, in both cases performing more poorly than children with higher IQ scores in both programs. Thus, there was no evidence of any negative effect of participation in an immersion program for children whose measured intelligence was below average.

More serious than low IQ, however, is the possible role that a learning disability, such as specific language impairment (SLI), might play in children’s response to bilingual education. The limited evidence for this question is similar to that found for IQ, namely, that the deficit associated with SLI is not further exacerbated by bilingual education and has the additional consequence of imparting at least some measure of proficiency in another language. Few studies have investigated this question in the context of bilingual education, perhaps because children with language impairment are widely discouraged from attending bilingual education programs, but an early study by Bruck (1982) assessed language and cognitive outcomes for children in kindergarten and first grade in French immersion programs, some of whom had been diagnosed with language impairment. These were Anglophone children being educated through French, and linguistic measures for both French and English were included. The crucial comparison was the progress found for language-impaired children in the French immersion program and similar children in a mainstream English instruction program. There were no significant differences between these groups. Even though these children struggled, they did not struggle more than they would if they were in the bilingual program. This issue of selecting the appropriate comparison is central to the debate. Trites (1978) , for example, argued against placing children with learning disabilities in French immersion programs, but his comparison was based on children without learning disabilities in those programs rather than children with learning disabilities in monolingual English programs.

Aside from the role of bilingual education in children’s language development, it is difficult to compare skills in the two languages for children with SLI because the areas of linguistic difficulty associated with this disorder vary across languages ( Kohnert, Windsor, and Ebert 2009 ). With this caveat in mind, a few studies have examined the effect of SLI on language development for children who grow up bilingually. Korkman et al. (2012) compared monolingual Swedish speakers and Swedish-Finnish bilingual children who were 5–7 years old on a range of language assessments in Swedish. About half of the children in each language group were typically developing and half had been diagnosed with SLI. As expected, children with SLI performed more poorly than typically developing children on these linguistic measures, an outcome required by definition, but there was no added burden from bilingualism and no interaction of bilingualism and language impairment. Bilingual children also obtained lower scores on some vocabulary measures, but this occurred equally for bilingual children in the typically developing and SLI groups and is consistent with large-scale studies comparing the vocabulary of monolingual and bilingual children ( Bialystok et al. 2010 ).

Paradis et al. (2003) took a different approach to investigating syntactic proficiency in children with SLI. Rather than comparing children with SLI to typically developing children, they compared three groups of 7-year-old children, all of whom had been diagnosed with SLI: monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, and English-French bilinguals. The sample was small and consisted of only 8 bilingual children, 21 English monolingual children, and 10 French monolingual children, so data were analyzed with non-parametric tests and results must be interpreted cautiously. The results showed no significant differences between the three groups of children in their mastery of morphosyntax; in other words, no additional delay to language acquisition could be attributed to bilingualism for children with SLI.

The most salient risk factor generally considered in this literature is not individual differences in children’s ability to become bilingual but rather low SES, a situation that applies to many bilingual Hispanic children in the US. Although it was discussed above in the context of testing outcomes of bilingual education, the issue is sufficiently important to warrant further consideration.

The main concern for Hispanic children from Spanish-speaking homes in the US is whether they will acquire adequate levels of English language proficiency and literacy to function in school and beyond. Although there is some controversy over this question, the majority of studies have shown improved outcomes with bilingual education ( Genesee and Lindholm-Leary 2012 ). This conclusion is supported by two major reviews and meta-analyses conducted first by Willig (1985) and then by Rolstad, Mahoney, and Glass (2005) for papers published after the Willig review. In a later review and meta-analysis, Francis, Lesaux, and August (2006) came to a broader and more emphatic conclusion: ‘there is no indication that bilingual instruction impedes academic achievement in either the native language or English, whether for language-minority students, students receiving heritage language instruction, or those enrolled in French immersion programs’ (397). The most persuasive evidence on this point comes from the large-scale longitudinal study and review conducted by Collier and Thomas (2004) that included every variety of bilingual education; the authors decide unequivocally for the superiority of bilingual education in developing the skills and knowledge of Hispanic and other at-risk children.

Contrary to this conclusion, Rossell and Baker (1996) argued that the effectiveness of bilingual education is inconclusive. As stated earlier, Rossell and Baker defined bilingual education narrowly and considered only programs that provided instruction through the first language for limited EP children, in other words, Spanish-speaking children in the US (although curiously they included some studies of Canadian French immersion in their analyses). However, this is only one of the many incarnations of bilingual education so while an evaluation of its effectiveness is important, that evaluation does not necessarily generalize to the broader concept, a point that Rossell and Baker acknowledge. Their review began with a list of 300 studies and then excluded 228 of them for a variety of methodological reasons, so the final sample of 72 studies that entered the meta-analysis may not be representative of this literature. However, Greene (1997) conducted a follow-up study from the same database using different inclusion criteria and reported that a meta-analysis found positive outcomes for bilingual education. The decision about inclusion or exclusion of specific studies is obviously crucial to the outcome; Rossell and Baker acknowledge that Willig’s (1985) positive conclusion can be traced to her choices on this important decision. However, it is impossible to adjudicate between these two conclusions regarding whether bilingual education is the most effective way to promote English language skills in limited English proficiency children ( Willig 1985 ) or not ( Rossell and Baker 1996 ) because the conclusions were based on different evidence. Yet, whether or not there are advantages, the evidence is clear that there is no cost to the development of English language skills in bilingual programs. What is completely uncontroversial is that bilingual education additionally maintains and develops Spanish skills in these children, an outcome that Rossell and Baker note but dismiss as irrelevant.

A different way of considering the impact of bilingual education on school outcomes for low SES Hispanic children in the US is to use data on the reclassification of children from ELL to EP, a decision made on the basis of English language and literacy test scores. In that sense, reclassification is an indication that adequate levels of English proficiency have been achieved. Lindholm-Leary and Block (2010) note that the probability of these children being designated as EP after 10 years of essentially mainstream English classrooms is only 40%, so the standard is low. However, Umansky and Reardon (2014) compared this reclassification rate for Hispanic students enrolled in either bilingual or English-only classrooms and found that these rates were lower in elementary school for children in bilingual programs than in English classrooms, but that the pattern reversed by the end of high school at which time children in bilingual programs had an overall higher rate of reclassification and better academic outcomes. As with some of the studies based on test scores, English proficiency takes several years to develop, but according to the reclassification data, it developed sooner in the bilingual programs.

In a review of studies that have examined the effect of various risk factors on children’s response to bilingual education, Genesee and Fortune (2014) found no case in which the bilingual education program contributed to lower academic outcomes for these children than for similar children in monolingual programs. Children with language disability, for example, will always find language tasks to be difficult; the important outcome of this research is that they do not find such tasks to be any more difficult in two languages than they are in one.

Evaluation of bilingual education for young children

In most evaluation research for educational programs, the conclusion tends to converge on a binary answer in which the program is considered to be either effective or not, or more or less effective than a control or alternative program. Given the complexity of bilingual education, such binary conclusions are inadequate. One reason is that independently of the quality of the program, bilingual education to some extent will almost inevitably help children to become bilingual or maintain bilingualism, an outcome that in itself is valuable but rarely considered in strict program evaluations. Some research has shown that even at early stages of bilingual education the cognitive advantages of bilingualism can be detected. Therefore, beyond the possible cognitive benefits of bilingualism described above are the intangible benefits of bilingual education such as potential to connect to extended family, increased opportunity for employment in a global economy, facilitation of travel and broadening of social spheres, and enrichment from widened horizons from language, arts, and culture. When successful, bilingual education offers a unique opportunity to impart the resources to sustain a valuable lifestyle asset. As one example, recent research has shown that lifelong bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve and delays the onset of symptoms of dementia (reviews in Bak and Alladi 2014 ; Bialystok et al. 2016 ).

These consequences of bilingualism, however, should not bias the interpretation of the evidence regarding the educational efficacy of bilingual education. To undertake that assessment, it is necessary to return to the distinction between bilingual education and the education of bilingual children. The first is a general question about the feasibility of educating children through a language in which they may not be fully proficient; the second is a specific question about the appropriateness of this option for children whose circumstances and abilities may mitigate those educational outcomes.

Both questions can be considered in terms of two factors that permeate many of these studies: the type of outcome measured and the demographic profile of the children in the program. Regarding the first, the main distinction is whether the studies assessed language proficiency or some other cognitive or academic outcome. Most studies included an evaluation of language proficiency in the majority language (English for Hispanic children in the US, French immersion children in Canada, community language for indigenous language programs in the US and elsewhere) and some included assessments of proficiency in the minority language, which is often the language of instruction (e.g. Spanish in the US, French in Canada, Maori in New Zealand). Fewer studies examined assessments of other educational outcomes, such as mathematics, subject curricula, cognitive ability, retention rates, attitudes, or enrollment in higher education. The second factor is whether the children assessed in these studies were at risk of academic failure for any number of reasons, such as low SES, poor language proficiency, or individual difficulty from learning, language, or social challenges. This combination of factors creates four categories for which there are three possible outcomes: (a) no measurable difference between bilingual and standard programs, (b) some advantage for participation in a bilingual program, or (c) hardship for students in bilingual programs that leads to poorer outcomes than would be obtained in traditional programs. If we consider that all bilingual programs additionally support some degree of bilingualism, then the only negative outcome would be (c).

Regarding language assessments, most studies show that proficiency in the majority language is comparable for children in bilingual and mainstream classes, providing that an appropriate comparison group is used and sufficient time is allowed. Children in Canadian French immersion programs develop English language skills that are at least comparable to those of other middle-class children in English programs (and sometimes higher but there may be other factors involved because of the selectivity of French immersion, see Hutchins 2015 ), and Hispanic children in US bilingual education programs eventually develop English language skills that are comparable to those of similar Hispanic children in English programs, although it takes several years to reach that level. Proficiency in the minority language is inevitably lower than is found for a native speaker of those languages, even when it is the language of instruction, but is invariably higher than levels obtained by children in English programs who have had little exposure to that language. For language proficiency, therefore, there is no evidence of a cost to the development of either language, although it may take several years to establish desired levels.

For other subject material, outcomes depend in part on the language of testing. As Macnamara (1967) showed long ago, the extent to which a weak language is used to conduct achievement tests can make the test equally a test of language proficiency, impeding children’s demonstration of proficiency in the tested content. In many cases, studies that assess academic achievement provide inadequate information about the potential involvement of language proficiency so the test results are sometimes indeterminate. At the same time, Mondt and colleagues (2011) demonstrated that simply by teaching a subject through a particular language makes proficiency in that subject more fluent when tested in the language of schooling. Thus, there are reciprocal relationships between academic achievement and the language of school instruction, and these relationships are flexible.

The second factor is the characteristics of the children themselves. Children entering school with any learning or language disability or social disadvantage will struggle to succeed, so an evaluation of bilingual education needs to hold constant these abilities and select the appropriate comparison group. Thus, the relevant question is whether children struggle disproportionately more if they are in a bilingual education program. Here, too, the evidence seems clear: there is no additional burden for children with specific challenges in bilingual programs than in single language programs if the appropriate comparison is made. But even if there were additional effort required by bilingual education, it needs to be evaluated in terms of the potential benefits for that child – the possibility of acquiring a heritage language, the opportunity to develop at least some proficiency in another language, and the potential for attaining the cognitive benefits of bilingualism.

Bilingual education is not perfect and it is not one thing. At the same time, the quality of the research is uneven and it is difficult to determine how much weight should be assigned to contradictory outcomes. The research generally pays inadequate attention to the social context in which these complex processes play out, such as home literacy, parental education, children’s levels of language proficiency, ability of parents to support children’s education in that language, and numerous other factors. Rossell and Baker (1996) claim that the research is inconclusive, and although there is still much to be learned, the weight of evidence is firmly on the side of bilingual education. In this brief review of a small portion of bilingual education programs in different countries and aimed at educating different kinds of children, there is no evidence that it creates measurable obstacles to children’s school achievement. Some studies show no advantage of bilingual education over other programs, but those need to be interpreted in terms of the benefits of learning another language and gaining access to the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Ultimately, a proper evaluation of bilingual education requires detailed description of the structure of the program, the quality of the teaching, and the match between children’s needs and abilities and the specific educational program being offered.

There is no single factor that can override the deep complexity of children’s development and prescribe a solution for an individual child, let alone a solution for all children. For both gifted children who are certain to excel and children who face challenges, the education program they follow, including participation in a bilingual program, may not fundamentally change their school experience. There is no credible evidence that bilingual education adds or creates burden for children, yet it is incontrovertible that it provides the advantage of learning another language and possibly the cognitive benefits of bilingualism. The over-riding conclusion from the available evidence is that bilingual education is a net benefit for all children in the early school years.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the US National Institutes of Health [grant number R01HD052523].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Education Policy

State of language rights and bilingual education 50 years after lau vs. nichols.

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Leslie villegas, feb. 6, 2024.

January 21, 2024 marked the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court case of 1974 which enshrined in law that students identified as English learners (ELs) must be provided with the necessary services to “ fully participate ” in their education, regardless of their home language. The class action case was brought forth on behalf of 1,800 Cantonese-speaking students from Chinese backgrounds enrolled in San Francisco Unified School District who were not being provided supplemental language instruction. The plaintiffs argued that without the appropriate linguistic supports, these students could not reasonably access equal educational opportunities they were entitled to under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin.

The provisions of Lau require that every school district serving EL-classified students have their own plan to ensure these students meaningful access to the district's educational program. To be sure, the scope of Lau’s impact has only broadened since 1974. For example, in San Francisco alone, there were 14,844 EL-classified students in 2022–23 speaking 51 different languages. Nationally, students classified as ELs represent roughly 10 percent of the K–12 population at around five million students.

On January 22, the School of Educational Studies at Claremont University hosted a webinar to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Lau and reflect on issues of advocacy, civil rights, policy and practice implementation. The event served as a pulse check for the state of language rights and bilingual education in the U.S. over the last 50 years as a result of Lau. So how have things changed since then?

On the positive side, several panelists spoke about the fact that research and evidence to support bilingual education has grown. There is consensus that bilingual education, including dual language programs that provide instruction in English and a partner language such as Spanish or Mandarin, is the best approach for students identified as ELs. Yet, as the benefits of bilingualism have become more amplified, these programs are increasingly saturated with English-dominant students, shared several panelists. In Texas, for example, Celina Moreno, president and CEO of the Intercultural Development Research Association shared that only 20 percent of EL-identified students participate in dual language programs, and the rest are still being educated in English as a Second Language (ESL) and other bilingual programs.

Despite progress on the research front, a resounding sentiment among panelists was that the promise of equitable access to education for students whose first language is not English remains unfulfilled and incomplete. As Edward Steinman, the original plaintiff attorney in Lau stated, policies such as Lau are not self-executing, they are just words unless reified with action, and there still seems to be barriers standing in the way of aligning policy and practice.

First, the education of EL-classified students is still highly politicized, potentially even more so than in 1974. Several panelists expressed that there still seems to be a need to win over the “hearts and minds” of those in positions of power who make programmatic and resource decisions that shape these students’ educational prospects. Michael Robert, a superintendent from Arizona shared his experience navigating a political landscape where those in positions of power continue to try to deny EL-identified students access to dual language programs.

This response is related to a misconception that still permeates the public consciousness that language is to blame for these students’ “underachievement”, when in reality underfunded schools and inadequate practices lead to inequitable access to education and hence, lower outcomes. Instead, panelists argued, focus should be placed on how to increase dedicated funding to design linguistically and culturally appropriate programs for these students.

Lastly, as Eugene Garcia, professor emeritus at Arizona State University expressed, fulfilling the intent of Lau is not possible without properly trained teachers in the classroom. Unfortunately, the teacher workforce has not been immune to anti-immigrant socio-political ideologies that position speaking a language other than English as a deficit. Many would-be bilingual teachers who grow up in the U.S. experience what Cristina Alfaro, associate vice president of international affairs at San Diego State University, described as “language shame,” about their lack of proficiency in their home language. As a result, not only is there a shortage of bilingual educators entering the profession, but there is also a lack of awareness, understanding, and capacity by those already working in schools and districts on how to build coherent educational programs for linguistically diverse students.

Looking at the next 50 years, panelists were hopeful that we could continue to break down these barriers by centering the benefits of multilingualism on EL-identified students, better defining and differentiating what equity means for these students, and creating better partnerships between schools, the broader community, and research and policy practitioners.

After Lau, San Francisco Unified entered into a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice to bring them into compliance with their civil rights obligations to EL-classified students. The consent decree was in place until 2019, which means that it took the district 45 years to rectify their shortcomings to students classified as ELs. There is no denying that Lau is a cornerstone of the larger fabric of civil rights legislation that protects linguistically diverse students, but 45 years is too long to realize change for these students. Let us hope it does not take 50 more years to bring equitable learning environments to life for EL-classified students.

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Bilingual Education: Programs Support Essay

Argument in support of bilingual education programs.

More than three decades after its inception, bilingual education is still entangled in myriad controversies. Although the initial structure of bilingual education program has been changed severally, the debate about whether bilingual education should or should not be practiced is not likely to die away in the near future.

Most importantly, these conflicting parties have been unable to agree on whether bilingual education yields any considerable value for L2 English speakers. On one hand, the intransigent proponents of bilingual education argue that, the program provides a common ground upon which non-English speaking children can compete favorably with their English speaking counterparts in technical subjects such as science and mathematics.

Contrastingly, opponents argue that bilingual education system impede the acquisition and development of English language among L2 speakers; thus, delaying their assimilation into the American society. Furthermore, this debate has also attracted the attention of multiculturalists who perceive bilingualism as an effective method of preserving immigrants’ language and cultural identities.

Conversely, this perception has also been criticized in that, immigrants already in the United States should not retain their language, but should be assimilated into American society through exclusive English language teaching. Nonetheless, in spite of the inconclusive research findings about accrued benefits of bilingual education, this essay will explore these controversial presuppositions, with an aim of proving the worthiness of bilingual education.

To begin with, opponents of bilingual education argue that various people have succeeded without bilingual education (Duignan). The latter author underscores that, although the above claim have taken place under some special circumstances, the individuals owe their success to other second language inputs.

This implies that, whereas these individuals’ may not have been subjected to bilingual education per se, they experienced de facto bilingual programs. According to Cummins (255), proponents of this claim often cite Richard Rodriguez (1982) and Fernando de la Pena (1991) to support their argument against bilingual education. Rodriquez claimed that he succeeded to attain high level of English proficiency even though he never received bilingual education (Duignan).

However, Cummins (256) argues that Rodriquez claim is not entirely truthful because he had two crucial advantages that led to his success in English language proficiency. For instance, Rodriquez was not an immigrant and he grew alongside other English speaking peers in Sacramento, California. This interaction exposed him to informal English language inputs.

Apparently most immigrants’ children do not have this advantage as most of them rarely use English outside their school setting (Duignan). Moreover, Rodriguez had access to numerous English books, which further improved his English language skills. Therefore, his success should not be adopted to eradicate the essentiality of bilingual education.

On the same note, de la Pena allege that having immigrated into United States at the age nine, he succeeded to attain superior competency in English language without undergoing through the bilingual education system (Cummins 257). This occurred in spite of the fact that he did not have prior encounter with English language prior to immigrating to the United States.

However, his case is weakened by the fact that, back in Mexico he was in fifth grade, thus had a good grasp of Spanish language and advanced subject matter. Correspondingly, opponents of bilingual education base their argument on the fact the system has attracted augmented negative public opinion.

However, Cummins (262) accentuate that this negativity is as a result of biased questionnaires that are adopted during those surveys. The latter author highlight that these questionnaires are often subjective and most questions are confusing to the respondents. For instance, questions are constructed in a manner that portrays mother tongue education as a great hindrance to the pursuance of higher education, and that it reduces employability of such students (Duignan).

On the other hand, Cummins (261) accentuates that if the questionnaires were not biased most parents would support bilingual education. According to Cummins (262), prior research has positively indicated that most respondents concur that L1 provides a solid foundation for L2 acquisition. Furthermore, most respondents support the notion that bilingualism yields both economic and psycho-cognitive benefits (Garcia 128).

The above analysis implies that the number of those against bilingual education is much less than what is often depicted in the public opinion surveys. Apparently, most opponents are frustrated with some specific practices of bilingual education, but not the entire system (Cummins 262). Most importantly, some opponents could be opposed to some regulations associated with bilingual education, thus their opinion would be different if those regulations were to be modified (Duignan).

Furthermore, research has indicated that most academic publications supported bilingual education except for some newspapers and magazines articles, which have often expressed a negative opinion. Needless to say, the fact that some people hold a negative perception about bilingual education is fallacious and should not be adopted to downplay the essential benefits of bilingual education.

In his article, Garcia (pp. 126-129) supports bilingual education due to the numerous benefits associated with the program. The latter author underscore that opponents of bilingual education in California blame the program for poor academic achievements, yet international and national researches have indicated that bilingualism attract myriad psycho-cognitive advantages.

In addition, Garcia (127) cites previous studies conducted among Hispanic descent students, which showed that bilingual children who interacted with bilingual programs showed greater potential in academics than monolinguals who attended English only programs. Most importantly, the latter group was shown to have faired poorly on standardized tests, portrayed a poor school attendance trend and their drop out rate is slightly higher than those attending bilingual education programs.

Furthermore, Garcia (128) cites several other studies that have portrayed that first language is an essential tool in promoting academic excellence among children and adults with inadequate formal education background. As a matter of fact, first language accelerates the acquisition of second language and promotes its’ usage in academic activities (Garcia 126). Thus, bilingual education programs should be given the precedence it deserves due to the numerous societal benefits attached to its’ practice.

Similarly, the practice of bilingual education has often been criticized due of insufficient studies to support its’ effectiveness. Conversely, although some studies have supplied negative results about the effectiveness of bilingual education, most of these conclusions are not entirely against bilingual education, rather researchers are concerned with scanty bilingual education efficacy studies (Duignan).

However, this allegation against bilingual education is not convincing and more often than not the problem is mainly on semantics than the actual practice of bilingual education. Cummins (265) underscores that the concept of bilingual education is rather dynamic and the controversies could because the parties are discussing different forms of bilingualism.

Nonetheless for the purpose of this paper, bilingual education is regarded as the transitional bilingual education whereby an L2 English learner receives academic instruction in his/her L1 in the lower grades in preparation for complete immersion in English instruction classes in latter grades. The idea behind this argument is that learning in L1 will enable the learner to achieve competency in English language based on literacy transfer concept.

Moreover, although some studies have often quoted the immersion programs in Texas, McAllen and El Paso as superior than bilingual education, Garcia(127) accentuates that the cited studies are actually bilingual education, but with a different practical approach.

On the same note, the latter author also underscores that the sample size for the above studies was extremely small and was carried out within a very short time frame, thus their results are anecdotal. On this note, the fact that a vast number of researches support bilingual education efficacy is evident that children exposed to these programs are more successful that those in all-English programs. Perhaps, these criticisms should be directed at the programs design than on the entire system.

To quote my own personal experience, bilingual education programs have enabled me to attain high level of French and English fluency although none of these languages is my native language.

This situation would not have been possible if I was immersed in English only or French only programs thus bilingual education has brought immense benefits to me; such that, I am able to utilize these languages in the classroom and they might come in handy in my afterschool life. The fact that globalization is opening new opportunities designate that bilinguals will have a greater advantage over monolinguals, who are immersed in English only programs.

Thus, the opponents should be perceived as individuals’ who are only concerned with instant results. This is based on the fact that, they cite that bilingual education delays assimilation of students into the American society. Although bilingual education process might be perceived as long and daunting, the end results justify the means. Hence, there is no reason to deny immigrants students a program that is beneficial to their lives both in the present and in future.

In a nutshell, in spite of inconclusive studies on bilingual education efficacy its’ significance cannot be overemphasized. On this note, obtainable studies indicate that bilingual education has performed exceptionally well and that with proper program improvement strategies, it has the potentiality of yielding even better results.

Although the author does not deny the fact that some elements of bilingual education might be wanting, the biggest problem is not about the practice of bilingualism, but on the availability of books to facilitate the adaptation of L1 and L2 within the bilingual education programs. As indicated above, Richard Rodriguez success was due to his exposure to vast English literature books, which enhanced his English language proficiency in the absence of bilingual education instruction.

Similarly, the current bilingual education systems can borrow a leaf from Richard Rodriguez case and ensure that students have unlimited access to books in order to cultivate a reading culture that would enhance the students success in attaining English language proficiency. As a matter of fact, learners can utilize these books to enhance their literacy levels of both L1 and L2.

Against this backdrop, bilingual education practices should be allowed to continue owing to the numerous benefits outlined above. Furthermore, the shortcomings of this program should be identified and dealt with conclusively in order to pave way for better bilingual systems.

Works Cited

Cummins, Jim. “Bilingual Education in the United States: Power, Pedagogy, and Possibility”. Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 20. 3, 1998, 255- 270. Print.

Duignan, Peter, J . Bilingual Education: A Critique , 1998. Web.

Garcia, Ofelia. “Bilingual Education Is Beneficial.” In Williams, Mary E. ed. Are Multicultural Approaches Good For Education? Opposing Viewpoints . San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. pp. 126-129. Print.

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Bibliography

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The Benefits of Bilingual Education and Its Impact on Student Learning and Growth

Approximately 5 million students in the United States are English language learners, and the number of English language learners (ELLs) in the US public school system continues to rise steadily, especially in more urbanized school districts.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), students who speak English as a second language are more likely to struggle with academics, and only about 67 percent will graduate from public high school in four years—whereas the average for all students is 84 percent. ELL students can better develop their English proficiency and close the gap in achievement by participating in language assistance programs or bilingual education programs, the NCES explains.

The benefits of bilingual education can begin with students in elementary school and follow them throughout their lives. Education’s impact can lead to a variety of outcomes depending on whether ELL students learn English in a monolingual or bilingual environment. Educators in diverse classrooms or working as school leaders should consider the benefits of bilingual education when creating curricula and establishing desired student learning outcomes.

What Is Bilingual Education?

While bilingual education can take many forms, it strives to incorporate multiple languages into the process of teaching. For example, since there is such a large Spanish-speaking population in the United States, many primary and secondary school students can benefit from educational environments where they are learning in both English and Spanish.

Bilingual education can often be the most effective when children are beginning preschool or elementary school. If children grow up speaking Spanish as their primary language, it can be difficult for them to be placed in English-speaking elementary schools and be expected to understand their teachers and classmates. In a bilingual classroom, however, young students can further establish their foundation of Spanish as well as English, better preparing them for the rest of their education.

Of course, this works for students who begin school speaking any language as their primary language. Children whose parents have come to the United States from another country may have limited English skills when they first begin elementary school. Teachers working in bilingual education classrooms will balance their use of two languages when teaching math, science, history, and other subjects to help these students develop a stronger foundation of their first language as well as English as their second language.

Academic Benefits

Students can benefit in many ways from participating in bilingual education programs or classrooms. Some of the benefits of bilingual education relate to intellect. For example, research has shown that students who can speak and write in multiple languages have cognitive advantages over their monolingual peers. Those who learn a second or third language from a young age are able to develop communication skills and a higher degree of literacy. Children who grow up in bilingual environments develop a keen awareness of how language works and have a stronger foundation for learning additional languages in the future.

Students can also benefit academically from bilingual education. Students who pursue higher education are typically required to take a foreign language at the collegiate level, so those who have been exposed to bilingual educational environments before college—and speak two or more languages—have an advantage over their peers. They can advance in their studies and feel comfortable with multiple communities of students on their campuses.

Students who are exposed to multiple languages throughout high school and college can also have long-term career benefits. Their proficiency in multiple languages is an advantage when they graduate and enter the workplace as professionals. Every industry has a need for effective communicators who can speak multiple languages to meet the needs of the growing number of English language learners in the United States. International operations also have a great need for professionals who can speak multiple languages and represent US-based organizations and companies.

Growth beyond Academics

While there are many benefits of bilingual education related to school and work, bilingual education programs also have a huge impact on students’ cultural and social growth. Children who grow up speaking English as a second language often come from culturally diverse backgrounds. Incorporating cultural education in the classroom can help create enriching academic experiences for all students.

Exploring multiple languages in the classroom provides a foundation for cultural education that allows students to learn and grow alongside classmates from a different cultural background. As a result, students learn to become more adaptable and more aware of the world around them.

To encourage the academic and cultural development of students in bilingual education settings, teachers should have a strong foundation in education and leadership. They should demonstrate a passion for teaching as well as an understanding of how language and culture work together in their students’ academic journeys. Educators should be aware of the role that policies play in the educational environments they cultivate and have an understanding of how to best represent their students’ cultural backgrounds.

Pursue a Master of Arts in Teaching or Master of Education in Education Policy and Leadership

To implement the best teaching practices in bilingual education classrooms, teachers should be equipped with a foundation in transformational leadership and cultural awareness. To that end, teachers looking to have a meaningful impact on the lives of their students can further their own education and pursue an advanced degree in education policy and leadership. Through programs like American University’s Master of Arts in Teaching and Master of Education in Education Policy and Leadership , educators can broaden their worldviews, engaging in topics such as education law and policy, quantitative research in education, and educational leadership and organizational change.

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Transformational Leadership in Education

Bilingual Kidspot, “5 Amazing Benefits of a Bilingual Education”

Learning English, “Number of English Learners in US Schools Keeps Rising”

National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics”

National Center for Education Statistics, “English Language Learners in Public Schools”

Pew Research Center, “6 Facts About English Language Learners in U.S. Public Schools”

USA Today, “More US Schools Teach in English and Spanish, But Not Enough to Help Latino Kids”

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Teachers’ implementation of bilingual education in Taiwan: challenges and arrangements

• Published: 22 August 2022
• Volume 24 , pages 461–472, ( 2023 )

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• Keith M. Graham   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9277-8589 1 &
• Yi-Fen Yeh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7843-7304 1  

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This qualitative study reports on the early implementation of bilingual education by teachers working in pre-tertiary contexts in Taiwan, with a specific focus on perceived challenges and the resulting bilingual education arrangements. Taiwan’s public schools have begun to implement bilingual education in response to the Bilingual 2030 policy. Several scholars have identified potential challenges that may affect implementation. However, little is known about the challenges perceived by teachers and their effect on the implementation of bilingual education. This study addresses this gap using data collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers from various academic disciplines in five primary schools and five junior high schools in northern Taiwan. Three challenges and six bilingual education arrangements were reported by the participating teachers. The paper discusses how these challenges may produce varying arrangements that are designed to achieve different outcomes, highlighting the need for policymakers to clearly define the intended outcomes of the bilingual education policy.

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Introduction

García ( 2009 ) described bilingual education as an “umbrella term covering a wide spectrum of practice and policy” (p. 9). Given this, bilingual education has been conceptualized and implemented through different language and learning arrangements worldwide (Baker & Wright, 2017 ). Taiwan has recently implemented its own bilingual education policy to “build upon Taiwan’s advantages as a Mandarin-speaking nation” and “enhance young people’s English communication capabilities” (National Development Council, 2021 , p. 1). For primary and secondary education, the Bilingual 2030 policy calls for “optimizing bilingual conditions in a balanced manner” (National Development Council, 2021 , p. 8), mainly through “using English for teaching English classes … Mandarin for Mandarin and social science classes, [and] bilingual teaching … for other subjects” (National Development Council, 2021 , p. 21). The planned implementation of the policy is rapid, where “one in every three schools is expected to implement bilingual teaching” by 2030 (National Development Council, 2021 , p. 18).

Though the policy is relatively new, first released in December 2018 (National Development Council, 2018 ), scholars have already called attention to the emerging challenges to the policy, which may drive Taiwan’s bilingual education toward undesired outcomes (e.g., Chen et al., 2020 ; Lin & Wu, 2021 ; Wang, 2021 ). While challenges have been identified, discussion of their effects on teachers’ practices remains limited. Thus, this study explores teachers’ perceptions of challenges in Taiwan’s bilingual education and the resulting bilingual education arrangements teachers report implementing in their classrooms.

Conceptual framework

The conceptual framework of this paper is driven by two propositions. First, bilingual education systems are created when forces (ideologies) influence the creation of educational policies (Mehisto et al., 2015 ). Second, when the resulting educational policies are not adequately defined, various arrangements of bilingual education may emerge (e.g., Czura & Papaja, 2013 ), each suited to achieving different goals. These two propositions are expanded upon below specifically as they pertain to the bilingual education system in Taiwan.

Forces and policies in Taiwan’s bilingual education

In Taiwan, there are three main forces that drive education policy: internationalization and economics (National Development Council, 2018 ), and politics (Hsu, 2021 ). The original bilingual policy document, Blueprint for Developing Taiwan into a Bilingual Nation by 2030 (henceforth, the Blueprint), was explicit about goals of “raising the nation’s international perspective” (internationalization; National Development Council, 2018 , p. 2) and “spurring the prosperity of our national economy” (economics; National Development Council, 2018 , p. 6). Similar language can be found in the updated Bilingual 2030 document (National Development Council, 2021 ). While neither of these forces are new, Wang ( 2021 ) suggested that past education policies have failed to produce outcomes that have satisfied the internationalization and economics forces, thus spurring Taiwan’s pursuit of a new bilingual education policy.

However, apart from these policy documents, it has been suggested that a third force—politics—may also be driving the bilingual education reform. According to Hsu, the bilingual policy “enables Taiwan to assert a de-Sinicized national identity in opposition to China” (p. 355), while also serving “as a method to further secure close relations with the United States” (p. 358). Similar to the other two forces, this force is not new, and the relationship between politics and language education policy has existed for decades in Taiwan. Yeh and Chern ( 2020 ) asserted that “English has functioned as the medium for Taiwan to strengthen its cooperation and exchanges with other countries in diplomacy, business, culture, technology, academia, and so forth” (p. 175). They noted that in response to these forces, the bilingual education policy has shifted policy from a traditional view of English as a subject to a more contemporary view of English as a tool for communication.

Regarding this bilingual turn in Taiwan’s education, several scholars have raised concerns about the nature and direction of the policy. Huang ( 2021 ) argued that the policy is vague and unclear in defining the intended bilingual education system. While the Bilingual 2030 policy states that schools should “implement bilingual teaching” (National Development Council, 2021 , p. 18), it fails to define bilingual teaching. Moreover, Ferrer and Lin ( 2021 ) argued that rather than being a policy for bilingualism, the “policy rhetoric is over-whelmingly English-focused” (p. 6), and Lin and Wu ( 2021 ) expressed concern that this approach to bilingual education would lead to it being interpreted as English teaching. Wang ( 2021 ) similarly asserted that the bilingual education policy might be the next iteration of Taiwan’s English language education policy, not necessarily bilingual education at all.

Alongside the lack of a clear definition of bilingual education are concerns regarding insufficient teacher training (Chen et al., 2020 ; Lin & Wu, 2021 ; Wang, 2021 ). As Chen et al. ( 2020 ) and Graham et al. ( 2021 ) have noted, teachers who lack proper training are unlikely to implement bilingual education as intended and will likely rely on their strengths and past experiences when deciding on their bilingual education arrangement. While the government has been actively hiring native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) in the hope of mitigating the current shortfall of local trained teaching talent, several scholars have raised questions regarding NESTs’ own level of training and familiarity with Taiwan’s education system (Chen et al., 2020 ; Graham et al., 2021 ; Lin & Wu, 2021 ).

One final concern that has been raised is how bilingual education may conflict with Taiwan’s current academic culture, one that is primarily driven by exams (Chou & Ching, 2012 ). Lin and Wu ( 2021 ) have noted that many schools purposefully choose non-nationally tested subjects to avoid negative academic consequences. Further, Chen et al. ( 2020 ) observed that bilingual education classes did not always provide instruction on the appropriate content, substantiating worries that bilingual education will negatively impact academic outcomes.

The above studies have identified several challenges that may hinder Taiwan from realizing the intended bilingual education system, though what exactly is intended remains ill-defined (Ferrer & Lin, 2021 ; Huang, 2021 ; Lin & Wu, 2021 ). These challenges may produce a range of bilingual education arrangements within the country (e.g., Czura & Papaja, 2013 ), some representing a bilingual education as intended by policymakers and others markedly deviating from the policy. While scholars have provided various acronyms and modifiers to define different arrangements of bilingual education (Brinton & Snow, 2017 ), these terms are often interpreted in varying ways (Airey, 2016 ; Macaro, 2018 ). Therefore, rather than using these terms, defining bilingual education arrangements across a spectrum of learning goals and language use may provide more clarity about the nature of teachers’ bilingual education practices. Toward this end, this study uses the bilingual education arrangements grid to define the arrangements Taiwan’s teachers plan to implement in response to the perceived challenges of bilingual education.

The bilingual education arrangements grid

The bilingual education arrangements grid, shown in Fig.  1 , was designed to define learning goals and language uses in a bilingual education classroom. Scholars such as Brinton and Snow ( 2017 ), Macaro ( 2018 ), among others have previously defined arrangements along a single continuum ranging from language learning to content learning. This continuum has been helpful in understanding how different arrangements may target different learning goals, but it assumes use of only the target language. In bilingual education, consideration of the local language is equally important as the target language, rendering the use of a single continuum insufficient. To adequately describe bilingual education, a second continuum is needed that ranges from target language use to local language use. Thus, the bilingual education arrangements grid builds on previous single-spectrum models by defining arrangements using two continuums: a learning continuum and a language continuum.

Bilingual Education Arrangements Grid. Note “Bilingual Education Arrangements Grid” by Keith M. Graham is licensed under CC BY 4.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ). https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16551369.v4

Running vertically along the grid is the learning continuum, which describes the focus of learning in the classroom—content, language, or both. Here, content learning is defined as the learning of the “subject specific conventions, norms, and values that define disciplinary areas” (Dafouz & Smit, 2020 , p. 60). Language learning, on the other hand, focuses on the development of communicative skills that conform to “socially conventionalized situated practices” (Dafouz & Smit, 2020 , p. 60). Learning of these academic communicative practices may occur at various levels of language, including academic vocabulary, grammar, and discourse-level organization. In the context of an academic discipline, this is often referred to as academic literacies (Coyle & Meyer, 2021 ; Dafouz & Smit, 2020 ; Lin, 2016 ). García ( 2009 ) drew a clear distinction between language courses and bilingual education, indicating that “bilingual education programs teach content through an additional language” (p. 6). Thus, the learning continuum begins with an arrangement labeled content learning. In a content learning arrangement, the only outcome that the instructor expects for students is the learning of academic content, or in other words, the development of an understanding of the academic discipline. While traditionally, most classrooms, bilingual or not, tend to be focused on content learning, Meyer et al. ( 2015 ) criticized that “the teaching of academic language seems to be neglected” (p. 44), that is, academic literacies are not explicitly addressed in instruction. These scholars further explain: “The consequences of a lack of awareness and focus on academic literacies may well impact on the construction and communication of deep knowledge” (Meyer et al., 2015 , p. 44). This has led Lin ( 2016 ) and Coyle and Meyer ( 2021 ) to advocate for more attention to academic literacies and language across the curriculum. This attention to academic language alongside content is labeled as a content–language learning arrangement. The other end of the continuum is labeled as a language learning arrangement. While García ( 2009 ), among others (Baker & Wright, 2017 ; Ball et al., 2015 ; Coyle et al., 2010 ; Macaro, 2018 ), were firm on defining bilingual education as focused on content learning, some courses within a bilingual education system may set language learning, or academic literacies, as an outcome (e.g., the language course in an adjunct model or strict-separation models; Brinton & Snow, 2017 ; García, 2009 ) while leaving instruction in the academic discipline to other courses. Thus, the continuum includes a language learning arrangement to allow for such courses to be identified and defined in bilingual education settings.

Running horizontally across the grid is the language continuum, which describes the role languages take in the classroom. As Baker and Wright ( 2017 ) lamented, whether right or wrong, bilingual education has been defined both as settings that “foster bilingualism” as well as settings where simply “bilingual children are present” (p. 97). Thus, this continuum spans from target language dominant to local language dominant. A target language dominant arrangement best resembles what García ( 2009 ) termed as flexible convergent. In this arrangement, use of the target language is the primary goal, and any use of the local language is simply for support, rather than as an outcome. On the other side of the continuum is local language dominant. In this arrangement, most instruction occurs in the local language, and the target language is viewed as a bonus rather than as an explicit outcome. Generally, the target language is rarely used for learning, although words or simple classroom language in the target language may be used in this arrangement. Between these two arrangements is language multiplicity. In contrast to the other two arrangements, in a language multiplicity arrangement, both the target and local language are set as outcomes and used for learning. Students in this arrangement are expected to engage meaningfully with content material and communicate in both languages within the class.

Together, the learning and language continuums can describe the various arrangements practiced within a bilingual education system. Though in Taiwan, various terms (e.g., content and language integrated learning [CLIL], English-medium instruction [EMI]) are often used to define bilingual education (Chen & Lin, 2021 ; Chen et al., 2020 ; Graham et al., 2021 ; Lin & Wu, 2021 ; Tsou, 2021 ), whether or not these terms constitute bilingual education continues to be vigorously debated (Airey, 2016 ; Baker & Wright, 2017 ; Ball et al., 2015 ; Brinton & Snow, 2017 ; Coyle & Meyer, 2021 ; García, 2009 ; Macaro, 2018 ). The bilingual education arrangements grid attempts to circumvent these disagreements by allowing for arrangements to be defined in relation to practices, thus preventing confusion that could arise from around poorly defined terminology.

The current study

The preceding two sections identified current challenges to Taiwan’s bilingual education system, and a grid of possible bilingual education arrangements was introduced. While several studies have reported scholars’ observations and concerns regarding bilingual education, the identified challenges have not been connected to bilingual education arrangements. Moreover, while scholars’ voices have been registered, the voices of teachers remain absent. These gaps deserve attention as the challenges acknowledged by teachers ultimately drive their decisions in planning bilingual education arrangements for their classrooms. Thus, this study seeks to address this by drawing connections between the challenges acknowledged by teachers and the bilingual education arrangements they report implementing in their classrooms. Specifically, this study addresses the following research questions:

What challenges do teachers perceive in Taiwan’s bilingual education system?

How do these challenges affect teachers’ reported implementation of bilingual education arrangements?

This study takes a qualitative approach to examine the challenges and arrangements of bilingual education in four cities in northern Taiwan. All local and national research ethics guidelines were adhered to while conducting this study.

Participating schools and teachers

Various purposeful sampling techniques were used to recruit participants for this study with the goal of “document[ing] diversity” and “identify[ing] important common patterns that are common across the diversity” (Patton, 2015 , p. 267). We began with purposeful random quota sampling, a process in which “a predetermined number of cases are selected to fill important categories of cases in the larger population” (Patton, 2015 , p. 268), with the goal of recruiting instructors from one elementary school and one junior high school from each of the four major cities in northern Taiwan—Keelung City, New Taipei City, Taipei City, and Taoyuan City—to account for the effects of varying local policies. We did not actively seek out high schools because, according to the Ministry of Education, only 12 public senior high schools offered bilingual experimental classes across all of Taiwan at the time of the study (Ministry of Education, 2020 ). Within this quota, we sought to achieve maximum variation sampling, where researchers are “purposefully picking a wide range of cases to get variations on dimensions of interest” (Patton, 2015 , p. 267); this was achieved by recruiting a sample of bilingual teachers who had been trained as content or English teachers, taught bilingual education through a variety of disciplines, and were working in schools with varying levels of experience with bilingual education. While conducting the study, we became aware of other schools that offered bilingual classes that either were in the process of applying to become government-recognized bilingual schools or had no current plans to apply for this status. Through our contacts, we expanded our recruitment to include variation in this respect.

Table 1 provides information on the participating teachers. In total, teachers from five elementary schools and five junior high schools were included in the study. Half of these schools were located in Taipei City ( n elementary  = 2; n junior high  = 3), while the other cities had one elementary and one junior high school each, except Keelung City, which had no bilingual junior high schools at the time of the study. Seven schools were officially recognized as bilingual schools by the government, two were in the process of applying for official recognition (Schools G and I), and one school had no plans to become a bilingual school (School H). At the school with no plans to apply for bilingual status, the teacher (JT4) had been assigned to the school through a government bilingual training program, and only a limited number of students at the school received bilingual instruction. Half of the schools were in their first year of implementing bilingual education implementation, three were in their second year (Schools B, F, and I), and two were in their third (School D) and fourth (School J) years.

From the 10 schools, 12 teachers ( n female  = 10; n male  = 2) agreed to be interviewed for this study. All of these teachers had at least three or more years of experience in local schools, and all were citizens of Taiwan. Half of them held permanent teacher licenses, and half held provisional licenses, with three enrolled in a permanent license program. Six of the teachers were trained in their content area, five were trained as English teachers, and one held degrees in both their subject area and English teaching.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with each teacher, with the exception of two teachers at School J who preferred to be interviewed together. Prior to the interviews, participants were informed of the purpose of the study and of their rights as study participants. All participants gave their consent for the interview to be recorded and for the findings to be disseminated under the condition of anonymity. All interviews were held in quiet, private rooms at the teachers’ respective schools.

Interviews were conducted bilingually in Mandarin and English by the first author and a research assistant and ranged in length from 41 to 93 min (mean length 57 min). The choice of language at any given time was driven by the participant’s preference. All interviews involved some language switching, which at times was done for clarification while at other times was simply part of the natural flow of conversation between two bilinguals. Eight participants used English for the majority of the interviews, two used a combination of English and Mandarin, and two chose to speak mostly Mandarin. The first author communicated in both languages throughout the interviews, as needed.

The semi-structured interviews were facilitated with the use of a researcher-created interview guide. Questions for the interview guide were designed around the ROAD-MAPPING Framework (Dafouz & Smit, 2020 ), composed of six dimensions describing the multidimensional nature of bilingual education. The first author adapted the framework for use in a pre-tertiary context and employed the interview guide to ensure all dimensions were discussed. Additionally, the first author asked impromptu follow-up questions throughout to elicit details for each dimension. Below are the subjects for questions posed for each dimension:

Roles of English: ways the teacher uses languages in their classroom

Academic Disciplines: how bilingual education has changed their teaching; the balance of content and language objectives

Management: impact of top-down policies on teaching

Agents: student reactions to bilingual education; teacher collaboration

Practices and Processes: strategies for bilingual teaching

Internationalization and Glocalization: beliefs regarding bilingual education policies globally, nationally, and locally

Though ROAD-MAPPING was initially developed for use in higher education, it has been applied in other levels of education as well (Graham et al., 2021 ). Smit and Dafouz ( 2012 ) contended that higher education exhibits unique features, which justify its differentiation from compulsory education, perhaps most prominently with respect to the dimension of internationalization and glocalization. Nonetheless, governments are increasingly seeking to internationalize compulsory education in ways similar to higher education (e.g., Taiwan; National Development Council, 2018 , 2021 ), suggesting that the ROAD-MAPPING dimensions may be increasingly valid for describing these changes at the primary and secondary levels of education as well.

Data analysis and researcher reflexivity

Interview recordings were first transcribed using automated transcription software and cleaned by the first author. Data were then coded in several cycles using procedures detailed by Miles et al. ( 2020 ). In the first cycle, transcripts were coded using a combination of in-vivo and descriptive coding. Then, data and first cycle codes were read and grouped into pattern codes. Pattern coding was conducted across several rounds using a process of constant comparison, confirming themes in the data until final themes were determined. Throughout this process, the first author also utilized jottings and analytic memoing as a way to facilitate “the researcher’s reflections and thinking processes about the data” (Miles et al., 2020 ).

Two types of analyst triangulation were utilized to enhance the credibility of the findings. Patton ( 2015 ) noted that researchers “can learn a great deal about the accuracy, completeness, fairness, and perceived validity of their data” by engaging participants in the review process. All participants were provided with a draft of this manuscript and were asked for feedback. The second type of analyst triangulation utilized was what Patton ( 2015 ) refers to as the “critical friend review” (p. 668). Because the first author was the sole data analyst, the second author acted as a “critical friend” throughout the research process—including data collection, sampling, and analysis—by asking questions, offering alternative viewpoints, and critiquing the work. The second author, an expert on Taiwan’s education system and faculty mentor of practicing bilingual teachers, conducted a final review of the analysis and findings to ensure its credibility.

The first author engaged in reflexivity throughout the process as a way of being “attentive to and conscious of the cultural, political, social, linguistic, and ideological origins of [his] own perspective” (Patton, 2015 ). The first author remained conscious that his identity—an English–Mandarin bilingual from North America living in Taiwan—could affect how he views bilingual education. He came to the study with strong views about what bilingual education should be (preferring García’s [ 2009 ] flexible multiplicity), though he stayed open to other arrangements as legitimate practices. He also maintained awareness of how his previous experiences teaching in a private bilingual school in Taiwan may also inform his beliefs. More specifically, it became important for him to realize the contextual factors in public education that may have differed from those he experienced as a teacher in a private school. His conversations with the second author throughout the researcher process helped him explore and better understand these potential biases so as to let the data speak for itself.

RQ 1: What challenges do teachers perceive in Taiwan’s bilingual education system?

Analysis of the data revealed three challenges perceived by the interviewed teachers: policy ambiguity, teacher/co-teacher background, and academic culture. Each is discussed below.

Policy ambiguity

Every interview contained at least one segment that was coded for confusion regarding the bilingual education policy. ET5 expressed that teachers at her school “don’t know the expectations,” and ET3 expressed that she was “very confused about … what bilingual [education] really is.” The result of an absence of detailed guidelines is that “each teacher’s thinking about bilingual education is different” (JT3). This became a challenge for planning bilingual education courses because, as one teacher described, “If the teacher does not have enough information about how to teach the bilingual class, everything is hard” (JT5). Teachers reported going through “a lot of trial and error” (ET2) to map their own way through bilingual education.

In some respects the teachers appreciated the “space” (ET2 & JT5), “freedom” (JT3), and “autonomy” (ET1) provided by this ambiguity, but there were questions about how teachers would be evaluated in the future. JT7 questioned about “what kind of goal the government wants” and ET2 suggested that “it’d be really hard to have a KPI (Key Performance Indicator)” for bilingual education. These questions raised fears that teachers would be evaluated “based on the results of [an English] test” (ET5), which several doubted would adequately measure program success.

Teacher/co-teacher background

While policy ambiguity left many questions unanswered, the teachers also shared how teacher backgrounds were the fallback guides for arranging the bilingual classroom. In some instances, NEST co-teachers influenced classroom language policy. The local teachers who co-taught with NESTs generally believed that English should take the main role in bilingual education, which also held true for JT1 and JT2, who taught independently but previously worked with NESTs. At their school, “due to the [COVID-19] pandemic [NESTs] from abroad couldn’t come, so the local teacher [taught] the bilingual class” (JT1). The previous involvement of NESTs in the school appeared to have an ongoing influence on the teachers’ visions of bilingual education, establishing English as the main language of instruction. For teachers who had never worked with NESTs, there was a shared belief that both English and Mandarin belonged in the bilingual classroom. An exception to this was ET2, who firmly believed that Mandarin should remain the dominant language in class.

In terms of beliefs about learning in bilingual education, content teachers believed content learning should take precedence in bilingual education, whereas local English teachers put a greater emphasis on incorporating language learning in the bilingual classroom. This finding held in all cases except with JT6 and JT7 (same school), where content teachers worked alongside English teachers for planning. For these teachers, the collaboration favored content: “[In] the lesson meetings … the [NEST] will double-check with the subject teachers the content for each week” (JT6). Thus, even with the involvement of English teachers, the NEST who led the class was influenced by the content teacher’s role in the collaboration.

Academic culture

Entrance exams and student scores are a strong force in Taiwan’s education system (Chou & Ching, 2012 ), especially at the junior and senior high school levels. Among the 12 participants in this study, 11 expressed doubt about bilingual education in relation to exams and student academic achievement. Eight of the participants directly addressed the issue of exams, and an additional three discussed academic achievement concerns more generally. ET2 explained that in Taiwan, “we put a lot of emphasis on tests.” JT1 illustrated what this may mean for bilingual education: “I am not sure that the ninth grade will emphasize bilingual education. They may carry on class like usual [monolingually]. I think they won’t have time to expend effort like students in the seventh and eighth grade; the ninth grade will focus on the exams.”

As a result of this prevailing academic culture, more often than not, the schools we visited for this study chose subjects for bilingual education that have “nothing to do with the entrance exam” (JT6). These subjects were often in the arts, health and physical education, or integrated studies courses. Bilingual courses in the core subjects of science, social studies, and math were generally avoided because of their representation in national exams. However, there was one notable exception—namely, JT4, a geography teacher. This teacher was enrolled in a city government initiative for training bilingual teachers and had been placed at her school by the government. The teacher noted that the school administration expressed reservations and requested that she restrict her use of English. She also had reservations and admitted to being anxious “about the test because there are too many things to teach in a really short class time.” She noted that “parents send their kids here because they want their student to get a higher score and go to a good high school,” so she felt the need to balance her desire to “add more English” and the desire of the school administration, parents, and students to keep the focus on the content of the exam. JT2 had faced a similar problem in a previous school: “I tried to speak a lot of English with my students, but the parents and my administrator complained. They complained that if I teach in English, students cannot understand and cannot get a higher score.”

RQ 2: How do these challenges affect teachers’ reported implementation of bilingual education arrangements?

The three challenges—policy ambiguity, teacher/co-teacher background, and academic culture—seemed to have had some influence, to varying degrees, on the bilingual education arrangements that teachers reported implementing in their schools. Together, these challenges led to teachers reporting six different bilingual education arrangements practiced in northern Taiwan, as shown in Fig.  2 . Each arrangement is described separately below.

Bilingual arrangements practiced in northern Taiwan

English dominant/content learning

Four teachers described arrangements resembling English dominant/content learning. All had or previously had NEST co-teachers (teacher/co-teacher background), and all worked in a junior high school setting, where the challenge presented by academic culture is strong. These teachers expressed English dominant philosophies where “all English would be the ideal” (JT5). Therefore, the goal was to “use English as much as possible” (JT1). All of these teachers expressed that “in an ideal situation, we will paraphrase and elaborate first [in English]” (JT7), and all agreed that Mandarin, if used, was reserved for “some students with lower English ability” (JT5) and when the subject matter “is really complicated” (JT6).

In terms of the learning continuum, JT7 shared that English is seen only as “a medium for [students] to learn the subjects,” and JT6 explained teachers “don’t really emphasize the vocabulary and grammar skills.” JT1 shared a similar philosophy: “I know that I am using English to teach subjects but not teaching English directly.” JT5 provided examples of what a content learning arrangement looked like: “PE class should focus on physical training. … I will explain some skills like how to pass, catch, and shoot the ball.” In all of these schools, the focus was for students to “get the important concepts” (JT5).

English dominant/content–language learning

Only one teacher, JT2, described a classroom that was English dominant/content–language learning. JT2 was unique among the participants in that she held an undergraduate degree in her subject and a master’s degree in TESOL. JT2’s teacher background seemed to play a strong role in the bilingual arrangement implemented. In terms of the role of English, JT2 often considered how to “offer more English support or offer more English environment for them.” She discussed the importance of maximizing English language use in the classroom but acknowledged the need to use Mandarin sometimes to “help [the students] understand.” When asked whether she had concerns about all-English classes affecting students’ Mandarin abilities, she dismissed these concerns, stating, “When they go outside, they still speak Chinese.” She saw her role as giving as much exposure to English as possible.

However, coupled with this strong belief in using English in the bilingual classroom, JT2 also acknowledged the need to teach language to support the use of English in the content classroom. This teacher reported teaching language using different strategies and scaffolding such as visuals, gallery walks, and sentence frames, all with the goal of supporting content and language learning together.

English dominant/language learning

ET1 was the only teacher to report an English dominant/language learning arrangement. Both this teacher and the NEST co-teacher had English teaching backgrounds, with no training in the content areas that they had been asked to teach, suggesting that their background may have been a factor. ET1 shared that the bilingual education class was led by a NEST who sought to keep the course nearly all in English. The teacher indicated that the NEST encouraged the local teachers to not “give [students] the answers [in Mandarin] too fast” and “let [the students] think.” This English dominant approach was believed to prevent the students from “rely[ing] on [the local English teacher] or their homeroom teacher” for Mandarin translations. ET1 also shared a bilingual education philosophy where “if you want to integrate English into content-based teaching, it is better that kids have some idea about the language structure or they go nowhere.” At the time of the interview, the teacher explained their approach as “teaching the language structure” first. In other words, the teacher believed language learning should precede content learning.

Language multiplicity/content learning

Three teachers described their classrooms as language multiplicity/content learning; however, there were some differences in the way language multiplicity was achieved. JT3’s decisions about languages would often “depend on the topic,” incorporating more English with simpler topics. However, she also emphasized that regardless of the topic, “[the students] still need to learn in [Mandarin].” JT4 described a slightly different approach in which “[English] is mostly for doing some activities” and “in my [lecture] I always speak [Mandarin].” Put another way, different languages were used for different instructional purposes. Notably, both teachers made these decisions about language allocation out of concern for student achievement (academic culture).

A similar approach was described by ET5, but these practices were divided between two teachers: “The [local] music teacher is using [Mandarin] to teach the main parts like the notes and all the difficult words and the concept of the music, and then the [NEST] will be there to introduce a song or the musician or the background story.” Unlike the other teachers in this category who were working alone, at ET5’s school students received instruction in both languages but from different teachers who took roles that were related to their backgrounds.

In terms of content learning, JT3 explained that “bilingual teaching in Taiwan is content-driven not language-driven,” and JT4 expressed that “the most important thing for me is content teaching. … Teaching the sentences and grammar” is the job of the English teacher. These beliefs may be connected to their backgrounds as content teachers or could be attributed to the academic culture. However, ET5 added that this content focus was not “teach[ing] them the technical term” directly but “just [learning] it naturally.” While this could also be associated with teacher background, it may also be connected with policy ambiguity. As ET5 commented, it was “recommended to us to use EMI” (ET5),” which the teacher reported as being implemented but with doubts about whether this was truly bilingual education.

Language multiplicity/content–language learning

Two teachers, ET3 and ET4, described arrangements that were language multiplicity/content–language learning. However, these two teachers achieved this balance in different ways. ET3 had experience teaching her health course through Mandarin in a previous academic year and explained that “all the content [objectives] are the same.” However, this year she has added English language objectives to her planning: “I just write down some target sentences or language or the words or sentences that they should be able to produce.” She explained that it is important to her that the students both understand the health content and learn the target language. She believed that bilingual education “should be [Mandarin] and English at the same time.” She described how both languages were present in her classroom: “Our book is a [Mandarin] book” and “I changed [the worksheets] into English.” She further shared that sometimes “[students] answer in [Mandarin] and I just rephrase in English” and “I give them pictures” to help elicit English production. ET3’s background as an English teacher with previous experience teaching health through Mandarin likely influenced the arrangement chosen, but ET3 also reported a lot of uncertainty about this approach (policy ambiguity), stating feelings that this arrangement may be “against what government wants.”

Whereas ET3 implemented the language multiplicity/content–language learning arrangement on her own in a single classroom, ET4 implemented this arrangement through a strict-separation model (García, 2009 ). The integrated studies course was divided between two teachers in separate classrooms taught at separate times. The teacher explained that “there are three classes of integrative activity. [The NEST and local English teacher] take one class each week and teach it through English. There are two classes for a homeroom teacher to teach [through Mandarin].” This allows the English class to “build up [students’] English ability first” so that students can “learn the concepts through the language.” It also allows the homeroom teachers to address the majority of the content learning through Mandarin. ET4 reported making this decision both out of concern for content learning in the subject (academic culture) and to align the teaching roles with the skills and training of the teachers (teacher/co-teacher background).

Mandarin dominant/content learning

ET2 was the only participant to describe an arrangement classified as Mandarin dominant/content learning. This teacher took a strong stance on making the course Mandarin dominant: “I already chose one side. I already chose Mandarin.” This did not mean that he avoided English in the classroom; rather, the teacher described “looking for a chance to speak English” within a predominantly Mandarin-driven lesson. ET2 admitted that originally he “tried speaking a lot of English” based on his interpretation of the policy, but he lamented that “that doesn’t work” and thus decided not to force English into his course. The teacher expressed confusion and doubt about the arrangement (policy ambiguity), sharing “if you just look from outside, people will say, ‘Oh, is that bilingual? That doesn’t seem like a lot of English going on’.” ET2’s background in content teaching also likely contributed to his position that “the subject is the most important thing.”

This study examined the challenges and bilingual education arrangements as reported by teachers in northern Taiwan. Through semi-structured interviews with 12 pre-tertiary teachers, three challenges and six different arrangements were identified. Extending previous research where scholars identified emerging challenges in Taiwan’s bilingual education system (Ferrer & Lin, 2021 ; Hsu, 2021 ; Huang, 2021 ; Lin & Wu, 2021 ; Tsou, 2021 ; Wang, 2021 ), this study sought to highlight the voices of teachers and create links between the challenges perceived by teachers and the bilingual arrangements they report to implement.

Policy ambiguity was a challenge identified by all participants, suggesting that the concerns voiced by Huang ( 2021 ) and Lin and Wu ( 2021 ) were shared by practicing teachers. This challenge is a possible explanation for the identification of six different arrangements in this study. While we will refrain from taking a position in this manuscript on which arrangements we believe to be and not be bilingual education, we will put forth that it is unlikely that all six represent what policymakers would define as the intended bilingual education since each is likely to produce different outcomes (Ball et al., 2015 ; Brinton & Snow, 2017 ). In terms of the language continuum, the policy may be seen as contradictory. As Ferrer and Lin ( 2021 ) noted, the Blueprint appears to be overly focused on English, with explicitly declared goals to “raise citizens’ English ability to a more internationally competitive level” (National Development Council, 2018 , p. 1). Considering this alone, teachers who are influenced by theories that call for maximizing target language input and output may gravitate toward a target language dominant arrangement. Yet, there is also mention of “equal importance attached to Chinese and English” in the Blueprint (National Development Council, 2018 , p. 2) and “implement bilingual teaching” in the Bilingual 2030 policy (National Development Council, 2021 , p. 18). Target language dominant arrangements are not designed to provide a target and local language with equal roles (Ball et al., 2015 ); if local languages are used at all, they appear only in a subordinated role of support. With respect to the learning continuum, no explicit direction is provided by the policy regarding the role of content learning or language learning in the bilingual education classroom. It is our belief that a path toward the intended bilingual education system must begin with clarity in terms of the intentions and goals along both continuums. This may come in the form of an amended policy or other clear directives from the Ministry of Education and city education bureaus. Failure to address this will result in the continued implementation of varying bilingual education arrangements, both intended and unintended.

Once the intended bilingual education arrangement has been clearly defined, the second challenge, namely, that of teacher/co-teacher background, can be addressed. While it is likely that policy confusion is a contributing challenge to the variety of arrangements, this study identified a pattern involving teacher/co-teacher background and the arrangements adopted. Schools that currently or in the past utilized NESTs took a target language dominant approach, whereas schools that only utilized local teachers implemented either language multiplicity or local language dominant. If a target language dominant arrangement is the intention of the bilingual education policy, then the NEST hiring mechanism seems to be producing the intended outcome. But if we are to interpret bilingual education as “equal importance attached to Chinese and English” (National Development Council, 2018 , p. 2), then the utilization of NESTs in these programs must be further examined. In terms of the learning continuum, there is a clear divide between those with content training who favor content learning arrangements and those with language training who implement content–language learning or language learning. From the position of Coyle and Meyer ( 2021 ) and Lin ( 2016 ), content teachers should realize their role in teaching academic language/literacies for promoting deep learning in their subjects. Thus, mechanisms that provide content teachers with training in academic language/literacies are needed. Such training must extend beyond just using English in the classroom and lead teachers toward a raised awareness of the role of languages in academic disciplines and learning (Coyle & Meyer, 2021 ; Meyer et al., 2015 ). On the other side, if administrators insist on using language teachers as bilingual education teachers, ignoring recommendations of Lin and Wu ( 2021 ) against the practice, at minimum, the language teachers must implement an arrangement where content has a role. While scholars have provided a wide range of definitions of bilingual education (Baker & Wright, 2017 ), we believe that most would agree with the assertion of García ( 2009 ) that bilingual education involves a focus on academic content. Thus, the language learning arrangement reported in this study is probably not an intended arrangement. Appropriate training must be provided to address this concern.

Finally, academic culture may be guiding teacher and administrator decisions about bilingual education arrangements. JT4 is perhaps the most salient example, where the pressure of teaching a nationally tested subject directly affected her arrangement choice, both in terms of the language continuum and the learning continuum. Academic culture may also explain why the majority of participants reported content learning arrangements. Yet, even those who reported other arrangements expressed concern about the academic consequences of incorporating language learning into their classrooms. In order to realize the intended bilingual education system, national curriculum developers may need to acknowledge the potential barriers that the current academic culture in Taiwan presents to the bilingual education system. Once the intentions of the bilingual education policy are clarified, the curriculum and examination system must be modified to align with the intended arrangement. Given the strength of the academic culture in Taiwan (Chou & Ching, 2012 ), it is unlikely that the intended bilingual education system can be realized unless there is cohesion between the arrangement and the national curriculum and examination system.

Limitations and conclusion

As Taiwan proceeds to implement the bilingual education policy, attention must be paid to challenges and how these translate to different arrangements, both intended and unintended. It is hoped that this study may encourage conversation among various stakeholders so that policy (mechanisms) and practice (arrangements) can be aligned to achieve the intended goals. However, this study has several limitations that should be considered when considering the findings and recommendations. First, this study was limited to one region of Taiwan. Although we reached data saturation with our sample, where the final interviews echoed the same themes as earlier ones and provided no new themes, future studies should investigate the unique arrangements and forces that may exist in other regions. Second, the sample included a wide variety of teacher backgrounds, meaning that many variables were present within the study. While this variation served our purpose of including varying perspectives in our data set, the presence of so many variables greatly limits the generalizations that could be made about any particular group. It is recommended that future studies limit their sampling to one group (e.g., secondary content teachers) to allow deeper insights to be drawn. Third, this study may have been enhanced through classroom observations. Given that bilingual education was new for Taiwan’s teachers, there was a noticeable reluctance to opening classrooms to observation. While self-report data can be problematic, participants were more accepting of sharing their experiences through interviews at this stage of their implementation. Finally, the absence of NESTs from the sample is a limitation given the impact of their teacher background on bilingual arrangements. The original focus of the study was local teachers, who are officially considered the lead decision-makers in public schools (though the data may indicate otherwise in practice). As we realized the size of the role that NESTs played during the data collection stage, we directly invited two NESTs from our sample schools to join the study; both politely declined without further explanation. In the other schools where we did not meet the NESTs during our visit, we mentioned our interest in speaking with the school’s NESTs but received no follow-up response. Ultimately, given that NESTs were outside of the original scope of the study, we proceeded with only local teachers. However, we recommend that future studies seek to document the voices of NESTs involved in Taiwan’s bilingual education and compare the findings with those presented here.

While this paper mainly focuses on the challenges and arrangements in the context of Taiwan, we believe the approach taken in this study, where challenges are identified and are then linked to the resulting arrangements, can serve useful for other countries designing and adjusting mechanisms for their bilingual education systems. We believe the bilingual education arrangements grid, in particular, may be helpful in other contexts for clarifying what arrangement is intended. The advantages of such a grid include that it can prevent or ameliorate the confusion and misunderstanding caused by the use of existing terms associated with bilingual education that are defined differently by various scholars and practitioners. If a bilingual education system is defined and challenges acknowledged, bilingual education has the opportunity of providing students with high-quality educational experiences that align with a nation’s multilingual goals. Yet, when challenges remain unaddressed, the resulting bilingual education may not be the intended one.

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Financial support for this work was provided by the “Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences” and the “Higher Education Sprout Project” of National Taiwan Normal University, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Graham, K.M., Yeh, YF. Teachers’ implementation of bilingual education in Taiwan: challenges and arrangements. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 24 , 461–472 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-022-09791-4

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Experts’ Top Policy Priorities for English-Learner Education

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Greater access to dual language programs, improving family engagement practices, and reimagined funding models were among the top policy priorities for English learners shared at a national convening in early April.

Hosted by the LatinoJustice Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and ASPIRA of New York, a civic and social organization, dozens of English-learner researchers, educators, families, and policymakers came together here to discuss the current national education landscape for these students and what needs to change to better support them.

The English-learner population is one of the fastest growing public school student populations in the United States and includes a growing number of immigrant students.

Experts spoke of the obstacles to high-quality education for these students, what research says about best instructional practices, including translanguaging , and how new laws and national political rhetoric on immigration impact students. One key focus in all this is the need to think about the assets English learners bring to schools and how to help students grow from there.

“We still really think about English-learner students, multilingual students, with this deficit lens. We think about them as this empty vessel that we need to fill up with American knowledge, with [the] English language, instead of thinking about the cultural and linguistic assets that they bring that we should be uplifting,” said Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, deputy director for the advocacy group Californians Together, and a speaker at the event.

The education programs that best support English learners are in short supply

One of the top concerns raised by experts when it comes to educational opportunities for English learners is the lack of access to dual language immersion programs , where students engage with academic content in both English and English learners’ home language.

While long-term studies have shown that such programs best support students’ acquisition of the English language and their academic performance, such research is hard to complete given that the biggest impacts aren’t seen until many years down the road, said Martha Martinez, director of research and policy at Sobrato Early Academic Language, or SEAL, an organization supporting EL and dual language education.

This long-term payoff may hinder efforts to scale up such programs. One New Jersey educator at the event spoke of how her school district tends to only invest in programs for a year or two, not giving teachers enough time to demonstrate results and thus making it hard to advocate for programs such as dual language immersion.

Yet Martinez and others spoke of the value of dual language immersion programs, especially in affirming the value of students’ home languages and cultures in an academic context. There are also overall cognitive benefits for native English speakers to acquire another language as well according to past research.

Other event audience members brought up how often English learners with disabilities end up excluded from existing dual language programs. Parents spoke of concerns over cases where students are separated from non-English-learner peers and what impact that might have on their personal, linguistic, and academic growth.

Yet another key challenge to increasing access to dual language immersion programs lies in a lack of bilingual educators qualified to teach in such programs. While the U.S. Department of Education has invested in professional development grants for bilingual education, and various independent programs and districts are working to build up a bilingual educator pipeline, experts spoke of a need for dedicated funding to invest in dual language immersion programs.

Reimagining language use in the classroom and communication with families

Ryan Pontier, assistant professor of bilingual education and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, TESOL, at Florida International University, spoke of how translanguaging plays a role in ensuring true bilingual education is offered to students.

Translanguaging, in the broadest sense , is the ability to move fluidly between languages and is a pedagogical approach in which teachers support this ability.

Even in existing dual language programs, Pontier said that language use is still largely monolingual. For instance, math class is taught in English while science class is taught in Spanish. In a true bilingual setting where translanguaging is practiced, students and teachers would flow through both languages in all subjects rather than thinking of them as separate tools or one language as a bridge to acquire the other language.

On the topic of communication, several parents in attendance spoke of the need for more schools to provide detailed information about the kind of programming students have access to, whether it’s dual language immersion or pulling students out of general classrooms for dedicated English language acquisition instruction. This is especially vital for immigrant households, experts said as they may be unfamiliar with the U.S. education system.

Legal chilling effects on immigrant English learners

While there are federal protections for immigrant and migrant students , Morgan Craven, national director of policy, advocacy, and community engagement at the Texas-based Intercultural Development Research Association spoke about how some laws and political rhetoric can create chilling effects that affect students and their families.

She specifically addressed Senate Bill 4 in Texas, which would let police officers arrest migrants suspected of entering the U.S. illegally. (The law is currently blocked and moving through courts, according to the Texas Tribune .) Craven spoke of how such legislation can make families more hesitant to send children to school and can complicate the role of school resource officers, as students who don’t have legal immigration status might feel unsafe around those police officers.

That’s not the only political issue with implications for English learners. Craven also addressed how at least 18 states now have legislation restricting instruction on topics of race and gender.

“We’re in a time of a lot of attacks on DEI, on affirmative action, so-called anti-CRT policies. And so when we see that efforts to really impact the ability of teachers to speak truthfully about curriculum, to have things like ethnic studies courses, to be able to support culturally sustaining and culturally responsive curriculum and instruction, that has a real impact on English learner students,” Craven said.

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What public k-12 teachers want americans to know about teaching.

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At a time when most teachers are feeling stressed and overwhelmed in their jobs, we asked 2,531 public K-12 teachers this open-ended question:

If there’s one thing you’d want the public to know about teachers, what would it be?

We also asked Americans what they think about teachers to compare with teachers’ perceptions of how the public views them.

Related: What’s It Like To Be a Teacher in America Today?

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand what public K-12 teachers would like Americans to know about their profession. We also wanted to learn how the public thinks about teachers.

For the open-end question, we surveyed 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14, 2023. The teachers surveyed are members of RAND’s American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative panel of public K-12 school teachers recruited through MDR Education. Survey data is weighted to state and national teacher characteristics to account for differences in sampling and response to ensure they are representative of the target population.

Overall, 96% of surveyed teachers provided an answer to the open-ended question. Center researchers developed a coding scheme categorizing the responses, coded all responses, and then grouped them into the six themes explored in the data essay.

For the questions for the general public, we surveyed 5,029 U.S. adults from Nov. 9 to Nov. 16, 2023. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a nationally representative online survey panel. Panel members are randomly recruited through probability-based sampling, and households are provided with access to the Internet and hardware if needed. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data is weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories.

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, the teacher survey methodology and the general public survey methodology .

Most of the responses to the open-ended question fell into one of these six themes:

Teaching is a hard job

About half of teachers (51%) said they want the public to know that teaching is a difficult job and that teachers are hardworking. Within this share, many mentioned that they have roles and responsibilities in the classroom besides teaching, which makes the job stressful. Many also talked about working long hours, beyond those they’re contracted for.

“Teachers serve multiple roles other than being responsible for teaching curriculum. We are counselors, behavioral specialists and parents for students who need us to fill those roles. We sacrifice a lot to give all of ourselves to the role as teacher.”

– Elementary school teacher

“The amount of extra hours that teachers have to put in beyond the contractual time is ridiculous. Arriving 30 minutes before and leaving an hour after is just the tip of the iceberg. … And as far as ‘having summers off,’ most of August is taken up with preparing materials for the upcoming school year or attending three, four, seven days’ worth of unpaid development training.”

– High school teacher

Teachers care about their students

The next most common theme: 22% of teachers brought up how fulfilling teaching is and how much teachers care about their students. Many gave examples of the hardships of teaching but reaffirmed that they do their job because they love the kids and helping them succeed. 

“We are passionate about what we do. Every child we teach is important to us and we look out for them like they are our own.”

– Middle school teacher

“We are in it for the kids, and the most incredible moments are when children make connections with learning.”

Teachers are undervalued and disrespected

Some 17% of teachers want the public to know that they feel undervalued and disrespected, and that they need more public support. Some mentioned that they are well-educated professionals but are not treated as such. And many teachers in this category responded with a general plea for support from the public, which they don’t feel they’re getting now.

“We feel undervalued. The public and many parents of my students treat me and my peers as if we do not know as much as they do, as if we are uneducated.”

“The public attitudes toward teachers have been degrading, and it is making it impossible for well-qualified teachers to be found. People are simply not wanting to go into the profession because of public sentiments.”

Teachers are underpaid

A similar share of teachers (15%) want the public to know that teachers are underpaid. Many teachers said their salary doesn’t account for the effort and care they put into their students’ education and believe that their pay should reflect this.

“We are sorely underpaid for the amount of hours we work and the education level we have attained.”

Teachers need support and resources from government and administrators

About one-in-ten teachers (9%) said they need more support from the government, their administrators and other key stakeholders. Many mentioned working in understaffed schools, not having enough funding and paying for supplies out of pocket. Some teachers also expressed that they have little control over the curriculum that they teach.

“The world-class education we used to be proud of does not exist because of all the red tape we are constantly navigating. If you want to see real change in the classroom, advocate for smaller class sizes for your child, push your district to cap class sizes at a reasonable level and have real, authentic conversations with your child’s teacher about what is going on in the classroom if you’re curious.”

Teachers need more support from parents

Roughly the same share of teachers (8%) want the public to know that teachers need more support from parents, emphasizing that the parent-teacher relationship is strained. Many view parents as partners in their child’s education and believe that a strong relationship improves kids’ overall social and emotional development.

“Teachers help students to reach their potential. However, that job is near impossible if parents/guardians do not take an active part in their student’s education.”

How the U.S. public views teachers

While the top response from teachers in the open-ended question is that they want the public to know that teaching is a hard job, most Americans already see it that way. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say being a public K-12 teacher is harder than most other jobs, with 33% saying it’s a lot harder.

And about three-quarters of Americans (74%) say teachers should be paid more than they are now, including 39% who say teachers should be paid a lot more.

Americans are about evenly divided on whether the public generally looks up to (32%) or down on (30%) public K-12 teachers. Some 37% say Americans neither look up to or down on public K-12 teachers.

In addition to the open-ended question about what they want the public to know about them, we asked teachers how much they think most Americans trust public K-12 teachers to do their job well. We also asked the public how much they trust teachers. Answers differ considerably.

Nearly half of public K-12 teachers (47%) say most Americans don’t trust teachers much or at all. A third say most Americans trust teachers some, and 18% say the public trusts teachers a great deal or a fair amount.

In contrast, a majority of Americans (57%) say they do trust public K-12 teachers to do their job well a great deal or a fair amount. About a quarter (26%) say they trust teachers some, and 17% say they don’t trust teachers much or at all.

Related: About half of Americans say public K-12 education is going in the wrong direction

How the public’s views differ by party

There are sizable party differences in Americans’ views of teachers. In particular, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say:

• They trust teachers to do their job well a great deal or a fair amount (70% vs. 44%)
• Teaching is a lot or somewhat harder when compared with most other jobs (77% vs. 59%)
• Teachers should be paid a lot or somewhat more than they are now (86% vs. 63%)

In their own words

Below, we have a selection of quotes that describe what teachers want the public to know about them and their profession.

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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State Education Department Releases Report on Mayoral Control of New York City Schools

Report Completes NYSED’s Legislatively Required Review of School Governance Models

Commissioner Betty A. Rosa announced today that the New York State Education Department submitted its report on mayoral control of New York City schools to the Governor and Legislature. The report, which includes detailed analyses, findings, and recommendations from the public, examines the New York City public school system before and after the 2002 enactment of mayoral control. Additionally, the report summarizes direct feedback from the public—including students, parents, teachers, administrators, and education experts—on their experiences, assessments, and review of mayoral control. The final report is a robust, nearly 300-page document that reflects the thorough nature and seriousness of this legislatively required project.

Chancellor Lester W. Young, Jr. said, "The Board and I thank the Department and Commissioner Rosa for their efforts in producing this noteworthy report. I am confident that the review was conducted with the expected level of objectivity, as entrusted by the Legislature and Governor. I also want to thank the principals and staff who hosted public hearings at their schools throughout the five boroughs for their support and professionalism in holding the required sessions. Additionally, I extend my sincere gratitude to all those who attended in person or submitted written testimony for their valuable contributions."

Commissioner Rosa said , “The report we’re issuing today is a thorough, research-based presentation of school governance models in New York City and elsewhere that meets the law’s requirements with fidelity. As intended by the legislature, the report provides thoughtful information and testimony concerning mayoral control of schools.”

Pursuant to Chapter 364 of the Laws of 2022, the New York State Education Department was required to conduct a comprehensive review and assessment of New York City’s school governance system. To assist in the development of the report, the Department collaborated with researchers at the CUNY School of Law and WestEd—a leading nationwide nonprofit education research and service organization.

The report includes a project timetable that illustrates the scope of the undertaking. The work began in September 2023, when NYSED entered into a memorandum of understanding with the CUNY School of Law to conduct the study of school governance models and began outreach to the New York City Mayor’s Office and New York City Department of Education to share information, timeline of deliverables, and legislative responsibilities. NYSED worked with the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Education to identify and schedule locations for the public hearings and procured vendors to coordinate livestreaming, translation services, and audio and video services for each hearing. Utilizing 100 staff volunteers from the New York State Education Department, NYSED held five public hearings over the course of two months and contracted with WestEd to conduct an analysis of all oral and written testimonies. In March 2024, the Department compiled and finalized the report that was submitted to the Governor and Legislature today.

The final report is based on a study of school governance models and best practices, including comparative examples of mayoral control governance structures in other large cities across the United States and feedback submitted to NYSED directly from the public. All members of the public were invited to provide feedback in person at one of five hearings or via written testimony. NYSED received oral and written testimony from hundreds of individuals and organizations.

The in-depth report highlights ten conclusions and four recommendations that emerged from the review of the public hearing testimony, written comments, and the synthesis of the extensive literature on school governance. The four recommendations provided by the public for next steps are:

• Empower student, parent, and teacher expertise in the New York City school system.
• Create more avenues for meaningful deliberation and shared decision-making.
• Ensure more accountability and transparency with an introduction of stronger principles of checks and balances in the governance system.
• Establish a commission to consider reforms to the New York City Department of Education governance structure.

Specific themes among the synthesis of the extensive literature on school governance and conclusions made by the public for addressing the issue of mayoral control include:

• The majority of testimony called for reforms with the purpose of creating more avenues for greater representation, community input, and shared decision-making.
• Compared with similar school systems reviewed in this report, New York City Public School’s governance model grants the most power to the mayor, closely followed by Yonkers.
• The majority of public school systems in the United States follow an elected board/superintendent structure rather than an appointive system under mayoral control.
• The majority of public hearing participants said they do not feel heard or included in the New York City public school system’s decision-making processes.
• Most public hearing participants testified that the centralization of decision-making authority in the mayor and chancellor results in a “one-size-fits-all” approach at the expense of local needs, conditions, and desires.
• Public hearing testimony and written comments expressed concerns with the lack of checks and balances and transparency in decision-making, given the current PEP structure that gives disproportionate voice and voting to mayoral appointees.
• Studies and examples suggest that mayoral control can attract resources, increase efficiency, and reduce corruption and bureaucracy. Yet other studies and examples have found persistent issues with inefficiency and the misuse of resources.
• Hearing participants raised concerns that placing authority over New York City public schools in the hands of a single elected official contributes to a lack of continuity in policies and programs.
• Research indicates that there is no conclusive relationship between school governance structures and student achievement.
• There is little evidence that any governance structure has reduced longstanding inequities in educational access and attainment among students.

The New York State Education Department’s report on mayoral control of New York City schools, as required by the legislature, is designed to serve policymakers, researchers, stakeholders, and the public at large as the governance structure of the New York City school system is considered in the future. The full report is available on NYSED's website .

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