Bilingual Education in the United States

     Bilingual education refers to the practice of teaching non-English speaking children in their native language. Developed in the 1960's, such programs were intended to allow children to progress in subjects such as math, science and social studies while they learned English in a separate class. Bilingual education was meant as a transitional program, but students frequently linger in such programs for most of their school years. Bilingual Education, a preferred strategy for the last 20 years, aims to teach academic subjects to immigrant children in their native languages (most often Spanish), while slowly and simultaneously adding English instruction. In theory, the children don't fall behind in other subjects while they are learning English. When they are fluent in English, they can then "transition" to English instruction in academic subjects at the grade level of their peers. Further, the theory goes, teaching immigrants in their native language values their family and community culture and reinforces their sense of self-worth, thus making their academic success more likely.

     Bilingual education is not an invention of the 1960s. Contrary to popular misconception, earlier waves of immigrants often enrolled their children in bilingual or non-English language schools public and private.

     In 1839, Ohio became the first state to adopt a bilingual education law, authorizing German-English instruction at parents' request. Louisiana enacted an identical provision for French and English in 1847, and the New MexicoTerritory did so for Spanish and English in 1850. By the end of the 19th century, about a dozen states had passed similar laws. Elsewhere, many localities provided bilingual instruction without state sanction, in languages as diverse as Norwegian, Italian, Polish, Czech, and Cherokee.

     Enrollment surveys at the turn of the 20th century reported that at least 600,000 primary school students (public and parochial) were receiving part or all of their instruction in the German language about 4% of all American children in the elementary grades. That's larger than the percentage of students enrolled in Spanish-English programs today. (Until recently, German was the dominant minority language.)

     But political winds shifted during the World War I era. Fears about the loyalty of non-English speakers in general, and of German Americans in particular, prompted a majority of states to enact English-only instruction laws designed to "Americanize" these groups. Some went so far as to ban the study of foreign languages in the early grades -- a restriction that was struck down as unconstitutional in 1923.

     Nonetheless, by the mid-1920s, bilingual schooling was largely dismantled throughout the country. English-only instruction continued as the norm for LEP students until its failure could no longer be ignored. LEP students in English-only classrooms were falling behind in their academic studies and dropping out of school at alarming rates.

     The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 passed during an era of growing immigration and an energized civil rights movement provided federal funding to encourage local school districts to try approaches incorporating native-language instruction. Most states followed the lead of the federal government, enacting bilingual education laws of their own or at least decriminalizing the use of other languages in the classroom.       

     Soon after, the Supreme Court recognized that leaving LEP students to "sink or swim" in English-only classrooms made "a mockery of public education" which must be equally available to all students. The court's decision in the landmark Lau v. Nichols case required schools to take "affirmative steps" to overcome language barriers impeding children's access to the curriculum. Congress immediately endorsed this principle in the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974.

     Neither the Bilingual Education Act nor the Lau decision requires any particular methodology for teaching LEP students. That is, there is no federal mandate for bilingual education (although a few states mandate it under certain circumstances). What civil rights laws do require are educational programs that offer equal opportunities for LEP children. To enforce this principle, the federal courts and the federal Office for Civil Rights apply a three-step test to ensure that schools provide:

·        Research-based programs that are viewed as theoretically sound by experts in the field;

·        Adequate resources such as staff, training, and materials to implement the program; and

·        Standards and procedures to evaluate the program and a continuing obligation to modify a program that fails to produce results.

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     Politically inspired efforts to eliminate bilingual education, such as the Unz initiative in California, would have a hard time passing this test. States or school districts that persist in such civil rights violations could face severe sanctions, including the loss of all federal education funding.

     Bilingual education is both a civil and human right. Unfortunately with the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, bilingual education has been attacked at the state and federal level. Statewide anti-bilingual initiatives have passed in California, Colorado and Massachusetts. Federal legislation recently passed (as part of George W. Bush's Elementary and Secondary Education Act) includes provisions which further disadvantage those who are learning English.

     Bilingual education is usually characterized as a controversial issue within U.S. educational debate. Discourses of educational equity (often pejoratively labeled as “liberal” by neoconservatives) collide with discourses ranging from overtly xenophobic and racist to discourses that are not overtly xenophobic but rather portray themselves as concerned with “rationality,” effectiveness, and cost. Editorials in the New York Times over a period of 20 years or so would fall into this latter category. Not surprisingly, debates over what the research data say about the effectiveness of bilingual education in promoting bilingual students’ academic achievement occupy a central role in this debate.

      Advocates of bilingual education (e.g. Cummins, 1996; Krashen & Biber, 1988; Wong Fillmore, 1992) argue that some form of bilingual education is implemented in virtually every country around the world, research from widely varied contexts shows positive results from bilingual education with respect to both first and second language development for both “minority” and “majority” students, and there is compelling evidence that conceptual knowledge and language skills transfer across language such that less instructional time spent through the “majority” language exerts no adverse effect on achievement in that language.  By contrast, opponents of bilingual education often characterize it not only as educationally ineffective but also as promoting social fragmentation and divisiveness. Arguments that bilingual education is ineffective focus on interpretations of research that suggest bilingual programs are no better than “sink-or-swim” (submersion) programs and inferior to “structured immersion” programs. This latter approach supposedly is modeled after Canadian French immersion programs that attempt to promote bilingual proficiency among predominantly English-background dominant group students by means of instruction through both French and English. The fact that much of the so-called research support for “structured immersion” (an English-only program, taught by monolingual teachers, with the aim of producing monolingualism) comes from a fully bilingual program, taught by bilingual teachers with the aim of producing bilingualism and biliteracy, does not seem to bother its proponents.  They focus on the fact that in French immersion programs, initial literacy instruction is through French (students’ second language [L2]) and thus minority and/or bilingual students in the U.S. should also be taught (totally or almost totally)  through their L2 (English) if they are to succeed academically. Their argument is that strong development of English academic skills requires maximum exposure to English in school.

     Convincing politicians and the public that bilingual education is a theoretically sound and effective way to educate not only language-minority students but also language-majority students has been difficult. It is a challenge that we must overcome in order to move out of the dismissive period. National and international evidence already exists to prove that quality bilingual programs promote academic success, with the added bonus that students become bilingual. Crawford (1999) writes that “language-minority children are achieving at or near grade level by the time they leave well-designed bilingual programs, even in urban schools where failure was once the norm”.

     In an attempt to stem the adverse publicity that bilingual education has received, Krashen (1999) argues that bilingual programs have been condemned without a fair hearing. For example, Krashen notes that the high Latino dropout rate, often attributed to bilingual education, is in fact the result of a complex set of background variables. These include poverty, racism, an unempowering school culture, school tracking practices, a dearth of successfully schooled Latino role models, and a lack of engaging reading materials in the home and school environments. In addition, during the permissive period, many were schooled in the U.S. in their native languages. Krashen also refutes the false assumption that the United States is the only country that offers bilingual education to language-minority students, noting that bilingualism is common in most parts of the world.

     Aside from issues of power, much of the opposition to bilingual education arises from the fact that its rationale seems to run counter to widely hold popular beliefs about how humans acquire languages. Intuitively, one would think that a person learns another language by using it frequently and by avoiding use of one’s native language. While using a new language is crucial to developing communicative and academic competence in that language, the quality of the instructional process is equally important. More time spent immersed in the new language is not necessarily associated with greater gains in that language, if the student does not understand the content of the lesson. Related to this, the climate for full cognitive development is absolutely crucial to the full development of the second language. One of the most common misconceptions is that children learn second languages with native-like pronunciation effortlessly and without pain—child’s play, so to speak. Yet research suggests that young children may not reach full proficiency in their second language if cognitive development is discontinued in their primary language. Given the prerequisites for second language acquisition, older learners from approximately ages 9 to 25 who have built cognitive and academic proficiency in their first language are potentially the most efficient acquirers of most aspects of academic second-language proficiency, except for pronunciation.

     The American experiment in bilingual education began in 1968, when Congress mandated $7.5 million to teach Mexican-American public-school students English. A generation later, federal, state and local bilingual programs have burgeoned into an $8 billion enterprise  which for the first time in three decades is facing a serious challenge from a cheaper and, many say, more effective approach called "English as a Second Language," or ESL.

      Bilingual education  presently used with 55 percent of the country's 3 million non-English-speaking students mandates that teachers instruct young people in their native languages while they learn English over a seven- to nine-year period. Critics contend that this method not only coddles students but segregates them by language and background: Some have labeled bilingual education "separatist movements in disguise." The Bush administration supports bilingual education, although the White House included no specific plans for it in its wide-ranging education program. A House subcommittee has proposed cuts of 75 percent in bilingual education-related programs -- from $195 million to $53 million budget cuts President Clinton has promised to veto.

     The issue is important because of America's growing number of young people whose first language is not English -- a segment of the student population that has increased by 20 percent during the last five years, especially in California, Florida, New York and Texas. Financially pressed California spends $400 million annually on its bilingual programs. New York City where programs exist in Bengali and Haitian Creole spends $300 million. Interestingly, only 43 percent of limited-English students are immigrants; the rest are native-born Americans. As federal and state governments look for ways to trim budgets and cut education costs, ESL, which has been around about as long as bilingual education, is looking more attractive. Bilingual programs cost twice as much as ESL programs -- primarily because bilingual education requires foreign-language textbooks and teachers qualified to teach math, social studies and other courses in foreign languages. ESL, on the other hand, aims not only to "mainstream" children but help them achieve fluency in two or three years.

     Educators label ESL programs as "immersion" experiences. Students who speak a variety of primary languages are grouped together under specially trained instructors whose goals are twofold: teaching students English as quickly as possible and assimilating them into an English-speaking society. The teachers guide students in vocabulary, supplying words and definitions when necessary and students are urged to talk and participate. But the New York report did suggest a problem that bilingual education hasn't solved -- and which may be insoluble: the shortage of qualified teachers. In Texas, for example, the HoustonIndependentSchool District is still smarting from a recent disclosure that nearly 100 bilingual teachers had falsified teaching credentials -- or hardly spoke English at all. The Los Angeles school district, which employs only one qualified bilinguist for every 112 students who need English training, is offering sizable bonuses up to $5,000 for qualified teachers. In New York, where public-school students speak 90 different languages, bilingual education is out of the question for many. Recently, the Massachusetts Legislature rejected a proposal by Republican Gov. William Weld that would have put a cap of three years on the amount of time students may spend in the state's bilingual-education programs. A recent article in the newsletter of the 240,000-member California Teachers Association, however, indicates weakening support for bilingual education -- or at least a willingness to consider alternatives such as ESL. The story, which attacked opponents of bilingual education, nonetheless admitted that bilingual programs are probably responsible for condemning "tens of thousands" of California students to unnecessarily long periods of language training.