Bilingual Education

Studies

Arizona Review of English Immersion Stanford 9 Results
Arizona Department of Education | August 5, 2004
"Students in structured English immersion programs outperformed students in bilingual programs in that they were anywhere from one to four months ahead between second and fourth grade, as much a six months ahead in fifth grade, and over a year ahead from sixth grade on."

Bilingual Education: A Critique
Hoover Institution | Peter Duignan
"This essay traces the evolution of the 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."

Dismantling Bilingual Education, Implementing English Immersion: The California Initiative
Public Policy Institute of California | Christine Rossell | revised August 20, 2002
"In short, the research evidence only supports the conclusion that bilingual education is, on average, the least effective approach to educating English Learners."

Structured English Immersion in Teaching Limited English Proficient Students
Phi Delta Kappa | Keith Baker | November 1998
English Immersion is gaining in popularity. "The experience of these programs, especially Seattle's, can provide much-needed guidance."

Bilingual Education: A Failed Experiment on the Children
Independence Institute | Sheldon Richman | May 14, 1997
"Bilingual education is based on the theory that the best way to make minority-language children proficient in English is to first strengthen their skills in their native languages. A large body of research shows that native-language instruction is an inferior method of moving limited-English-proficient children to full proficiency."

Bilingual Reform in Massachusetts: The Emperor Has No Clothes
Pioneer Institute | Christine Rossell and Keith Baker
"If one can draw any conclusion at all from the research, it is that teaching a LEP student to read and write in the native language is at least marginally detrimental to his or her overall acquisition of English."

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org