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Bilingual Education-The Facts
- Bilingual Education is instruction in a student's native language that allows them to effectively learn grade level knowledge and skills to stay on grade level, while they acquire English. Correctly implemented, Bilingual Education produces academic proficiency[1] (grade level knowledge & skills) in student's first language that transfers to the second language.
- Texas Bilingual Education offers a variety of programs: TBE[2] late exit, TBE early exit, content based ESL, and Dual Language. Dual Language instruction is employed in one-way and two-way classroom models (most effective type of bilingual education).[3]
- English Immersion prohibits instruction in a native language. Immersion approaches produce only "playground proficiency" whereby students learn limited English which is insufficient to learn academic content at grade level & results in poor long-term academic achievement in English.
- Replacing Bilingual programs with English Immersion has never produced positive results for students, and further widens the academic achievement gap.
- Decades of research, and academic peer review of studies conclude that instruction in a child's native language (Bilingual Education) is the tried & true method of closing the achievement gap between English Language Learners and native English speakers.[4]
-
Analysis of school districts across the state that
have piloted English Immersion, especially in ..:namespace prefix =
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- The most comprehensive study on Bilingual Education tracked 210,054 students over 12 years that participated in different programs outlined above. The study encompassed 11 school districts in 5 states and showed overwhelmingly that the more English students were subjected to, the worse they did on English standardized tests[6]. Conversely, the more instruction they received in their native language, the more they tested at or above native English speaking students in English.
[1] Proficiency (def.) is the Mastery or the academic ability to achieve at grade level.
[2] TBE=Transitional Bilingual Education where students move from native language to mainstream classrooms depending upon their levels of proficiency. Late Exit=receive native language instruction for 3 yrs or more. Early Exit=instruction in native language less than 3 yrs. ESL=English as a Second Language is a transitional model.
[3]. Dual Language: Two-Way (instruction in 2 languages to two language groups, ex> half English, half Spanish). One-Way (primarily for ELL's in one language group & can easily be adopted by schools as the BE program serving Spanish ELL's. Instruction is provided in 2 languages.
[4] Language, Power & Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the
Crossfire.
[5] Houston I.S.D. and most recently, Routh Roach Elementary in Garland I.S.D. recipient of the Blue Ribbon Award by D.O.E. in 2006 and rated exemplary by T.E.A. 2006.
[6] A National Study on School Effectiveness for Language
Minority Students on Long-Term Academic Achievement. Thomas
& Collier 2002,
[1] Proficiency (def.) is the Mastery or the academic ability to achieve at grade level.
[1] TBE=Transitional Bilingual Education where students move from native language to mainstream classrooms depending upon their levels of proficiency. Late Exit=receive native language instruction for 3 yrs or more. Early Exit=instruction in native language less than 3 yrs. ESL=English as a Second Language is a transitional model.
[1]. Dual Language: Two-Way (instruction in 2 languages to two language groups, ex> half English, half Spanish). One-Way (primarily for ELL's in one language group & can easily be adopted by schools as the BE program serving Spanish ELL's. Instruction is provided in 2 languages.
[1] Language, Power &
Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. ..:namespace
prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />
[1] Houston I.S.D. and most recently, Routh Roach Elementary in Garland I.S.D. recipient of the Blue Ribbon Award by D.O.E. in 2006 and rated exemplary by T.E.A. 2006.
[1] A National Study on
School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students on Long-Term
Academic Achievement. Thomas & Collier 2002,
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