Bilingual Education - Research Paper Example

Bilingual Education Introduction and Background The nature of the problem with the education of Hispanic Americans is rooted in a refusal to accept, to recognize, and to value the central role of Hispanics in the past, present, and future of this nation. According to the President’s Advisory Commission (1996) the education of Hispanic Americans is somehow characterized by a history of negligence, oppression, and the periods of wanton denial of opportunity. As the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans indicates, there is indeed a problem with the education of Hispanic Americans in the United States. There is perhaps no other time in history when the future of Latinos in the U.S. has been so bleak. Today, one of every three Hispanic Americans has dropped out of high school (President’s Advisory Commission, 2003), over one-fifth live at or below the poverty line (National Poverty Center, 2006), and Hispanic Americans continue to lag behind their White and non-White peers on national, norm-referenced measures of achievement. “In 1999, average NAEP scores for Hispanics were consistently below those of non-Hispanic Whites. 9-year-olds Hispanics performed 13 percent below non-Hispanic Whites and 13- and 17-year-olds performed 9 and 8 percent respectively below their non-Hispanic White peers” (President’s Advisory Commission, 2003, p. 15) The statistics are even less promising for those Hispanics whose primary language is not English and who were not born in this country. These language-minority students face a dropout rate of over fifty percent and over one-third live in poverty (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Doucet, 2004). Hispanic children face more risk factors than non-Hispanic White children; the proportion of children with two or more risk factors among Hispanics (33 percent) remains over five times that of non-Hispanic Whites (6 percent) (President’s Advisory Commission, 2003). This ethnic group is also one of the fastest growing groups in the U.S. today. U.S. census figures report that Hispanics comprised 12.5% of the U.S. population in 2000, a number that has grown to 14.7% by 2006 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007). Overall, the Hispanic population has grown rapidly over the last four decades and is currently the largest minority ethnic group in the U.S. Conservative estimates predicts that by the year 2040, less than half of all school age students will be non-Hispanic White (Hernández, 2004) and over one-third of the workforce will be representatives of non-White ethnic groups. As one researcher put it, in thirty years’ time, the current majority white workforce will be relying on a majority of Hispanic, Asian and African American workforce, for its support. It is in light of this information that this study was undertaken. The effective education of language-minority students is more important than ever before; it is hoped that this study will add to the growing body of research concerning those factors found to be most critical to implementing and sustaining quality programs for language-minority students. This situation led to the implementation of a bilingual program, particularly within the larger context of the effective education of language minority students. Bilingual Education Bilingual education provides instruction to students in two or more languages. Sometimes bilingual education exists for those who want to ensure that their children become bilingual and bi-literate, especially in important languages such as English and Chinese. It also is true that entire countries have bilingual education systems to ensure that all their children become multilingual. In the case of the United States, bilingual education is mostly for immigrant and minority-language children who need to acquire academic competence in a majority language as soon as possible. Bilingual education programs are also often used in the education of groups who have lost their native languages and want to revitalize them. The best examples of such language-revitalization bilingual education programs are the preschools known as Kohanga Reo; these were developed by the Maori of New Zealand. Increasingly, bilingual education programs worldwide in the 21st century aim to develop "Plurilingualism"; this is the ability to use and learn more than one language to varying degrees. These programs are integral to the development of linguistic tolerance toward different languages, as well as their speakers. This is the goal, for example, of all bilingual education efforts in the European Union. It can be said that plurilingualism is also the goal of the few two-way bilingual education programs; these are also known as two-way dual-language education programs in the United States. The programs validate and attempt to develop both languages within the student population. (Johnston, p. 225-240) Bilingual Education in USA As stated by Llanes (2001) in the United States there has been a long history of public bilingual education. In 1968 the first Bilingual Education Act (Title VII) was added to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. It provided funding for establishing such programs to educate English-language learners (ELLs); these students are also known as limited English proficient (LEP) students. The 1965 act was reauthorized multiple times until Title III of the No Child Left behind Act replaced the previous legislation (signed into law in 2002). Bilingual education is also supported through several court decisions, the most important of which is Lau v. Nichols (1974). In this case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Chinese parents who claimed that children who did not speak English were not receiving an equal educational opportunity. The Court ruled that the San Francisco School Board had to do more for these children. (P. 70) There is great linguistic diversity in the United States. The 2000 U.S. census revealed that there were almost 10 million schoolchildren (ages 5 to 17) who spoke languages other than English at home, with almost 7 million of them speaking Spanish. Chinese was spoken by the second-largest group of schoolchildren in 2000, followed by French and then Vietnamese. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there were 41 million Latinos residing in the United States in 2005; 25 million of them had been born in the United States. (Llanes, p. 73-75) Types of Bilingual Education. Adopted from Baker, Colin, & Prys, Jones, p. Bilingual Education Programs Specific bilingual program models (also called dual language programs) are named to denote the balance of the first language with the second language (L1/L2), the longevity of the program, the population, or even the program goals. Such models include transitional bilingual education. Following are such bilingual education programs: 1. Two-Way Immersion Programs Within the realm of bilingual education is a new model that has shown extremely positive results: dual immersion. Dual immersion is a type of bilingual program that balances instruction between the majority and minority languages, typically allocating more instructional time in the minority language and less in the majority language for the first few years, and transitioning to a fifty-fifty balance by third or fourth grade. This is called the 90/10 or 70/30 model, alluding to the percentage of time spent in each language. The 50/50 model begins in kindergarten with both languages equally represented in instruction. 2. One-Way Immersion Programs One-way dual immersion programs are those that typically serve students representing a single language, usually the minority language, such as Spanish. While one-way and two-way Immersion Programs share same linguistic, attitudinal, and academic goals, there is one major distinction that should be kept in mind when comparing student achievement data. One-way immersion programs differ from two-way immersion in that there are no peer models of the target language in the classroom. The entire class is composed of students who speak one language (e.g., English) and who are attempting to learn a second language (target) or foreign language through an immersion experience. 3. Structured English Immersion (SEI) Opponents of bilingual education programs have pointed to One-Way Immersion programs as evidence that immersion education works. The research findings from Canada appear to support this view. However, there are clear distinctions between immersion programs in Canada for language majority students and Structured English Immersion programs for language minority children in United States. Most relevant to this study is the distinction in program goals. One-Way immersion programs are considered enrichment programs where children are expected to acquire a second language while developing and maintaining their first. Students in One-Way Immersion programs are not in danger of losing their home language because this language is supported in their homes and their surrounding environments. The opposite is true for language minority children in Structured English Immersion programs. SEI programs are compensatory and subtractive in nature. The goal is to teach English learners English. Therefore, there is minimal to no formal support in the home language. In 1981, Baker and de Kanter provided the field with one of the earliest definitions of Structured English Immersion. They wrote, “Instruction is in the second language (L2), as in the case of submersion, but there are important differences. The immersion teacher understands the home language (L1), and students can address the teacher in home language (L1); the immersion teacher, however, replies only in the second language (L2).” Furthermore, they added, “Structured immersion differs from bilingual instruction in that the home language (L1) is never spoken by the teacher and subject area instruction is given in the second language from beginning” (Baker and de Kanter, 1981, p. 2). Fifteen years later, Baker (again) and Rossell slightly modified their definition of SEI. They added to their earlier definition, “The native tongue is used only in the rare instances when the student cannot complete a task without it” (Rossell and Baker, 1996, p. 10). This change from never using home language in the classroom to only using it when needed to provide English learners instructions or clarifications is a major difference between structured immersion and submersion. However, in order to follow structured immersion in its purest definition, all English learners must be provided with a teacher who understands and speaks their home language. Benefits of Bilingual Education Programs Bilingualism has been found to have a number of positive benefits beyond that of simply knowing a second language. “Bilingual children exhibit a greater sensitivity to linguistic meanings and may be more flexible in their thinking than are monolingual children” (Cummins, 1998). They have gained a habit of more closely observing the features of language from their position as outside observers. French language immersion students tend to have more positive attitudes toward the language studied, although they still do not often choose to use it when they can choose to do otherwise (Genesee, 1994). Citing number of studies, Robinson (1998, p. 41) states that “an early introduction to language study seems to foster respect and appreciation for cultural diversity”. She goes on to mention the age of 10 as an important time for development of attitudes toward other nations and groups, and the ages of 7-12 as “an important period in the development of role-taking ability”. Students in language immersion programs seem to exhibit higher levels of cultural sensitivity than those in other types of bilingual programs, perhaps because all tasks are carried out using the target language, enhancing its importance in the minds of students (Calderon, 2003). Furthermore, language immersion students consistently do “as well as or better than their monolingual English-speaking peers on all standardized measures of achievement in mathematics, science, and social studies” (Rubio, 1998, p. 18). Clearly, language immersion is something worth investigating further. Despite the growing language diversity in the United States, bilingual education has recently come under attack. Voters passed Proposition 227 in California in 1998, Proposition 203 in Arizona in 2000, and Question 2 in Massachusetts in 2002; these statues effectively outlawed bilingual education in those states. Most of the world has embraced bilingual education as a way to become linguistically competent and culturally tolerant. U.S. federal policy has become more restrictive, as shown by the silencing of the word bilingual in Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act. Yet a growing number of parents, especially majority-language parents, are embracing two-way bilingual education programs for their children. Works Cited Baker, Colin, & Prys, Jones. Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education, Multilingual Matters, 1998, ISBN1853593621, 9781853593628, p. 469-470 Baker, K A. & de Kanter, A A. Effectiveness of Bilingual Education: A Review of the Literature. Final Draft Report, Department of Education, ED 215010, 1981 Calderon, M E. & Minaya-Rowe, L. Designing and Implementing Two-way Bilingual Programs: A Step-by-step Guide for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc. 2003 Cummins, J. Age on Arrival and Immigrant Second Language Learning in Canada: A Reassessment, Applied Linguistics, 1998, 11 (2), 132-149 Genesee, F. Educating Second Language Children: The Whole Child, the Whole Curriculum, the Whole Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994 Hernández, D. Children and youth in immigrant families: Demographic, social, and Educational issues, In J. Banks & C. McGee Banks (eds.), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (p.404-419). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2004 Johnston, R. Case studies of expectation climate at two bilingual education schools. Bilingual Research Journal, 2000, 24(3), 225-240. Llanes, Jose. The Sociology of Bilingual Education in the United States, Journal of Education, 2001, Vol. 163 Issue 1, p70, Database: Academic Search Premier National Poverty Center, Poverty Facts, The University of Michigan. 2006, July 10, 2000, from http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. Our nation on the fault line: Hispanic American education. Washington D.C. 1996 President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. From Risk to Opportunity: Fulfilling the educational needs of Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century. Washington D.C. 2003 Robinson, D. The Cognitive, Academic, and Attitudinal baenefits of Early Language Learning, in M. Met (Ed.), Critical Issues in Early Second Language Learning (pp. 37-43). New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc., 1998 Rossell, C H. & Baker, K. The Educational Effectiveness of Bilingual Education, Research in the Teaching of English, 1996, 30: 1, 7-74. Rubio, C. A Rationale for Immersion. In M. Met (Ed.), Critical Issues in Early Second Language Learning (pp. 15-19). New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc., 1998 Suárez-Orozco, C., Suárez-Orozco M., & Doucent, F. The academic engagement and Achievement of Latino youth, In J. S. Banks & C. A. McGee Banks (eds.), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2004 U.S. Census Bureau. American Fact Finder, 2007, July 11, 2009, from http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en Read More