Bilingual Education in the United States

Abstract

The history of bilingual education in the United States has shifted between tolerance and repression depending on politics, the economy, and the size of the immigrant population. Languages other than English have been (and continue to be) primarily seen as a problem to be remediated by the schools. However, the massive increase in students whose primary language is not English (today more than one in five) and who perform at exceptionally low levels in the nation’s schools has once again provoked discussion about the most effective way to educate them. Research has accumulated showing a clear advantage for “maintenance” dual language and bilingual programs over English-only or transitional programs with respect to achievement, attainment, and a number of other outcomes. Nonetheless, many challenges remain to implementing such programs on a large scale: the politics of bilingualism and the shortage of highly qualified teachers are among the primary obstacles. However, if federal and state education policies supported bilingualism as an important goal for all US students, and incentives were created to recruit and train bilingual teachers, the USA could rapidly join other developed nations that have long supported multilingualism and nurtured it in their students.

Full text

Bilingual Education in the United States
Patricia Gándara and Kathy Escamilla
Contents
History of Bilingualism in the USA .............................................................. 2
Demographics of Bilingualism in the USA .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 5
Defining Bilingual Education and Instructional Options . . ...................................... 5
Research on Bilingual Education ................................................................. 7
Contemporary Dilemmas in Bilingual Education in the USA .. ................................. 9
Conclusion .. . . . ................................................................................... 11
Related Articles in the Encyclopedia of Language and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
References .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 12
Abstract
The history of bilingual education in the United States has shifted between
tolerance and repression depending on politics, the economy, and the size of the
immigrant population. Languages other than English have been (and continue to
be) primarily seen as a problem to be remediated by the schools. However, the
massive increase in students whose primary language is not English (today more
than one in five) and who perform at exceptionally low levels in the nation’s
schools has once again provoked discussion about the most effective way to
educate them. Research has accumulated showing a clear advantage for “main-
tenance”dual language and bilingual programs over English-only or transitional
programs with respect to achievement, attainment, and a number of other out-
comes. Nonetheless, many challenges remain to implementing such programs on
P. Gándara (*)
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California Los Angeles, Los
Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: gandara@gseis.ucla.edu
K. Escamilla
School of Education, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
e-mail: kathy.escamilla@colorado.edu
#Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
O. García et al. (eds.), Bilingual and Multilingual Education,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02324-3_33-1
1

a large scale: the politics of bilingualism and the shortage of highly qualified
teachers are among the primary obstacles. However, if federal and state education
policies supported bilingualism as an important goal for all US students, and
incentives were created to recruit and train bilingual teachers, the USA could
rapidly join other developed nations that have long supported multilingualism
and nurtured it in their students.
Keywords
Assets •Dual language •Maintenance bilingual •Politics •Teachers •Transi-
tional bilingual
History of Bilingualism in the USA
Ironically, the United States, a self-proclaimed “nation of immigrants”has histori-
cally had an uncomfortable relationship with its immigrants and their languages.
There have, however, been some exceptions at different times in the nation’s history.
For example, during the eighteenth century many of the new settlers spoke French,
Dutch, and German (Kloss 1977/1998) and the German language was so widely
spoken in the new colonies that Benjamin Franklin was quoted in 1751 as
bemoaning the possibility that Pennsylvania “in a few years [would] become a
German colony”(Schmid 2001, p. 15). By 1800, German bilingual schools
flourished throughout large swaths of the country, particularly in the Midwest. 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 Mexico Territory did so
for Spanish and English in 1850. By the end of the nineteenth century, about a dozen
states had passed similar laws (Kloss 1977/1998).
In 1870, the country was hit with a deep economic recession and any policy that
seemed to favor immigrants was targeted. In defense of German language programs,
the “straightforward economic argument was made that bilingual skills in English
and German would prove a great boon to business and trade interests at home and
abroad, particularly in light of Germany’s growing stature in international commerce
(Schlossman 1983, p. 156),”but this argument could not forestall the coming
repression of “foreign”languages. By the 1880s, more restrictive language policies
were underway as new immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans was begin-
ning. The Naturalization Act of 1906 required that to become a US citizen, immi-
grants would have to be able to speak English. World War I finally brought a close to
German language education in the United States (Wiley 1998).
The post-World War I period ushered in an era of overt repression of foreign
languages and new efforts to “Americanize”immigrants. By 1923, 34 states had
laws requiring English-only instruction in all private and public primary schools
(Kloss 1977/1998). That same year, a Nebraska teacher who was fired for teaching
German in a private elementary school took the case to court arguing that the 14th
2 P. Gándara and K. Escamilla

amendment disallowed such discrimination against a language group. In an unchar-
acteristic decision for its time, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the teacher’s right
to teach his subject and parents’right to choose their children’s education in the case
(Meyer v Nebraska 1923). However, this had little impact on the tenor of the times.
The economic depression of the 1930s and the end of immigration to the country
(Schmid 2001) stemmed the Americanization efforts and reduced the nation’s
obsession with rooting out “foreign”languages. Nonetheless, a significant pocket
of Spanish speakers continued to live in the states along the US-Mexico border
where the families were largely dedicated to farm labor and the children often came
to school speaking no English. The primary response to this was to segregate them
into “Mexican schools”or “Mexican rooms”where they were presumably taught
English and “Americanized.”The education Mexican children received in these
settings was clearly inferior (US Commission on Civil Rights 1972). Bilingual
instruction was not provided and the level of education was appallingly low, with
few students going on even to high school (Carter 1970; US Commission on Civil
Rights 1972).
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 and subsequent exodus of large numbers of
Cubans to South Florida had an important impact on the way that bilingual instruc-
tion came to be viewed. Unlike the Mexicans of the Southwest in almost every way
(e.g., wealth, status, education, and race) except language, the Cubans established
bilingual schools where their children could learn in two languages while they
waited to return to the Spanish-speaking island as soon as Castro was deposed.
The Coral Way School, the first established to meet the needs of the Cuban children,
became a model of bilingual education for the nation.
With the civil rights era of the 1960s came a new willingness to consider the plight
of students who did not speak English, as well as a new understanding that making
children feel ashamed of their language and culture was counterproductive to learning
(Portes and Hao 2002). The 1968 Bilingual Education Act (Title VII of the historic
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) acknowledged the particular needs
of “Limited English Proficient”(LEP) students and provided a modest $7.5 million for
some pilot bilingual programs. However, the goal of these programs was not defined
in the law and it was unclear –and highly controversial –whether their purpose was to
teach children in two languages so that they might be literate in both or simply to
transition them into English at the first moment possible (Crawford 2004). Nonethe-
less, the very fact that the legislation named the program “bilingual education”gave
credibility to the idea of instruction in two languages. Following the lead of the federal
government in supporting bilingual instruction, most states with significant “LEP”
populations passed legislation to provide a variety of bilingual programs. Massachu-
setts was the first to pass a bilingual education law in 1971.
The next critical event for education policy for English learners occurred in 1974
with the Supreme Court ruling, Lau v Nichols in which 1,856 Chinese-speaking
children in San Francisco argued that they were being denied an equal education
because they could not understand the classroom instruction and no accommoda-
tions were made for their language difference. The Court ruled that the school district
Bilingual Education in the United States 3

had to take affirmative steps to provide access to the same curriculum that English-
speaking students received; however, it did not instruct the schools about how this
should happen. In Justice Douglas’s opinion for the Court, he wrote:
No specific remedy is urged upon us. Teaching English to the students of Chinese ancestry
who do not speak the language is one choice. Giving instructions to this group in Chinese is
another. There may be others. Petitioners ask only that the Board of Education be directed to
apply its expertise to the problem and rectify the situation [414 U.S. 563, 565].
Most Boards of Education assumed that some form of bilingual education was
probably in order. By 1997, 11 states had laws supporting some form of bilingual
instruction (Garcia and Morgan 1997). However, in 1998 California became the first
to overturn its bilingual law and establish English-only instruction as the default.
Even states with bilingual education laws allowed for English Learners (ELs) to be
educated in alternative settings. For example, prior to the passage in California of the
antibilingual initiative, only 29 % of EL students were actually in any kind of
bilingual program (Gándara et al. 2010). The last study sponsored by the US
Department of Education to assess the programs being offered to English learners
found that no more than 39 % of these students were being provided instruction that
incorporated, in some form, the use of their primary language (Zehler et al. 2003).
This study was undertaken before Arizona and Massachusetts also officially aban-
doned bilingual education; other states have done so more quietly.
Days after the ruling in Lau v Nichols, in 1974, the Congress passed the Equal
Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA), requiring school districts to “take appropri-
ate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its
students in its instructional programs.”“Appropriate action”was clarified by the
5th Circuit in (1981)Castan˜eda v Pickard decision, setting the “three prong stan-
dard”that included: (1) a program based on recognized theory; (2) faithfully
implemented according to the theory, including adequate resources for implementa-
tion; and (3) that demonstrated effectiveness over time. In (2009), in Horne v Flores,
the Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision, overturned a federal court’sfinding that
Arizona did not meet the second prong, failing to provide requirement of sufficient
funding to implement the program. In his written opinion, Justice Alito also noted
that Arizona had implemented a “significantly more effective”form of instruction
when it abandoned bilingual instruction in favor of Structured English Immersion.
The federal Bilingual Education Act (BEA) has also been the object of political
whim and ideological campaigns. With the exception of 1994, each time the
Bilingual Education Act has been reauthorized, the regulations regarding bilingual
education have been weakened in favor of greater support for English-only instruc-
tional methods. With the realization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
in 2001 (renamed the No Child Left Behind Act), the BEA (Title VII) disappeared
entirely and was replaced with the “English Language Acquisition, Language
Enhancement, and Academic Achievement Act.”
Thus the history of bilingual education in the United States has shifted between
tolerance and repression depending on politics, the economy, and the size of the
4 P. Gándara and K. Escamilla

immigrant population. Languages other than English have been (and continue to be)
primarily seen as a problem to be remediated by the schools (Ruiz 1984). Language
rights have been framed largely as the right to not be discriminated against, and
bilingual educators have routinely been on the defensive about helping students to
maintain their native language; in the minds of most Americans, bilingual education
is for the purpose of teaching English and not about actually educating a student in
two languages (Gándara and Contreras 2009).
Demographics of Bilingualism in the USA
Since 1980, the number of people 5 years and older that speak a language other than
English at home in the USA has nearly tripled. Today more than 60 million people,
or almost one-quarter of the total population, use another language at home. Nearly
two-thirds of these individuals speak Spanish, with the next most common lan-
guages being Chinese, French, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean; however, more
than three-fourths of these individuals report that they also speak English “well”or
“very well”(Ryan 2013). Thus “natural”bilingualism is now pervasive; one in five
students in American public schools comes from a home in which English is not the
primary language, and about 11 % of all students are designated as English learners
(Batalova and McHugh 2010).
Defining Bilingual Education and Instructional Options
When defining bilingual education in the USA, it is important to understand that,
unlike in much of the rest of the world, bilingual education in the United States has
primarily been a program whose goal is to teach English rather than to develop
bilingualism/biliteracy. The vast majority of USA bilingual programs are designed
for students who come to school speaking native or home languages other than
English and who are learning English as a second or additional language. Over the
past 20 years, new forms of bilingual education, generally referred to as dual
language, have also been developed and implemented in the USA. Dual language
bilingual programs have the goal of developing bilingualism/biliteracy and cross-
cultural competence and include in their student body students who are monolingual
speakers of English as well as those who are learning English as an additional
language. Bilingual programs whose goal is English acquisition are generally termed
transitional bilingual programs and have been labeled “subtractive”in the literature,
whereas dual language bilingual programs whose goal is the development of bilin-
gualism and biliteracy have been labeled as “additive”(Baker 2011; Crawford 2004,
de Jong 2011). These various forms of bilingual education will be defined and
discussed below. It is important to note that there is great variability within transi-
tional and dual language bilingual programs and some programs use the same label
but implement widely different practices while other programs use different labels
but employ similar practices.
Bilingual Education in the United States 5

The vast majority of bilingual education programs in the USA are labeled as
transitional bilingual education (TBE) and TBE programs can serve any non-English
language group; however, the majority of TBE programs serve Spanish-speaking
students. Transitional bilingual programs are subdivided into early-exit and late-exit
programs. TBE programs were developed as a way of responding to various local,
state, and federal mandates that required schools in the USA to provide equal access
to educational opportunities for students who enter US schools with limited profi-
ciency in English. These programs are designed for students who are labeled as
English Language Learners (ELLs) or students whose proficiency in English is so
limited that they would not be able to benefit from schooling offered only in English
(see Lau v. Nichols,1974), and as their label suggests were designed to use students’
native languages to help them transition to English.
With regard to language policy, TBE programs utilize two languages as media of
instruction for all or part of the school day in order to enable ELLs to access the
content of math, science, social studies, and reading and language arts while they are
learning English. In addition to learning content in the non-English language, TBE
programs include the study of English as a Second Language (ESL) in their
curriculum. The underlying rationale for TBE programs is to utilize students’native
languages to teach content so that these students do not fall behind in their learning
of content while they are learning English. TBE programs are organized to gradually
transition students from learning school content in a non-English language to
learning school content all in English. Early exit programs strive to attain this
transition in 1–3 school years, while late-exit programs favor a more gradual
transition of 4–5 school years (Crawford 2004). In all cases, the ultimate goal is
the acquisition of English.
TBE programs of all types have been widely criticized in the US for being
subtractive and assimilationist. Subtractive in that they are not intended to develop
bilingualism and biliteracy and frequently result in loss of students’native language,
and assimilationist in that they do not foster the development of multicultural
perspectives or cross-cultural competence. Despite this criticism, there is a plethora
of research that indicates that the use of students’home languages in instruction,
even for short periods of time as in TBE programs is beneficial (August and
Shanahan 2006; Goldenberg 2013). The research base is particularly strong with
regard to learning to read in students’native languages, and the consensus around
numerous experimental studies conducted over the past 40 years is that learning to
read in a non-English language boosts reading skills in English (Goldenberg 2013).
A second type of bilingual education program that is growing in popularity is
labeled Dual Language Education. There are three major types of dual language
programs: (1) Developmental or maintenance dual language, (2) Two-way immer-
sion programs, and (3) Immersion programs in languages other than English. Unlike
TBE programs, dual language programs have as their goal the development of
bilingualism (the ability to speak fluently in two languages), biliteracy (the ability
to read and write in two languages), academic achievement (equal to that of students
in nondual language bilingual programs), and cross-cultural competence (García
2009; Genesee 2004). Their intent is to use two languages for content and literacy
6 P. Gándara and K. Escamilla

instruction for a sustained period of time (at least 5 years) (Howard et al. 2003).
Further, two-way dual language programs include students who are native mono-
lingual English speakers as well as students for whom English is an additional
language. These programs are considered to be additive in nature because they
build on and extend students’existing language competencies and aim to broaden
students’linguistic repertoires. In dual language bilingual programs, all students
learn at least two languages and all students learn content area subjects in English as
well as other languages. Like TBE programs, the vast majority of dual language
bilingual programs in the USA are offered at the elementary school level and are
Spanish/English programs. However, there are small but growing numbers of pro-
grams in middle and high schools and programs that involve languages other than
Spanish (Center for Applied Linguistics 2014).
It is important to note that bilingual education programs in the USA of all types
have largely been developed, debated, and researched around language of instruction
issues. Languages of instruction debates have included which languages should be
used as media of instruction, for whom, and how long. While important, debates
around language of instruction have prevented the field from engaging in equally
important debates about quality of instruction. For example, it is not just important
that a TBE or dual language bilingual program teach children to read and write in
English and Spanish for 1 h a day, it is equally important to insure that during this 1 h
of instructional time, quality teaching methodologies are implemented. There is a
dire need for research on the development of pedagogical practices that can enhance
and improve instruction in all types of bilingual education programs (Slavin and
Cheung 2005; Genesee et al. 2006; Goldenberg and Coleman 2010).
Research on Bilingual Education
Following a very short “honeymoon”after the passage of the Bilingual Education
Act in 1968, bilingual education began to come under attack for being ineffective
and a waste of money. In response to the controversy, the federal government
commissioned its first evaluation of bilingual education from the American Institutes
for Research in 1977–78 (Danoff 1978). This study compared students in 38 Title
VII bilingual programs with similar students in ESL classrooms and found no impact
of the bilingual programs on test scores. The study was roundly criticized for
including programs in the two groups solely on the basis of program labels without
examining the educational treatment provided. This, and other methodological
problems, left the findings of the study in significant dispute. A second, large-scale
comparative study was commissioned by the federal government. This one
conducted by David Ramirez and his colleagues (1991) was much more complex
and involved a 4-year comparison of English immersion, early-exit transitional
bilingual, and late-exit transitional bilingual programs on various achievement out-
comes in both English and Spanish. The researchers were careful to examine the
instruction provided in each, and the amount of time dedicated to each language, as
well as teacher characteristics and pedagogical strategies. Nonetheless, there were
Bilingual Education in the United States 7

very significant differences in the students assigned to each program type with late-
exit students being much more low income and with a significantly lesser chance of
having attended preschool. Also, programs could not usually be compared to others
in the same district or school so that school and district effects were likely powerful
contributors to uncontrolled differences among the groups (Meyer and Feinberg
1992). Moreover, very heavy attrition of students called into question many of the
results. In sum, the researchers found a small positive difference in first grade
reading outcomes for the early-exit bilingual model over the English immersion,
but overall the study did not find significantly different outcomes for the three groups
of students.
A number of meta-analyses of smaller studies have also been conducted. The first
was a narrative review commissioned by the US Department of Education to
determine if English-only programs were more effective with respect to English
language outcomes than bilingual programs based on existing research. Keith Baker
and Adriana de Kanter (1981) reviewed over 300 studies but found only 28 that met
sufficient methodological rigor to be included in their qualitative analysis of the
programs –“yes”the evaluation found positive effects for bilingual instruction,
“no”, it did not. There was no attempt to quantify the degree of effectiveness. This
very widely cited study found, “The case for the effectiveness of transitional
bilingual education is so weak that exclusive reliance on this instructional method
is clearly not justified (p. 1).”In other words, they did not find a definitively positive
outcome for either of the two methods tested.
Diane August and her colleagues (2010) more recently reviewed a “best evidence
synthesis”and four meta-analyses conducted of second language programs since the
early 1980s, selecting only those that used rigorous meta-analytic methods, and that
were conducted by researchers from varying disciplines and perspectives. In the best
evidence study, Robert Slavin and Alan Cheung (2005) found that among the
17 studies that met their strict criteria for inclusion, 13 favored bilingual programs
(all Spanish-English) and 4 found no differences. The effect size for the averaged
score differences was between .33 and .45, indicating a “medium positive effect.”It
has been pointed out that this is approximately the same effect size as for significant
reduction in class size (Goldenberg 2008). Across both the best evidence study and
the four meta-analyses, August et al. (2010, p. 143) found “differences in favor of
native-language instruction, with effect sizes ranges from small to moderate.”The
researchers also note that the better the technical quality of the studies, the larger
were the effect sizes. In another synthesis of the research on reading instructional
approaches for English learners, Goldenberg (2008, p. 14) also concludes that
“Teaching students to read in their first language promotes higher levels of reading
achievement in English,”afinding that is often thought to be counterintuitive.
Most evaluation research on bilingual education has focused narrowly on short-
term outcomes for reading and math in English. Very little attention has been paid to
longer-term effects or to other potential outcomes. In fact, many of the studies that
have found no difference or less positive effects for bilingual instruction have been
based on very short-term analyses. Genesee and his colleagues (2006) reporting on a
synthesis of research on English learners note:
8 P. Gándara and K. Escamilla

Evaluations conducted in the early years of a program (Grades K-3) typically reveal that
students in bilingual education scored below grade level...[but] Almost all evaluations of
students at the end of elementary school and in middle and high school show that the
educational outcomes of bilingually educated students, especially those in late-exit and two-
way programs, were at least comparable to and usually higher than their comparison peers.
(p. 201)
A recent study that followed thousands of students in one large school district in
transitional bilingual, dual language bilingual, and English-only programs beginning
in kindergarten and following them into high school found that the students who had
remained in bilingual instruction, and especially dual language bilingual programs,
outperformed the students in English-only instruction on all measures –they ulti-
mately reclassified to English proficient at higher rates, scored higher on English
Language Arts and on measures of English proficiency (Umansky and Reardon
2014).
With respect to outcomes other than test scores or English proficiency, there is
now a large and growing body of research on a host of outcomes. Bialystock (2001)
has found that bilingually educated students have greater cognitive flexibility,
working memory, and executive functioning (e.g., concentration); Portes and Hao
(2002) have found that bilingual students have more cohesive family relations and
fewer behavior problems in school; Santibañez and Zárate (2014) have found that
students who maintain their bilingualism into high school are more likely to go to
college and for Latinos, to 4 year colleges; and Rumbaut (2014) has found that these
students who maintain bilingualism are less likely to drop out of high school and to
secure higher level positions in the workforce. Agirdag (2014) has also found that
these young bilinguals will earn significantly more in the labor market compared to
their monolingual peers “with immigrant roots.”These findings call attention to the
need to be more specific about the goals of instructional programs for English
learners. If the goal is simply oral English proficiency, it may not matter greatly
which program is provided; however, if educators are concerned about cognitive
growth, reading ability, social adaptation, drop out, college-going, or eventual
earnings, the research is all pointing in the direction of bilingual instruction and
especially those programs that offer strong models of both languages.
Contemporary Dilemmas in Bilingual Education in the USA
There are a myriad of issues that challenge the full implementation of bilingual
education programs in the USA. Since the early 2000s, federal policy has established
definitively that bilingual education is for the purpose of teaching English and not
about actually educating a student in two languages (Gándara and Contreras 2009).
In addition, there are other contemporary dilemmas to full implementation of
bilingual programs in the USA. These include: (1) changing demographics with
regard to language minority populations; (2) the implementation of the new Com-
mon Core State Standards (CCSS) which are currently monolingual and
Bilingual Education in the United States 9

monocultural; (3) a concomitant new high stakes testing system to assess account-
ability to the CCSS and which currently exists only in English; and (4) a chronic
teacher shortage, in part, caused by English-only educational policies of the past two
decades. Each of these dilemmas is discussed below.
Currently, the majority of bilingual programs in the USA are designed for
students who are labeled as “English Learners.”These models follow sequential
models of bilingual development in that literacy and content knowledge is developed
in the non-English language first as students learn English as a second language.
This is the structure of the majority of TBE and many dual language bilingual
programs. These models work well for students who enter school having had little
or no exposure to English.
However, over the past 20 years, the profile of English learners has changed and
program designs have not kept pace with the changes. In some areas of the USA, the
majority of English learners are simultaneous bilinguals who were born in the USA
and have been exposed to English since birth. They are children of immigrants, but
are not immigrants themselves. The Urban Institute reports that 77 % of elementary
aged English learners are born in the USA as are 56 % of secondary aged English
learners (Capp et al. 2005). There are few, if any, bilingual programs designed for
simultaneous emerging bilingual children although there is growing interest in this
demographic (García 2009; Escamilla et al. 2014). They represent a “new normal”
and new programs and policies need to be designed for them.
In addition to the changing profile of English learners, the USA has recently
instituted two additional national policy initiatives that will likely not support the
creation of new bilingual program models regardless of the population to be served.
The initiatives are the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and their accompa-
nying assessment systems known as Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for
College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium
(SBAC). Developed in 2009, the goal of the CCSS is to provide a framework to
better prepare students for life after high school whether in college or the work force.
Forty-five states will begin implementation of the CCSS in the 2014–2015 school
year with the hope that the implementation of the CCSS will improve the interna-
tional ranking of the USA on assessments and that having national standards will
insure that all states are teaching the same things in the same grades (Council of
Chief State School Officers 2012). PARCC and SBAC assessments will be used to
measure the extent to which individual states, districts, and students are meeting the
new CCSS. As these new reforms are implemented, teachers will have little control
over the curriculum they teach and the time they can allocate for instruction, thereby
making the implementation of transitional bilingual and dual language bilingual
programs more challenging (Berliner and Glass 2014).
These reforms are thought to be necessary to boost the USA’s international
standing. Ironically, neither the CCSS standards nor the high stakes testing programs
that are meant to assess their progress include standards about bilingualism,
biliteracy, and cross-cultural competence. In fact, the standards and assessments
are currently all in English. The research cited above affirms that bilingualism,
biliteracy, and cross-cultural competence are highly desirable skills, especially for
10 P. Gándara and K. Escamilla

the twenty-first century, and yet there is no inclusion of them in the new standards.
Since bilingualism/biliteracy imply meeting standards in two languages, the new
CCSS would actually appear to be lowering standards rather than raising them.
Moreover, 11 states have already passed legislation authorizing the Seal of Biliteracy
and legislation is pending in the Congress to make it nation-wide. The Seal of
Biliteracy is awarded to students who can demonstrate full proficiency in two or
more languages (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) upon high school grad-
uation. In 2014, almost 25,000 students were able to earn this recognition in
California alone.
It is axiomatic that programs of transitional bilingual and dual language bilingual
education cannot be implemented without fully qualified teachers. Historically, one
of the greatest obstacles to quality implementation of bilingual programs has been
the availability of fully prepared teachers, and this dilemma continues. For school
year 2009–2010, the Biennial Report on Title III (the federal government’soffice of
English Language Acquisition), it was estimated that 47,185 additional English as a
second language or bilingual certified teachers would be needed over the following
5 years to fill Title III teacher positions. These numbers are likely conservative
estimates (US Department of Education 2013). Further, in 2009–2010 the American
Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) reported that only 1 % of
bachelor’s degrees nationally were awarded to teachers preparing to be bilingual
and/or ESL teachers. Added to this is that fact that the potential teaching force of
bilingual/biliterate teachers has been diminished due to state mandates over the past
15 years that in some cases have outlawed bilingual education outright or have
emphasized the acquisition of English over the development of bilingualism/
biliteracy. The future bilingual teaching force includes emerging bilingual students
who are currently sitting in US classrooms and who because of current federal and
state policies are lacking opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge in two
languages.
Ongoing and unresolved debates about immigration, testing and assessment, and
teacher evaluation also constitute significant issues that might impede the future of
bilingual education in the USA. In short, despite growing interest in bilingual
education among parents and local communities, there remain some formidable
challenges to the creation and widespread implementation of bilingual education
in the USA in the near future.
Conclusion
Virtually all of the recent growth in US public schools is attributable to the children
of immigrants. These children bring enormous cultural and linguistic assets to the
nation. Research suggests that building on these assets through bilingual instruction
would be the most effective way to increase their academic achievement and social
and psychological well being, but it would also strengthen both their own labor
market prospects and the economy of the nation.
Bilingual Education in the United States 11

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