Bilingual Education Column

As more than 5,000 educators gathered in Albuquerque, N.M., last month for the annual conference of the National Association for Bilingual Education, the prospects for their primary cause--instruction in a child's native language--looked as bright as they have at any time in recent years.

Paul E. Martinez, the president of NABE, gave a speech describing bilingual education as "alive, well, thriving, and on the move."

"NABE has had bad years, and those bad years are gone," Mr. Martinez said, in an apparent reference to the political and pedagogical controversies that surrounded bilingual education...