Federal

Guides Avoid Bilingual vs. English-Only Issue

By Mary Ann Zehr — November 03, 2006 | Corrected: February 22, 2019 5 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Corrected: This article misstated the arm of the U.S. Department of Education that paid for three guidebooks on how to teach English-language learners. The Comprehensive Centers Program of the office of elementary and secondary education underwrote the project.

Educators and policymakers looking for advice on the most highly charged issue affecting the education of English-language learners won’t be getting it from the Department of Education.

Read the “Practical Guidelines for the Education of English Language Learners,” posted by the Center on Instruction.

Three guidebooks with “research-based recommendations” for teaching such students released by the department last week don’t address the issue of whether it’s more beneficial to use bilingual education or English-only methods, even though it is prominent in research literature. Neither does the draft of a “practice guide,” still to be peer-reviewed, that offers counsel for teaching the same group of students.

“We intentionally avoided that,” said Russell Gersten, the executive director of the Instructional Research Group, of Long Beach, Calif., referring to why the panel he led for the practice guide hadn’t made a recommendation on whether schools should provide instruction to English-learners in their native languages.

The practice guide was previewed here last week at an Oct. 30-Nov. 1 meeting on English-language learners sponsored by the Education Department.

“Internally, we decided it was best to come out with practical guidelines about ways to teach, ways to assess, and ways to improve curriculum and instructional materials,” Mr. Gersten said. The panel also avoided the issue of bilingual education in part, he acknowledged, because it is political and has polarized the field.

David J. Francis, a professor of quantitative methods in the psychology department at the University of Houston who led the writing of the three guidebooks with “research-based recommendations” for teaching English-language learners, said his team of researchers from Harvard University and his own university had deliberately excluded a discussion on the language of instruction.

“The point of these books was not to get into this discussion, not because it’s not an important topic ..., but because it tends to dominate all discussions at the cost of discussions about good instruction, which transcend the choice of language model,” he wrote in an e-mail.

“Double the Work: Challenges and Solutions to Acquiring Language and Academic Literacy for Adolescent English Language Learners” is available from the Alliance for Excellent Education.

By contrast, a study on how best to teach English-language learners in high schools—paid for by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and released Nov. 2 by the Washington-based Alliance for Excellent Education—took up the matter of the language of instruction.

“If adolescent ELLs are literate in their native language and on grade level, a bilingual program might be the best option,” says the report, “Double the Work.” It describes a bilingual program in Union City, N.J., public schools as “based on research.”

The Education Department guides on English-language learners “are omitting something that is important,” said Stephen D. Krashen, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, and an advocate of bilingual education. Research shows “a consistent small to moderate advantage to bilingual education,” he said. “It’s one of the most reliable findings we have in all of education.”

Differing Views

Both Mr. Gersten and Mr. Francis say they didn’t have a directive from the Education Department telling them not to address research comparing bilingual education and English-only methods. Both projects were financed by the department’s Institute of Education Sciences.

The two scholars have different views about research on the effectiveness of bilingual education. Mr. Gersten said the research is “utterly ambiguous” and “not convincing.” Mr. Francis said that in a meta-analysis he helped conduct of research comparing bilingual education and English-only methods, “we find a small to moderate positive effect size for primary-language instruction” in developing literacy.

Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the director of the IES, said it was his understanding that the practice guide doesn’t address such research because the authors “wanted to focus on research-based recommendations that could be carried out anyplace in the country.” Some states, he noted, have laws that restrict the use of bilingual education.

See Also

See the accompanying story,

ELL Test Reviews Postponed

But James Crawford, the president of the Silver Spring, Md.-based Institute for Language and Education Policy, contended in an e-mail that politics is driving the Education Department to say as little as possible about bilingual education.

“Apparently, the Bush administration worries if it says anything nice about bilingual education, it will offend the Republican base,” he said. “On the other hand, if it jumps on the English-only bandwagon, it might alienate Latino voters.”

‘Off the Radar Screen’

The practice guide for teaching English-language learners is the first of several such guides the IES plans to publish. “It’s to fill a space that currently isn’t filled in education—research-informed documents that provide coherent advice about a problem that is multifaceted,” said Mr. Whitehurst.

Three of the six panel members relayed its seven recommendations to the 1,500 educators at the meeting last week.

Timothy Shanahan, the director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, explained that the practice guide recommends that teachers explicitly teach vocabulary to English-language learners throughout the school day. That recommendation, he said, is backed by only two studies focusing on vocabulary and English-language learners. Yet another of the recommendations—teachers who teach reading in students’ native languages should also introduce English reading early on—is backed with a “moderate” level of research, Mr. Shanahan said.

After the presentation, Claude Goldenberg, the executive director of the Center for Language-Minority Education and Research at California State University-Long Beach, confronted Mr. Shanahan about why the practice guide doesn’t address research on the effectiveness of bilingual education. “How could you drop it off the radar screen?” Mr. Goldenberg asked.

“It’s a legitimate question,” replied Mr. Shanahan, who agreed that there is more evidence to support the position that bilingual education is effective than there is to back some of the recommendations.

Sylvia Linan-Thompson, an associate professor of special education at the University of Texas at Austin and a panelist, said in a phone interview, “The decision was made early on that because a majority of English-language learners in the country received instruction in English, that’s what we would focus on.”

At the same time, she said, “I don’t think that this practice guide suggests that if you are able to provide bilingual education, you shouldn’t do so.”

A version of this article appeared in the November 08, 2006 edition of Education Week as Guides Avoid Bilingual vs. English-Only Issue

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Equity & Diversity Webinar
Classroom Strategies for Building Equity and Student Confidence
Shape equity, confidence, and success for your middle school students. Join the discussion and Q&A for proven strategies.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Professional Development Webinar
Disrupting PD Day in Schools with Continuous Professional Learning Experiences
Hear how this NC School District achieved district-wide change by shifting from traditional PD days to year-long professional learning cycles
Content provided by BetterLesson
Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal How Schools Fare in Biden's Proposed Budget
President Joe Biden released his fiscal 2024 budget, which calls for more money for preschool, Title I, and special education.
7 min read
President Joe Biden speaks about his 2024 budget proposal at the Finishing Trades Institute, Thursday, March 9, 2023, in Philadelphia.
President Joe Biden speaks about his 2024 budget proposal at the Finishing Trades Institute, Thursday, March 9, 2023, in Philadelphia.
Evan Vucci/AP
Federal The Push for a $60K Base Teacher Salary Gains Steam as Bernie Sanders Signs On
Sanders' legislation complements a proposal in the House and comes as state lawmakers from both parties prioritize legislation to boost teacher pay.
6 min read
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., outlines his priorities during an interview in his Capitol Hill office, Feb. 7, 2023.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., outlines his priorities during an interview in his Capitol Hill office, Feb. 7, 2023.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Federal Q&A Ending 'Government-Run Monopoly' on Schools Is Top Priority for Rep. Virginia Foxx
The Republican chair of the U.S. House's education committee plans to pass parents' rights and school choice bills.
5 min read
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., greets then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at the conclusion of a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on "Examining the Policies and Priorities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.' Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 6, 2018.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., greets then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at the conclusion of a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington in June 2018. Foxx spoke to Education Week about her priorities as she becomes chair of the committee for a second time.
Carolyn Kaster/AP
Federal Opinion Is This the Key to Unlocking Breakthrough Education Research?
An innovative federal R&D program for education is getting underway. Rick Hess and Jal Mehta discuss their mixed feelings about it.
5 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty