Bilingual Education

The United States has always been home to significant numbers of non-English speakers. Sometimes the language differences have been tolerated by English-speaking Americans, but not always. In the first half of

the nineteenth century, for example, the most prevalent language next to English was German. In the 1850s, bilingual schools (schools in which two languages were taught) teaching in German and English were operating in Baltimore, Maryland ; Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio ; Indianapolis, Indiana ; Milwaukee, Wisconsin ; and St. Louis, Missouri . Similarly, Louisiana , with its large French-speaking population, allowed bilingual instruction in its schools. (See New France .) Several states in the Southwest had Spanish as well as English instruction. Hundreds of thousands of children in the United States were educated in a language other than English.

Anti-immigrant movement

Around 1900, anti-immigrant sentiments in the country increased. Several states passed laws against teaching in other languages. Immigrant children who did not speak English began to have a hard time in the public schools. In 1908, only 13 percent of the immigrant children enrolled in New York City schools at age twelve were likely to go on to high school, as opposed to 32 percent of native-born students. This trend was mirrored across the country as non-English-speaking immigrant children, not understanding the language spoken in their classrooms, fell further and further behind.

During World War I (1914–18), an intense wave of nationalism (pride and loyalty to one's own country, sometimes in an excessive way) swept the country. It reinforced the negative reaction of many Americans to the large number of immigrants entering the country. By 1925, thirty-seven states had passed laws requiring instruction in English regardless of the dominant language of the region. This opposition to bilingual education continued into the 1950s. Many children whose native language was not English received a very poor education in the public school system.

Federal government support

After the Cuban revolution of 1959, waves of Cubans fled to South Florida . Florida's Coral Way school district established the first state-supported program in decades to instruct students in Spanish, their native language, thereby easing their transition to English. The bilingual program provided all students, Anglo and Cuban, instruction in both Spanish and English with excellent results. With the success of the Coral Way project, state and local government involvement in language education became accepted.

The federal government soon took up the cause, starting with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which prohibited discrimination in education, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which funded schools and provided help for disadvantaged students. In 1968, after considerable debate, Congress passed a bill that amended (modified) the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Under the amendment, the federal government would provide funding for bilingual education to school districts with a large proportion of non-English-speaking students who lived in poor neighborhoods. To receive funding, districts would be required to provide instruction in a student's native language until the child could demonstrate competence in English. The federal government put hundreds of millions of dollars into bilingual education programs nationwide by the mid-1970s.

Supreme Court support

In 1974, the Supreme Court gave its support to bilingual education in Lau v. Nichols. The ruling states that school districts with a substantial number of non-English-speaking students must take steps to overcome the students’ language differences. After that ruling, the federal government was able to force school districts to initiate bilingual education plans. These Lau plans greatly expanded the number of bilingual programs across the country. They set standards to determine which students qualified for inclusion in a program and when they could be allowed (or forced) to exit. During this period, test scores repeatedly showed that non-English-speaking students who participated in well-designed bilingual programs consistently performed at the same level as their English-speaking classmates.

English immersion

None of the new acts or policies clearly addressed the goals of bilingual programs. Should the programs aim to send the student quickly back to regular English-language classes, or should they take a slower approach, allowing the student to maintain good grades and stay up to standard with his or her age level in school? Different programs addressed these questions in their own ways, and the lack of clarity contributed to a conflict that lasted into the 2000s. By the 1980s, a growing number of opponents of bilingual education believed that, rather than speeding immigrants into the English-speaking mainstream, bilingual education was causing them to hold onto their native languages and cultures. The critics considered this undesirable. Studies showed that some bilingual programs were allowing students to remain in bilingual classes longer than three years and were not teaching them sufficient English to function in mainstream classrooms. In the early 1980s, the federal government quietly withdrew its support for native-language instruction programs.

In 1984, the government began providing funding for English immersion programs—programs that placed non-English-speaking students in all-English classes, forcing them to learn English in a hurry or be left behind. Several studies in the mid-1980s showed that the performance of the limited-English students in the English immersion programs declined. Meanwhile, public attitudes in California , with its rapidly growing foreign-born population, became increasingly hostile to bilingual programs. In 1998, California adopted an English-only requirement for instruction in all its schools. Arizona and several other states followed.

Bilingual education remained controversial in the 2000s. Advocates contended that non-English-speaking children will receive little or no education unless they are taught in their own language during the years when they are first learning English. With a poor start due to language difference, students are much more likely to drop out of school and consequently face low-paying jobs and poverty in the future. Opponents argue that students in bilingual programs may not be motivated to learn English as well as they should and will therefore not be able to secure good jobs later in life. They argue that the government should not use its funds to help non-native people preserve their cultures in the United States.