Twenty-five years of debate around bilingual education programs culminated in California passing Proposition 227 in 1998 to eliminate using students' first languages for instruction. This review examines various studies comparing outcomes of bilingual vs monolingual education programs for English language learners. Most studies found bilingual education led to equal or better performance on standardized tests measured in English compared to monolingual instruction alone. However, the debate remains ideological rather than based solely on pedagogical implications as bilingual education also confers social and economic status to non-English languages.

1. Bilingual Educational Programs:
A Synthesis on Effectiveness for English Language Learners
SYNTHESIS PAPER

2. 25 YEARS OF DEBATE
Twenty-five years of debate culminated in June 1998 with the passage of Proposition
227 in California by a margin of 61 to 39 percent. Proposition 227 was aimed at
eliminating the use of bilingual children’s first language (L1) for instructional
purposes except in very exceptional circumstances.

3. The shapes and forms of these programs vary from school to school.
Program options: transitional bilingual, maintenance bilingual, English-as-
a-second-language, immersion, sheltered English, and submersion
(Altarriba, 2008)
INTRODUCTION

4. Important definitions:
 Bilingual education: “refers to an organized and planned program that uses
two (or more) languages of instruction” (Cummins, 209, p. 161).
 Monolingual education: a program in which there is only one employed
language of instruction, and non-native students’ L1s are acknowledged
minimally, if at all.
INTRODUCTION

5.  This review does not take into account things like:
 ideal length of time to be in a bilingual education program
 what type of bilingual program is best
 effects on children who speak neither languages in a bilingual education program
WHAT THIS REVIEW DOES NOT COVER

6. One of the most famous studies of bilingual programs:
 Rossell and Baker (1996)
 Evidence overwhelmingly points to transitional-bilingual education being much less
effective than immersion programs in which English language learners are put in a
class of native English speakers and the instruction is solely in English.
 Evaluation of these programs lead them to conclude that regular classroom
instruction, in which the limited English proficient children are not given instruction in
their native language, is superior to a bilingual program approach.
LEADING UP TO NOW

7. Rossell and Baker's argument rests on their claim that students in
monolingual "structured immersion" programs (Canadian French
immersion programs in kindergarten and grade 1) come close to grade
norms while the program is monolingual in L2 but lose ground in
comparison to native speakers when the program becomes bilingual in
later grades.
 The data show exactly the opposite: there are major gaps between
immersion students and native French speakers after the initial two years
of monolingual L2 instruction but students catch up with native speakers
in receptive skills after instruction in their L1 (English) is introduced and
the program has become fully bilingual.
MAJOR CRITICISM OF RESULTS

8. Greene (1998)
 Used 11 of 75 studies in Rossell and Baker’s 1996 study
 Strove to avoid using seriously flawed studies, thus only 11
 “Despite the relatively small number of studies, the strength and consistency of these
results, especially from the highest quality randomized experiments, increases
confidence in the conclusion that bilingual programs are effective at increasing
standardized test scores measured in English.”
REFINING ROSSELL & BAKER’S RESULTS

9. GREENE’S RESULTS (1998)

10. Calderon, M., Slavin, R., & Sanchez, M. (2011)
 Quality education comes by respecting and incorporating students’ native
language
 Evidence showed Texas students in cooperative learning programs
(transitional-bilingual programs) scored higher on measures of English
language skills, as well as native-language skills, in comparison to those
students with English-only instruction.
Rolstad et al. (2005)
 Meta-analysis in Arizona showed positive effects on all
measures of language development
 Despite definitions of bilingual educational programs varying from researcher
to researcher, therefore making research difficult, past research still shows a
positive correlation between bilingual education and higher test scores in
comparison to monolingual program counterparts.
CURRENT STUDIES SUGGEST:

11. Uchikoshi et al. (2010)
 After assessing language in a variety of measures, both in English and their
respective native-tongue (Spanish or English), the evidence points to bilingual
instruction as beneficial to overall learning.
 An assessment of test scores on English reading comprehension and decoding
showed that these students, on average, did as well, and in some cases,
better, than their classmates attending class in a monolingual setting in which
the instruction was only English.
CURRENT STUDIES SUGGEST:

12. Concerns over bilingual education are usually fueled over ideological
matter rather than pedagogical.
Use of a language as a medium of education confers recognition, status
and economic benefits for speakers of that language
Has become a sociopolitical issue in which the competition between
social groups for resources is often times more important than empirical
implications
SO, WHY THE PUSH BACK?
*Cummins (2009)

13. Although, scientifically, bilingual education programs have been
acknowledged as legitimate in the academic development of second-
language learners, there is still debate as to whether these programs are
useful or not.
All studies in this review compare bilingual programs directly with
monolingual programs, and in all but one (Rossell and Baker, 1996),
bilingual education is superior to monolingual in various academic
measures.
Rossell and Baker’s 1996 review is highly questionable and multiple
studies have been done since it was published to test and disprove their
theories that support monolingual education as the better method.
CONCLUSIONS

14. Cummins, J. (2009). 10 Bilingual and Immersion Programs. The
handbook of language teaching, 161-181
REFERENCES