Jersey Claims Success with Bilingual Program

Bilingual education has been controversial within the general population as well as the Latino community. After a couple of decades of less than stellar results, opponents have succeeded in limiting the use the program in a number of states, including California and Arizona. While others continued to offer bilingual education programs while evolving newer models for transitioning students from their native languages to English proficiency, including two-way or dual immersion models. New Jersey and New York are in that category.

The controversy surrounding bilingual education continues unabated, and its emerged as one of the favored targets for nativists and anti-Latino activists.

So it's a bit of a surpise to see that today's EdWeek includes N.J. Bucks Tide on Reading for English-Learners: State cites studies finding advantage for bilingual approach by Mary Ann Zehr, a story citing the "success" of bilingual education in New Jersey public schools.

While I find this article interesting and I'm eager to learn more, I'm still troubled by the state of the evidence even as presented in the article. The state of the evidence for or against has always been the issue because of the quality of the research itself. For example, the study cited by the State of New Jersey in the article as evidence of the program's efficacy is itself a problem because it did not pass a peer-review. Additionally, the claim by the state that the program is succeeding because 50% of 3rd graders tested proficient in English is not that impressive.

Perhaps there really is something to the program in New Jersey. If there is, I and others concerned about the state of Latino education want to know about it. My recommendation is to have the country's pre-emminant researchers conduct a definitive comparison study of the competing approaches: bilingual, ESL and English immersion. And then let's see the results.

One final point: While controversial in the U.S. bilingual education is actually the preferred approach in other countries. It is also common in the elite international schools in the World's leading cities and are favored by elite nationals and foreign dignitaries. These fairly bright parents see tremendous value in equipping their privileged offspring to be bilingual.