New study finds bilingual ed. and all-English classes have equal results | OregonLive.com

New study finds bilingual ed. and all-English classes have equal results | OregonLive.com

New study finds bilingual ed. and all-English classes have equal results

By Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian

April 09, 2010, 10:44AM

Marv Bondarowicz/The Oregonian
Education Week has just posted an excellent article (warning: long) about a fascinating new study of bilingual education versus English-only instruction for native-Spanish-speaking students in kindergarten through grade four.

The finding: Children learn to read English equally well if they are taught only in English or in both English and their native language.

That undermines the long-held findings of some other, less rigorous research from the pro-bilingual-education camp showing that students need to learn to read in their native language first if they are to master advanced academic English. It also undermines the position of the other side, that students learn English best and fastest when they are taught in English.

The key to this study is that Spanish-speaking students in six schools in six different states were randomly assigned in kindergarten to either a bilingual program or an all-English program, then kept in that program and tracked for five years. That allowed researchers to even out all other potential differences in their educational experiences and draw conclusions solely about the Spanish-and-English versus English-only approach to teaching.

Ed Week, the national education newspaper, writes extremely thorough articles on every topic it addresses, including this one. In other words, their