Dual-language programs educate both English learners and native English speakers without incurring extra costs.
During the past 10 years of conducting research on English language programs and school effectiveness, we have discovered the key to the successful future of U.S. education: meaningful, grade-level, and accelerated instruction in two languages—English and another language spoken in the school community—throughout the school years. In many states—especially in Texas, New Mexico, New York, California, Illinois, and the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area—active dual-language programs are providing win-win advantages for all students. English learners have an opportunity to make faster-than-average progress on grade-level instruction that is not watered down. Native English speakers who are already on grade level can exceed the achievement of their monolingually educated peers. And through the cognitive stimulus of schooling in two languages, which leads to enhanced creativity and analytical thinking, native English speakers who are lagging behind academically receive the accelerated instruction necessary to close the achievement gap. All student groups in dual-language classes benefit from meaningful, challenging, and accelerated—not remedial— instruction (Baker, 2001). Some dual-language programs in North America have developed as one-way programs provided for speakers of one language. Throughout Canada, for example, bilingual immersion programs provide instruction in both French and English to one language group, native English speakers. In the United States, one-way bilingual immersion programs teach native English speakers in two languages—English and Japanese, for example—and confer full proficiency and mastery of the curriculum in two languages. Other one-way dual-language programs in the United States are designed for English learners who continue optimum cognitive development in their first language—for example, Spanish—at the same time that they are learning the curriculum in English. These one-way programs for English learners exist only in demographic contexts where there are few or no native English speakers in the schools. Two-way dual-language programs educate English learners and native English speakers together, combining the instructional advantages of both types of one-way program.
The instructional infrastructure of dual-language programs provides greatly increased educational productivity because it offers full rather than partial achievement gap closure at annual costs comparable with existing programs. Traditional programs for English learners provide only remedial, watered-down instruction in “playground English,” virtually guaranteeing that the native English speakers will outperform English learners and thus widen the achievement gap over time. English learners need enriched, sustained forms of instruction that allow them to receive support in their first language while learning a second language. Dual-language programs offer English learners a mainstream curriculum, which leads to full English proficiency and curricular mastery, with instruction provided by monolingual and multilingual teachers who already work within the school system. In our research of the Houston, Texas, Independent School District (Thomas & Collier, 2002), English learners who received five years of dual-language schooling reached the 51st percentile on the Stanford 9—a nationally normed test in English—after having initially qualified five years before for English learner services by scoring low on English proficiency tests. The majority of these students were of low socioeconomic status, receiving free or reduced-price lunches. In comparison, a matched group participating in the same district's effective transitional bilingual program scored at only the 34th percentile after five years. Many of the dual-language schools in Houston (56 schools to date, and increasing in number every year) and elsewhere in Texas have received recognition as superior, high-scoring schools by the Texas education system, a notable achievement because many also serve low socioeconomic groups. Dual-language programs also provide integrated, inclusive, and unifying education experiences for their students, in contrast to the segregated, exclusive, and divisive education characteristics of many traditional English-only and transitional bilingual programs. The atmosphere of inclusiveness in the dual-language milieu meets the cultural needs of minorities and provides opportunities for them to experience the world of their nonminority peers. Just as important, nonminority students expand their worldviews to include knowledge of and respect for the customs and experiences of others. Native English-speaking children receive many of the benefits of travel to, and life in, other countries, along with an increased understanding of other cultures. Many dual-language students value these early experiences, and, as high school graduates, they actively seek opportunities for international travel and employment that uses their second language. Native English speakers also benefit academically. In Houston in 2000, native English speakers who had been in the two-way dual-language programs for four years scored between the 63rd and 70th percentiles in total reading scores on the Stanford 9, whereas the scores of native English speakers in the mainstream hovered around the 50th percentile. When tested in Spanish using the Aprenda 2, the dual-language native English speakers scored between the 65th and 87th percentiles at the end of grades 2–5, with an average score equivalent to the 76th percentile. These native English speakers, including African American students, not only scored higher than their monolingually educated peers, but they also acquired a second language for their lifelong use.