ABSTRACT
The report on national Parent Preference Study contains two major conclusions that have important implications for public education policy: first, parents agreed that special language programs should be provided to language minority children. Second, opinions varied widely both within and among ethnic groups as to what the most desirable language programs are. Newton, Massachusetts, an upper-middle-class community of 90,000 bordering Boston, has a well-established reputation as a lighthouse district in educational innovation. For twenty-one years Newton, along with other eastern Massachusetts cities, has participated in a regional busing program, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) that brings black students from Boston to Newton schools for their entire twelve years of schooling. Berkeley's school system enjoys a reputation for encouraging creative teaching, valuing cultural diversity, and promoting educational equity through integration. In June 1987 the association of bilingual parents in both Berkeley programs clashed head-on in a debate over the amount of native-language use.
