ABSTRACT
Few educational issues in the United States in recent years have been as volatile or as ideologically loaded as bilingual education. Bilingual education has evoked passionate responses from all sectors of society, pitting those who have characterized it as a “death wish” (Bethell, 1979) on the part of federal and state governments against those who see it as fundamental to the pursuit of equality of educational opportunity for students who speak home languages other than English. In much of this debate, confusion has reigned about what exactly constitutes a bilingual program. For example, it has been argued (e.g., Porter, 1990; Rossell & Baker, 1996) that monolingual English-only programs for linguistic-minority students in the United States are supported by the success of French “immersion” programs for English-background students in Canada despite the fact that these “immersion” programs involve two languages of instruction (English and French), are taught by bilingual teachers, and aim to promote bilingualism and biliteracy. Thus, it is appropriate to clarify initially what we are talking about when we discuss bilingual education.
