ABSTRACT
Panel one focuses on the report presented by Diane August. It reflects a peculiarity of American educational policy, and that is its very heavy reliance upon research and upon claims about research to justify policies. There are millions of children in the world who are educated bilingually. There are educational systems that educate bilingually as a matter of policy—in Catalonia in Spain, in Wales, in Friesland in the Netherlands, and in many other places. Consistent accountability for the academic progress of language minority students is long overdue. Bilingual children need to be tested along with their English-speaking classmates, after one, two, or three years in United States schools. English language learners are marginalized and provided with curriculum or instruction that is not aligned with district or state content standards. The data in the Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier Study on two-way bilingual programs is about 30 points higher than that in the other highly acclaimed bilingual education programs.
