ABSTRACT
Entering the twenty-first century, the US government faced perpetuating deficiencies in bilingual personnel (Smith, 1952a, 1952b; Sollenberger, 1951). American public schools were considered an option for building future bilingual service personnel, but they lagged in their implementation of language education compared to other nations in the world (Benevento, 1985; Edwards, 2004; US DOD, 2005). In response, the US federal government began national language initiatives and passed legislation to fund world language and EL instruction (RELA, 2019; WLARA, 2019). Individual US state governments also played a role in promoting language education through Seal of Biliteracy (SOB) initiatives (SOB, 2020). As the focus on language education became more prominent, goals of US public education came into question. US Public schools experienced allegations of inadequacy (Kirk, 1958). A task force group called the Council for Foreign Relations asserted that the shortcomings of US public education have jeopardized national security (Levy, Klein, & Rice, 2012). In response, the group offered recommendations for improving US public school. The Task Force suggestions have gained some traction in the country, but some educators have found their recommended global education goals, extreme (Hutchins et al., 1961; Kirk, 1958). To strengthen their education systems, some US states began implementing dual language immersion programs (Harris, 2015, October 8; Lindholm-Leary, 2013). Dual language programs had developed a reputation as world-class initiatives that elevated schools' status (Harris, 2015, October 8; Lindholm-Leary, 2013). Although expansion of dual language programs has steadily increased in the US, these instructional models have also faced criticism by proponents of the translanguaging movement, a phenomenon of bilingual individuals flowing in and out of their languages (Palmer, Martínez, Mateus, & Henderson, 2014; Wei, 2018). Within and beyond US borders has also been a growing interest in Chinese language instruction through Confucius Institutes (Epstein, 2018, January 18; Jakhar, 2019, September 7). Even so, educational systems in the US and some continents have expressed concerns about Confucius Institutes, which have resulted in controversy (Fulda, 2019, October 15).
