Massachusetts has over 40,000 bilingual education students, and is one of only nine states in the US to require bilingual education in all districts where there is a sufficient number of students who are not proficient in English. 

There is a nation-wide movement to reform or end bilingual education in America.  California voters recently approved a referendum to end bilingual education (Proposition 227), and Congress is considering legislation to phase out federal support for it. 

The effectiveness of the state’s bilingual policy was criticized in a 1996 Pioneer Institute report, “Bilingual Education in Massachusetts:  The Emperor Has No Clothes.”  The report concluded, “Twenty-five years after passage of the bilingual education law in Massachusetts, there is still no proof that the mandated approach to teaching works better than other approaches, such as intensive English instruction. Not only is there no proof from Massachusetts, but there is none from the many studies that have been conducted in other states.” 

The director of an Amherst language think-tank reached a similar conclusion, featured in an article in last month’s issue of The Atlantic, “The Case Against Bilingual Education.”  Research shows that “bilingual education is a classic example of an experiment that was begun with the best of humanitarian intentions but has turned out to be terribly wrongheaded,” concluded 
Rosalie Pedalino Porter, the director of the Institute for Research in English Acquisition and Development (READ). 

Nevertheless, the Boston Globe reported on June 4 that bilingual education advocates were confident that what happened in California could not happen in Massachusetts, although they did admit that reforms were necessary and that the issue would be taken up by the state legislature in January. 

An article in Reason magazine describes the extraordinary efforts made by Massachusetts in bilingual education.  “In Massachusetts, school officials actually created an alphabet so that Kriolu—an obscure spoken-only dialect of Portuguese used in parts of the Cape Verde Islands--could be written for the first time.  Textbooks and a curriculum followed, and now Massachusetts boasts the only schools in the entire world where classes are taught in Kriolu. (The unenlightened schools of the Cape Verde Islands continue to teach in Portuguese.) Massachusetts even sends home report cards and school bulletins in Kriolu. The parents have no idea whatsoever what this stuff says--none of them can read Kriolu--but their opinion hardly matters, does it? We know better, we're the teachers.” 

California opponents of  Proposition 227 have not given up their fight, challenging the referendum results in court, and they maintain an elaborate web site with information for bilingual proponents. 

The National Association of Bilingual Education also tries to preserve the controversial programs. 

Education Week and IntellectualCapital.com provide a list of additional readings on both sides of the issue. 

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