California's cultural and linguistic diversity are remarkable assets for the state. In particular, bilingualism is linked not only to economic growth, but also to improved health, social empathy, educational attainment, community cohesion, and civic engagement. Harnessing this potential depends upon the educational success of California's more…

This article reports on a formative experiment involving the implementation of long-term multifaceted vocabulary instruction in second-grade Spanish-English dual-immersion classes. The findings indicate that students in the second year of the project showed accelerated growth in English vocabulary knowledge in comparison to the norming sample of a…

The goal of this toolkit is to shed light on the importance of authorizing nontraditional charter schools and how the challenges of authorizing nontraditional schools manifest in practice, as well as to provide action steps for authorizers and school leaders who are able and eager to lead the field on these complex issues. The toolkit contains the…

This toolkit informs school leaders about the authorizing challenges they may confront, illustrates opportunities and options for school leaders to navigate the authorizing process, and shares useful frameworks for considering the benefits and trade-offs of these options. The toolkit contains the following sections: (1) Strategies &…

High-quality dual language immersion (DLI) programs can be a key lever to provide every student with a pathway to multilingualism. The Dual Language Immersion Playbooks (DLI Playbooks) provide a roadmap for the creation, design and adoption of policies, processes, programs, and practices that state educational agencies (SEAs), local educational…

While research on Irish-medium immersion education (IME) has heralded benefits such as cognitive skills, academic achievement and language and literacy development, many studies have also identified challenges to its successful implementation. Immersion-specific research-validated tools can help school leaders navigate the school self-evaluation…

The Federated States of Micronesia National Department of Education (FSM NDOE) requested support from the Region 18 Comprehensive Center (R18CC) to build National and State-level knowledge of effective practices in bilingual and multilingual education. This scan offers an overview of evidence-based practices for implementing and evaluating the…

Multilingual learners (MLs) are the country's fastest-growing student population: One in five students speak a language other than English at home, and 10 percent of the student population across the country is identified for language development services in school. Despite these students' growing presence nationwide, relatively few best practices…

At the time of the demise of bilingual education in California via Proposition 227, Chueng and Drabkin (1999) discussed the unchecked prevalence of poorly run bilingual programs and the apathetic administrators who provided inadequate oversight in terms of ensuring program quality. Proponents of dual language immersion programs hope to avoid this…

Dual-language immersion programs--in which students learn core subjects (language arts, math, science, and social studies) in both English and a "partner" language--have been gaining in popularity across the United States. Such programs may use a "two-way model," in which roughly half the students are native speakers of the…

This qualitative study explored the awareness and perceptions of a select group of parents about specialty and charter school offerings in a large countywide school system in a mid-Atlantic state. The study utilized focus groups as the primary source of data collection to obtain information from parents about their knowledge and opinion of current…

The purpose of this review is to provide a comparison of reading outcomes of the two most popular bilingual programs in the United States: Transitional Bilingual Education and Two-way Bilingual programs. To provide context, we present a theoretical framework and a brief historical perspective on how these programs came to gain popularity. We…

This essay offers a candid overview of the past one hundred years of preK-fifth grade Spanish language teaching and learning in the United States. Among the topics addressed are numbers of programs, program models, and factors that impact the success of learners and programs.

Simply put, children with poor English skills are less likely to succeed in school and beyond. What's the best way to teach English to young children who aren't native English speakers? In this article, Lisa Barrow and Lisa Markman-Pithers examine the state of English learner education in the United States and review the evidence behind different…

The article discusses how instead of being parts of a concerted educational reform effort, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the development of charter schools are in fact contradictory initiatives. Basing itself on a theoretical framework that brings together issues inherent to outcome-based school reform and arguments supporting and criticizing…