Indigenous-language immersion (ILI) is a form of schooling where all, or nearly all, classroom instruction in every subject area is conducted in an Indigenous language. This dissertation comprises three case study comparisons of neighboring pairs of ILI and English-medium school programs. The first case study examines two elementary schools in the…

The price of not being English proficient in the United States is costly. A study using 2000 census data showed that people who were not English proficient experienced lower earnings than those who spoke only English (Community and Regional Development Estate, 2005). The cost of being a non-proficient English speaker has the potential to decrease…

This three-article dissertation examined how policy choices in three key policy areas -- initial enrollment, service provision, and reclassification -- impact English learner (EL)-classified students. The first article examined the national landscape of state statutes, regulations, and state education agencies' (SEA) guidance that support…

Prior research has shown that EL classification is consequential for students, however, less is known about how EL classification impacts students' outcomes. In this study, we examine one hypothesized mechanism: teacher perceptions. Using nationally-representative data (ECLS-K:2011), we use coarsened exact matching to estimate the effect of EL…

This article investigates the differences in academic achievement trajectories from elementary through middle school among English Learner (EL) students in four different instructional programs: English Immersion (EI), Transitional Bilingual (TB), Developmental Bilingual (DB), and Dual Immersion (DI). Comparing students with the same parental…

A Mandarin/English two-way immersion elementary program is described from its inception and implementation through the fifth grade, the culminating year of the program. All students in all grades were assessed on their oral/listening, reading, and writing performance in Mandarin using program-created assessment measures. Fifth-grade students also…

As classrooms across the U.S. are becoming increasingly more multilingual and multicultural, there is a need for research that provides insight into literacy instruction that builds on students' linguistic knowledge. The qualitative study of a fourth-grade dual-language classroom examined the ways that peer mediation in Spanish and English…

This study was conducted to explore the effects of a two-way immersion bilingual program on maintenance/acquisition of Spanish-language proficiency and on reading and mathematics achievement in English over a period of 4 academic years. The researchers used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques to compare the effects of two different…

Presents results of the fourth evaluation of trilingual school programs in French, Hebrew, and English being offered on an experimental basis in several elementary schools in Montreal. (Author/AM)

The issue of whether to separate English language development (ELD) into a separate instructional block or whether to integrate it with reading/language arts instruction is an unanswered question with theoretical and practical implications. We addressed this question by observing instruction across the year in 85 kindergarten classrooms that…

The academic achievement in French of two cohorts of grade 9 students of a public school early immersion program in New Brunswick, which has total French-language instruction through grade 4 and includes all students in the program except transfers was compared to that of a group of native French-speaking students at a nearby French-language…