This guide was produced by the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instructional Educational Programs (NCELA). NCELA, authorized under Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), supports the Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English…

Developed a model for the concurrent development of assessments in two language versions and tested the model with classes of seven bilingual teachers who developed the assessments in English and Spanish. Results show that the model allows assessment developers to give deeper consideration to culture in test development. (SLD)

Responds to an article by Strubell, "Language, Democracy, and Devolution in Catalonia," arguing that the nationalism that already exists is viewed as the norm and suggesting that the Catalan nationalism and its attempts at affirmative action are menacing. The paper worries that demographic realities might push Catalan nationalism into…

Reviews political debates over the effects of California Proposition 227, which restricted bilingual education. Identifies effective strategies for teaching language-minority students: valuing culture, native language use, staff development, community involvement, and student assessment. Asserts that Proposition 227 is flawed. (SK)

Outlines some of the key complexities and controversies that surround the advocacy of minority language rights, most notably via the movement of linguistic human rights (LHR). Argues that while the LHR movement has much to offer, particularly in articulating how minority languages might come to enjoy some of the privileges accorded majority…

Charts the recent debates in France in response to the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages that, if ratified and implemented, would grant limited protection to minority regional languages there. Examines the tenor and substance of the debates surrounding the fate of the charter. Argues that much of its opposition rests on France's…

Suggests that the education of most minorities, particularly in the West, is organized in ways that counteract sound scientific evidence and violate linguistic human rights, especially in relation to the wrong choice of medium of education. Substantiates this claim with recent developments in linguistic human rights in education, with special…

Discusses reasons for the collapse of mother tongue instruction in Sweden, including such issues as the transfer of implementation and economic responsibilities of educational politics to the municipalities; the unwillingness in Swedish society to support the bilingualism/biculturalism of minority pupils, and the poor municipal information and…

Within the last several years, researchers working with linguistic minority children have focused increasingly on the development of the types of language proficiencies that are required to perform successfully in academic contexts. Most practitioners and researchers agree that, in order to succeed in schools, such learners must be given the…

This volume is the first to comprehensively examine Chinese's affirmative action policies in the critical area of minority education, the most important conduit to employment and economic success in the People's Republic of China after the economic reforms begun in the late 1970s. This book contains four parts. Part I, "Debating China's…

In Britain, since the 1980s, the term "equality of opportunity" has been a major theme at the heart of the government's agenda. Centralisation via the National Curriculum documents has strengthened the idea of "education for all". In terms of many linguistic minority children, mainstreaming and the English as an Additional Language (EAL) provision…

Racial and language minority students who must repeat high school exit exams are at increased risk of dropping out of school. Each time students fail an exit exam, they become less confident that they will ever pass and more unsure about their ability to graduate and their postsecondary plans. The relationship between students' culture and their…

The focus of this paper is on immigrant minority languages in urban Western Europe. Both multidisciplinary and cross-national perspectives will be offered on two major domains in which language transmission occurs, i.e., the domestic domain and the public domain. Prototypical of these two domains are the home and the school, respectively. At home,…

This paper describes multiple Estonian-Russian language contacts in Estonia. For synchronic microsociolinguistic research it is usual to concentrate on the impact of a sociolinguistically dominant language A on an immigrant/minority language B. In the Soviet setting, the dominant language was usually Russian (despite Russians being a minority).…

This paper describes the linguistic plurality of the Russian Federation, assessing the impact that the hypothetical ratification of the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages could have on it. Four sections focus on the following: (1) "Introduction"; (2) "Part 1--The Linguistic Plurality of the Russian Federation":…