The Summer Institute of Linguistics runs several bilingual schools in the Andean and Amazonian regions of Peru. These are the only public bilingual schools in the country serving the Indian population, a majority of whom do not speak Spanish as their first language. Although public education is now available to some 80 percent of all children, the school completion rates in rural, monolingual-Spanish schools are less than ten percent. In the Summer Institute of Linguistics schools, the teacher is always bilingual and of the same tribe or region. Typically, the student first learns to read in his native language while studying Spanish orally. After learning to read Spanish as well, the student transfers to the second grade of a monolingual-Spanish school. Evaluation of the efficiency of bilingual schools depends on the criteria used (religious, political, social) and the evaluators (missionaries, government officials, teachers). Objective evaluation is also hampered by the lack of local or national statistics. Preliminary findings based on the achievement of children from bilingual schools transferring to monolingual schools indicates that they have a higher rate of achievement. The author concludes that foreign language learning and second language learning may be much more dissimilar psychological experiences than we have previously supposed them to be. Further interdisciplinary research and cooperation is essential. (JD)