A study undertaken to assess the educational services offered to children in three diverse bilingual communities gathered data through interviews with a variety of school and community people, classroom observations, and review of school documents. The results of the data gathering are summarized for each of the three communities: (1) an urban, primarily Asian community of Seattle, Washington with multiple language groups; (2) the larger of two El Paso, Texas, school districts, which has a majority of Hispanic Americans, and (3) two neighboring rural New Mexico school districts serving primarily Navajo students. The descriptive summaries for each community include information on the region and population, factors influencing change in educational practices for minority-language students, educational services presently available to limited-English speaking students, program exit criteria, length of stay in programs, and student achievement. It is concluded from these three descriptive studies that special language assistance programs continue to be needed, and that federal policy should be broad enough to allow communities considerable latitude in designing appropriate services. Benefit is seen in the use of the non-English home language in the classroom. Results of the analytic study of Cantonese bilingual education in the Seattle site are also summarized, including information on student characteristics, language proficiency, and literacy skills as measured by a number of distinct tests, and the literacy predictors examined. (MSE)