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The State of Dual Language Immersion Education

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The State of Dual Language Immersion Education Draft. Not for Quotation or Dissemination THE STATE OF DUAL LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN THE U.S. IN THE CONTEXT OF EQUITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE Robert Slater, PhD American Councils Research Center Richard Brecht, PhD American Councils Research Center Donna Christian, PhD Center for Applied Linguistics Gregg Roberts American Councils Research Center Introduction Dual Language Immersion (DLI)1 represents an education strategy that offers the promise of access to quality education for students from all backgrounds, especially for marginalized ethnic and language populations. At the same time, DLI offers the promise, for the first time, of developing a new generation of bilinguals as measured by proficiency in two languages and of promoting maintenance of the heritage language of English learners (ELs). And, DLI also offers the promise of transforming schools and school districts, through “purposeful integration” of partner language speakers (immigrant and U.S.-born) and English speakers (Arias and Markos, 2018, p. 13), perhaps even shifting populations that might help reverse emerging trends that include increased segregation of Latinx and immigrant populations. As the successes of DLI are documented, concerns about practices and contexts for different groups of students are also being raised. It is important to focus our attention on the 1 For definitional clarity, we use the term Dual Language Immersion (DLI) not Dual Language Education (DLE) for this discussion. DLE is inclusive of all approaches to developing language proficiency and literacy in English and a partner language. DLI, and particularly two-way programs whose goal is to enroll roughly equal numbers of students from English and partner language backgrounds, is the major focus of this paper and of the discussion on equity at this meeting. For the Forum on Equity and Dual Language Education, Dec. 7-8, 2018, UCLA 1 Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles Draft. Not for Quotation or Dissemination relationship between DLI and social justice at this point in the evolution of these programs: by its very nature, DLI attracts and interfaces a diverse set of learners by ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, and other factors, with students from marginalized and privileged circumstances seeking the hoped-for educational and economic advantages the program may bring. There are potentially significant educational achievement opportunities afforded by DLI programs as research evidence has demonstrated based on established correlations between DLI and educational achievement in programs around the country. However, there is significant risk to achieving the promise of DLI when students and families with different language experiences, cultures, socioeconomic statuses, and other demographic and personal history characteristics do not realize the full benefits of DLI. As we expand our understanding of DLI’s impact and limitations, there is a need for extending the research and discussion on how DLI policy and practice can advance to serve all students and how we can better address the issues that arise in the full range of DLI contexts. The growth of DLI programs across the U.S. has been dramatic. We don’t have any precise or reliable assessments of the number of DLI programs in existence today but it is likely the number of two-way programs alone exceeds 2,500 (Arias, 2018). States like Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina and Utah are expanding programs across school districts in their respective states. Growth is both urban and rural. New York City lists 192 DLI programs; Boise, Idaho recently expanded from one to two Spanish DLI programs. California with the passage of Proposition 58 and the rollout of Global California 2030 promises to be a hotbed for DLI expansion. With all the promises of DLI come significant risks stemming from this rapid growth and expansion. Many of these risks are associated with the aspirations of a strategy that has emerged so quickly and in so many ways pushed the boundaries of curricular innovation, teacher and administrator development and preparation, along with the capacity of school districts to make effective decisions regarding DLI school placement and rules of enrollment. In addition, in a program grounded in diversity of students and communities, we confront shifting demographics and political environments that can affect the structure and success of programs. For the Forum on Equity and Dual Language Education, Dec. 7-8, 2018, UCLA 2 Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles Draft. Not for Quotation or Dissemination It is important to remind ourselves that dual language programs, like all education programs, function in an environment of changing and evolving education and language policies at every level of government. As we continue to argue for the relevance and importance of DLI as an intervention strategy for building equal opportunity for quality education, we note that DLI should be seen from the perspective of education in general, and not as some “boutique” program that is overlaid on an existing education structure. As Christian (2018, p. 115) points out, “Dual language programs are in a unique intersection of policy areas. All education programs must respond to many levels and types of policies related to education, in the form of compulsory schooling for children of certain ages, graduation requirements, and teacher qualifications, to name a few – but dual language education, by involving multiple languages, is also heavily influenced by the language policies and politics, overt or covert, in the sociolinguistic context of the program that are embedded in views of immigration, diverse cultures, and other social issues.” It is in this framework that we must understand the implementation of DLI and how equity enters into the equation at virtually every stage and level. Our effort in this paper is to lay a foundation for the discussion of equity issues in DLI by summarizing some of the more recent research (and identifying some critical gaps) that might inform our understanding of these issues. The intent here is to establish general agreement on common understandings of what we know and what we do not, so that we may engage in creative dialogue on concrete strategies and actions aimed at ensuring social justice in DLI education. Given the current nationwide expansion of DLI programs as well as recent studies on it potential and vulnerabilities with regard to social justice, we consider the time to be ripe for a summary discussion of where we are and where we need to go. We focus on three key areas of DLI: (1) Academic outcomes; (2) Biliteracy and bilingualism; (3) Social and behavioral development. We end the paper with a report on the results of an unscientific survey of DLI administrators undertaken in September and October 2018. The goal of this survey was to identify issues and areas of concern across school districts that would help guide the equity conversation. For the Forum on Equity and Dual Language Education, Dec. 7-8, 2018, UCLA 3 Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles Draft. Not for Quotation or Dissemination Academic Outcomes There is reasonable cognitive science rationale for the academic goals of DLI grounded in laboratory evidence that bilinguals outperform monolinguals on numerous verbal and non- verbal tasks, including working memory and executive function tasks, where the latter include attention control and task switching (Bialystok & Craik, 2010; Luk & Bialystok, 2014). There is also evidence that familiarity with bilingual environments improves young children’s social perspective-taking skills (Fan et al, 2016; Greenberg et al., 2013) which may help them work more effectively with teachers and peers. Bilingualism also appears to improve students’ metalinguistic skills such as lexical and semantic awareness (which may be helpful in developing their literacy skills in both languages), as well as their ability to acquire additional languages (Cenoz, 2003; Keshavarz & Astaneh, 2004). This suggests that bilingual students may have advantages in understanding language structures and components in ways that make them better readers and writers in both languages. The academic rationale follows logically from the cognitive evidence based on the notion that instruction in two languages from early grades (fostering bilingualism) produces higher academic achievement in core academic content (e.g., language arts, mathematics, and science) tested in English. In the absence of evidence about the cognitive rationale, this notion might seem counterintuitive. Conventional wisdom suggests that there may be efficiency losses when the language of instruction and the language of academic testing are not well-aligned. On the other hand, the academic rationale has empirical backing. There is limited but growing evidence that supports the argument that higher achievement based on such testing is positively related to enrollment in DLI. A recent study of one-way and two-way immersion programs in Utah used propensity score matching and found greater mathematics gains from third to fourth grade for immersion students as compared to non-immersion students, but students were matched on post-treatment performance, meaning that cumulative immersion effects between first and third grade were not captured (Watzinger-Tharp, Swenson, & Mayne, 2016). In another recent study, Bibler (2017) used randomized lottery data from North Carolina to estimate causal effects of cumulative DLI dosage; he found benefits for native English speakers of 0.09 of a standard deviation per year in math, and 0.05 of a standard deviation per For the Forum on Equity and Dual Language Education, Dec. 7-8, 2018, UCLA 4 Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles Draft. Not for Quotation or Dissemination year in reading, with benefits of 0.06 of a standard deviation per year in both math and reading for ELs. An important caution to note, however, is that many studies are unable to implement designs that adjust for students’ selection into programs. Also, since most testing is carried out in English, it is hard to assess to role of proficiency in the partner language, other than by assuming a degree of bilingualism based on the curriculum offered.
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