In 1974, the United States Supreme Court ruled in "Lau v. Nichols" that 1,800 Chinese-speaking children in the San Francisco public schools were entitled to English-language instruction or other support to help them understand what was happening in their classrooms. Thirty-six years later, state and local responsibilities to public…

In this article we explore some of the ways that language ideologies--shared beliefs about language forms and practices embedded in social conflicts over power--mediated the language choices of 4 girls in peer activities. These activities took place in the Spanish and English first-grade classrooms of a dual-language program that enrolled children…

Taking a position that is unusual these days, New Jersey officials are promoting research that says bilingual education methods have an edge over English-only methods in teaching English-language learners to read. This article talks about the importance of bilingual education or a blended approach in the implementation of Reading First Program in…

"Peer Tutoring and Response Groups" aims to improve the language and achievement of English language learners by pairing or grouping students to work on a task. The students may be grouped by age or ability (English-only, bilingual, or limited English proficient) or the groups may be mixed. Both peer tutoring pairs and peer response…