This document provides an overview of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), the state's student testing system. MCAS measures the performance of students, schools, and districts by assessing student knowledge of the academic learning standards contained in the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. The purpose of this document is…

In Spanish-monolingual Colombia, social pressures push for access to early 50 = 50% Spanish-English medium instruction from the age of five. Parents and school administrators consider this the best way to achieve bilingualism. This article takes a first general look at the effects of this type of bilingual education on the Spanish and English…

A preliminary study is presented that attempts to define the linguistic needs of minorities in higher education in the State of Massachusetts. In particular, the study focuses on comments and information provided by educators, students, and would-be students, who were interviewed in Spanish and English, in the cities of Lynn, Lawrence, and Lowell,…

The paper describes development of the Brockton Battery: A Special Needs Assessment for Minority Students, a collection of four independent instruments designed for special education assessment of minority students. Initial sections review demographic information on the city of Brockton, Massachusetts, and on special education in the city.…

The combined effect of the articles in this issue of "Inequality in Education" is to offer the reader a primer in bilingual/bicultural education. The articles which follow indicate that neither legislation nor court orders, correctly or incorrectly interpreted, can bring about effect change in this field on their own. What the bilingual…

All states are addressing the problems of accommodations for English Language Learners (ELL's) in state assessment systems, but Massachusetts is noteworthy for the way in which it handles this problem. Since the early 1980s, over 40 states have created a statewide assessment program. Testing in these states is typically modeled on the National…

This report concerns conditions in Boston and Springfield, the cities with the largest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The lack of adequate statistics on living conditions of Puerto Ricans remains one of the main barriers to determining a solution for any problem of the Puerto Rican community. This situation…

This study of the effectiveness of transitional bilingual education (TBE) programs for Hispanic students in five Massachusetts school districts analyzed data on students' personal and educational characteristics (place of birth, socioeconomic status, number of years in TBE, district mobility, attendance, test scores, academic grades, and…

Ways in which an evaluation of bilingual programs could be appropriately conducted were studied, using two transitional bilingual education programs. In Program A, the first language (Spanish) is the initial medium for all instruction with a gradual phasing in of English. Program A is located in a large suburban school system in central…

This report presents the evaluation of the Chelsea Bilingual-Bicultural Program for the 1973-1974 academic year, a project funded by Title VII of the 1965 Elementary Secondary Education Act, as amended, and also by the city. Program staff included the following: program director, materials specialist, community worker, English as a Second Language…

This article describes an email project carried out jointly by the Institute of Modern Languages and the Department of Applied Languages at Antonio de Nebrija University in Madrid and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) in the US during the first semester of the academic year 2004-2005. Students worked with a partner exchanging…

A student's entire journey along the educational spectrum is affected by what occurs--and, crucially, by what does not occur--before the age of eight or nine. Yet early learning has never received the attention it deserves and needs. In his latest book, education expert Gene Maeroff takes a hard look at early learning and the primary grades of…

Testimony offered to the United States Department of Education focuses on the need to legitimize the value of adult biliteracy, particularly among the Hispanic population. Using the demography of Lawrence, Massachusetts as an example, it is suggested that English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction alone will not lower the language barrier…

A Massachusetts two-way bilingual education program provides initial first-language (L1) literacy development for all students, teaches half of the curriculum in L1 and half in L2 by third grade, and selectively integrates native and non-native speakers of the target language. Both target groups meet academic and linguistic goals by fifth grade.…

The Brookline Early Education Project (BEEP) has been initiated by the Public Schools of Brookline, Massachusetts to help parents provide an optimum learning environment for their children throughout the preschool years. Enrollment in BEEP begins at birth and the project provides educational and diagnostic services, including pediatric care. Each…