In this testimony, Dr. Willard Sakiestewa Gilbert talks on behalf of the National Indian Education Association with regard to the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and challenges facing BIE schools in improving student achievement. Founded in 1969, the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) is the largest organization in the nation dedicated…

A discussion of the immersion approach to second language instruction contains: a description of the approach and its goals; a brief history of its introduction into public schools; a description of the most common immersion program designs (early total, early partial, middle or delayed, and late); a review of available information on program…

The fact that early immersion in a second language has led to bilingualism and academic success among majority language children has been used as an argument against mother tongue instruction for minority language children. However, for minority language children, immersion in a second language has often led to language loss and academic failure.…

This overview of research focuses on the characteristics of immersion programs in the Ottawa area. These are primary-entry, late-entry (grade 6 or 7), and secondary level bilingual programs. The following matters are treated: tests and testing conditions; comparisons with Canadian Public Service language requirements; comparisons between groups…

Evaluation of a structured immersion program, operating since 1968 in Uvalde, Texas as part of the United States Department of Education's Project Follow Through, suggests that the structured immersion approach has had a consistent positive effect on the academic achievement of the language minority students involved. Approximately 130 Spanish…

This study investigated the effect of a bilingual education program on the achievement gap in language development between at-risk kindergarten students with minimal English proficiency and students who were proficient English speakers. Limited English Proficient (LEP) students were included in an Extended Foreign Language (EFL) program designed…

A study of 24 Maori children in grades 3-6 who were invited to perform at a children's festival in Turkey and two control groups (control 1, n=24; control 2, n=23) of Maori children who did not participate in the festival examined the effect of an intense cultural program on children's self-esteem, locus of control, and academic performance.…

A 1992 Canadian study and 1994 followup investigated the high school experience of six Anglophone French immersion students who participated in a pilot program in French immersion in elementary and junior high school and continued immersion study in high school. Data were gathered during the students' tenth grade, primarily in semi-structured…

A study in an early French partial immersion program in a Melbourne (Australia) elementary school investigated participating children's performance in mathematics in English (their first language) and French. Mathematics testing in both languages has been undertaken regularly as part of a long-term evaluation of the program. In the first year of…

The fourth-year update of a longitudinal study examined the progress of the 31 remaining members of 2 classes in the first cohort of a Spanish immersion program and their standard-program monolingual comparison group of 15 students. Achievement gains were measured on standardized tests of mathematics and language skills. Results provided new…

In French immersion programs in Canadian public schools, kindergarten is taught all in French, and the proportion of French instruction gradually decreases thereafter until in seventh grade instruction is only 50 percent French. This study examined the psychological adjustment of a group of first-grade children who had been enrolled in an early…

This study examines how instruction in the first language (L1), Chinese, and in the second language (L2), English, affects a large sample of students' academic achievement in L1, L2, and content, nonlanguage school subjects, including mathematics, science, geography, and history, in their first 3 years of high school. For all four content area…

The two-way bilingual education program in Port Chester, New York, in which both native English-speaking and limited-English-proficient native Spanish-speaking students are given instruction in both languages, is described and its outcomes evaluated. Data on the performance of language-minority and language-majority students, gathered from…

A study of the differences in achievement among Ottawa's grade 9 and 10 students taught in English and French in three subject areas (mathematics, geography, and history) in which suitable comparative measures were available had as subjects the students in 73 classes. The students in French-language classes were administered the test twice, once…

A study investigated the characteristics and behaviors of college students learning a third language. Four groups of students with backgrounds in Slavic second languages and enrolled in a variety of Slavic and non-Slavic third languages courses were studied using ethnographic techniques, including open-ended questionnaires, focus groups, classroom…