Surveys California educators (teachers, principals, school librarians, and bilingual education coordinators) on attitudes regarding books in Spanish in school. Finds that positive attitudes toward having and using books in Spanish in public schools are closely associated with, and may be determined by, the percentage of Hispanic students in the…

Providing Hispanic elementary students with a great variety of books in Spanish and 60 minutes a week of free reading time resulted in significantly higher Spanish reading performance with no loss of English reading proficiency and significant improvement of reading attidues, compared with control groups. (MH)