This report was prepared for submission to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. It reviews the California State Department of Education's administration of state and federally funded bilingual programs and identifies specific Department policies and practices that may affect the success of district-level programs for language-minority students.…

After surveying the vocational rehabilitation (VR) needs of disabled migratory and seasonal farmworkers in the U.S., a national plan to meet those needs was developed, in cooperation with designated state agencies. A random cluster sample of farmworkers was interviewed to determine service needs. Additional planning data were gathered by…

The Bilingual/Bicultural Education Professions Program conducted a needs assessment designed to find out the situation teachers in the Holyoke Public Schools face in their classrooms and what needs they have, in order to improve preservice teacher education. The tools used to determine teacher needs were a demographic questionnaire, an explicit…

Public policy has recognized the need to develop selective programs that zero in on the needs of specific racial subgroups (especially those Chicanos, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans of mixed racial backgrounds). However, entering the 1970's, the strategy of approaching social problems in terms of their impact upon subgroups has been politically…

This issue of "EFF Voice" was assembled by the staff to share with their readers some of the ways their partners are using Equipped for the Future (EFF) to help adults build the skills they need to be successful in the workforce today. Readers will learn about how states like New Jersey are using EFF to craft a common vision and a common…

Articles are included on such issues as the following: heritage languages; the psychology of language; the Voice of America broadcasts; dual language programs; linguistic autobiography in the language classroom; pronunciation; electronic education; dialects; world languages; bilingual education; language travel; language structure; conceptual…

This collection of papers examines approaches to teaching near-native ability in foreign languages. The 13 papers focus on the following: (1) "Principles and Practices in Teaching Superior-Level Language Skills: Not Just More of the Same" (Betty Lou Leaver and Boris Shekhtman); (2) "Toward Academic Level Foreign Language Abilities:…

This edited volume contains 15 chapters. Part one, "Language Teaching, Language Learning, and Literacy," has three chapters: "The Monolingual Teaching and Bilingual Learning of English" (Henry G. Widdowson); "Literacy: The Extension of Languages Through Other Means" (Ellen Bialystok); "Bilingual Processing…

In a 3-year, federally-funded program, faculty at St. Olaf College (Minnesota) have developed a series of behavioral and natural science courses in which students with at least the fourth semester of foreign language do a portion of the course readings in the second language and meet once a week to discuss them in that language with the regular…

In the 1930s Loyd Tireman organized two successful New Mexico experiments in progressive and bicultural education that anticipated contemporary trends. Resisting the nativist and assimilationist sentiments of the time, Tireman saw the necessity of tailoring education to the child rather than fitting the child into a standardized curriculum. His…

This paper describes the use of folktales in the classroom, noting the instructional benefits, challenges and potential problems, and techniques for presenting and expanding on the stories. Of nine folktales told during the school year, five are told in English and four in Spanish, and most are closely tied to the social studies curriculum. Four…

A 16-week office specialist certificate program was developed for Spanish-speaking adults who have the ability and desire to obtain an entry-level office administration position but who have limited English proficiency and basic occupational skills. The program, which is based on the vocational bilingual training model, takes advantage of the…

The plight of students learning language simultaneously with content material, particularly math, spurred this study of the power of socioculturally based pedagogy, such as Instructional Conversation (IC), to increase Spanish-speaking minority students' acquisition of English math lexicon and concepts. This article describes a series of four ICs…

In spite of political pressure, bilingualism is emerging as a strategy for improving the academic achievement of all students. Two-way bilingual or dual-language programs integrate language-minority and language-majority students for instruction in two languages. Site-based decision making has enabled schools in cities that border with Mexico to…

This collection of papers includes the following: (1) "Insights from Research and Practice in Spanish as a Heritage Language" (M. Cecilia Colombi and Ana Roca); (2) "Toward a Theory of Heritage Language Acquisition: Spanish in the United States" (Andrew Lynch); (3) "Profiles of SNS Students in the Twenty-First Century:…