This newsletter includes six articles that examine key issues facing public schools and communities related to accountability, bilingual education, immigrant education, school finance, and school choice. In addressing these issues, articles focus on the importance of community involvement and input in local school reform efforts aimed at achieving…

This paper reports a study of the effects of a collaborative inquiry approach to science on language minority students' (middle and high school) learning. This approach emphasizes involving the students, most of whom have had very little schooling, in "doing science" in ways that scientists practice. This study addresses the question: To…

The High School Equivalency Program (HEP) at Milwaukee Area Technical College, in Wisconsin, is designed to help migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their dependents obtain General Educational Development (GED) degrees, and gain employment or enroll in postsecondary educational programs outside of the agricultural setting. Before enrolling in…

This paper reports qualitative and quantitative data obtained about relationships between 27 students with special language needs or learning disabilities and their nondisabled peers (N=99) in four integrated eighth grade classes of an urban middle school in Massachusetts. The study involved approximately 120 hours of in-school observation over a…

This study examined the relationships among a set of psychosocial variables (academic competence, physical appearance, self-worth, and motivation) and between the psychosocial variables and academic achievement for 236 third grade and fifth grade native Spanish speakers and native English speakers enrolled in a bilingual immersion program since…

Students from Lafayette High School and Pershing Intermediate School in Brooklyn, New York who were of Spanish and Cantonese linguistic backgrounds (and who scored at or below the 40th percentile on the Language Assessment Battery) received intensive instruction in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and native language arts (NLA) in Spanish or…

This collection of essays on multilingual education includes the following: "A Global Perspective on Multilingualism and Multilingual Education" (G. Richard Tucker); "Psycholinguistic Perspectives on Multilingualism and Multilingual Education" (Jasone Cenoz, Fred Genesee); "Curriculum Decision-Making in Content-Based…

This publication contains a series of 12 garment-related bilingual (English and Chinese) television broadcast lessons that were produced to augment an earlier series of 15 lessons. The objective of these television lessons is to teach garment-related English terminology to the garment workers who cannot attend classes in the National Workplace…

The third annual external evaluation of the Choctaw Special Alternative Instruction program is reported. The program has its roots in two efforts by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians to improve their schools, an English-as-a-Second-Language education effort, and a curriculum implementation program. The Mississippi Band preserves many…

This study reports on nine family literacy projects that focus on families whose primary language is not English. The first six projects fall under the Kenan service model, which sees that children receive more or as many services as adults and is organized around children's needs. These include the Canoncito Family Support/Early Childhood…

This paper describes some aspects of a collaborative project between elementary school teachers and university faculty in anthropology, bilingual education, and mathematics education. The project goal is to develop classroom-teaching experiences that make use of the resources and experiences of students and their families. Most of the students…

The monograph reports on a year-long ethnographic study of a program for deaf students, DeafCAN (College Access Network) at Laney College, a community college in Oakland, California. During the 1988-89 year of observation, the program offered six specially designed courses, a daily lab hour, tutoring services, and a women's support/rap group. The…

This study examined special education services for migrant and Native American students in Washington's Northwest Educational Service District 189, an area of 35 school districts with 33% of the enrollment comprising these two minority groups. The study used a backward mapping approach as it sought to identify best practices/procedures and…

Twenty-two case histories of bilingual education programs funded under Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are presented as a companion volume to the technical report of the same study. The case histories were developed from site visits and surveys of administrators, teachers, and parents involved in the program. The program…

The multiethnic situation in American schools in the 1980s can be compared to that of Britain in the 1960s, when a sudden influx of non-English-speaking children in great numbers taxed the resources of an educational system dedicated to the English language. Arguments favoring multicultural education are increasing in both countries, and the need…