This paper is a critical examination of the issue of bilingual education in American schools. Diane Ravitch, an educator and scholar with experience in the field, argues that efforts to teach children in two languages, their language of origin and English, have failed, and that structured immersion, in which students are taught exclusively in English, is the only really effective way to keep students advancing and achieving in school.
She bases her argument on the rates for Hispanic students "unable to pass an English-language test after three years of bilingual education" (Ravitch, 1997, p. 94). Ravitch further notes that students unable to develop fluency in English are more likely to fail in life, since "unless students are fluent in English, they will not have a fair chance of graduating from high school, going to college, and getting good jobs" (1997, p. 95). She has a good point. However, her insistence on the abolition of bilingual education as a solution is shortsighted and ignores the considerable research that has led to the establishment of an extensive nationwide program of bilingual education.
Until the early 1960s, public education in the United States consisted of a more ignorant version of Ravitch's approach. Schools used a "sink or swim" policy for students who could not speak English, holding them back until they had mastered English and conducting instruction exclusively in English, regardless of the child's language of origin (Baker, 1981).
In 1963, the success of a two-way bilingual program teaching the children of Cuban refugees in Dade County, Florida, paved the way for a more sensitive approach. By the time the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 was passed, educators had begun to recognize that America, as a nation of immigrants, would always have a large population of school-age children with limited proficiency in English. Conservative estimates put the current figures at almost three and a ha...