Dual Immersion in Texas

English language learner (ELL) students are not doing well. Last month a federal judge ruled that Texas's bilingual education programs are not to blame. Indeed, there are plenty of other reasons for ELLs' poor performance but in fairness to LULAC, MALDEF and the GI Forum who argued that ELL education is not being well monitored or evaluated, our education programs for ELLs need a lot of work.

The judge's ruling has prompted a renewed debate over what type of programming is best for ELLs. For educators of ELLS, this is a fair debate. It's hard to figure out the best way to teach these kids, mostly because there isn't one best way (ELLs are a diverse group-a recent immigrant with few years of formal schooling is very different from a U.S.-born student who is struggling with English). But there are some things we do know. For instance, there's ample evidence from research that shows that language-minority students who are instructed in both languages (native and English) perform better on average in English reading proficiency than those taught in English-only, for early grades and secondary school levels, as was reported by The National Literacy Panel in their study of language-minority children last year.

There are many philosophical and political arguments for why we support English-only instruction and remove all native language from U.S. public school curricula, but none is supported by research. So it's promising to read that Texas educators are looking into dual immersion.