Research Evidence Concerning Bilingual Education

GAO testified on the Department of Education's policy to drop the native-language teaching requirement in the Bilingual Education Act. GAO found that: (1) it was difficult to separate the question of the effects of native language teaching on learning English from the effects of that teaching on learning other subjects necessary to keep up in school; (2) even if the two could be separated as research matters, the law includes both as goals for students; and (3) learning enough English to obtain a high-quality education, while at the same time keeping up adequately in other subjects, almost certainly required the use of native-language approaches, as called for in the law.