Big Study: No Evidence that Bilingual, English Immersion is Better

WestEd, a fairly big name outfit, teamed with the American Institutes for Research and produced this report, based on five-years of data, looking at whether California students who were English language learners did better after voters passed a referendum calling for English language immersion in schools.

I'll up date more later, but the big money finding here is that Prop 277 didn't help or hurt students. Basically, achievement and language learning for ESL students remained the same. Here is the full report.

A grad student colleague reminded me that the federal Institute of Education Sciences created a report that said bilingual education was better. By that I mean, education in BOTH the student's native language and English. Versus English-immersion, or English only. Here's a news article from USA Today about the completed but shelved report.