Federal Bilingual Education Programs in Massachusetts: “But Do They Help the Children?”

Issue Brief

Executive Summary

Massachusetts currently has over 45,000 students in “transitional bilingual education” programs. School districts are required by state law to implement such programs when at least 20 students speak the same, non-English native language. But there are very little state data on the effectiveness of these programs. This study analyzes the state’s federally-funded bilingual programs, based on information reported to the federal Department of Education by school officials.

The study examines two essential indicators of program success, student academic achievement and transition rates to mainstream classrooms. In each of these areas, the programs examined were deeply problematic. For example:

In one Springfield bilingual program, English learners at two of the program’s three schools scored lower on the post-test in reading than they did on the pre-test a year before in both English and Spanish. In another, test scores in reading of native English speakers participating in the “two-way bilingual inclusionary program” declined in all four of the program’s schools.

One program in the Boston Public Schools graduated only 9 percent of its English learners into mainstream classes in 3 years.

Nearly all programs studied failed to achieve critical program objectives. But despite such poor performance by English learners, many dedicated substantial program time and funding to tangential activities, including these in the Boston Public Schools:

The translation of a dictionary into Cape Verdean Creole by school officials, and

‘Structured clubs’ in Chinese yo-yo and palm reading whose meeting times “regularly disrupt” regular classes, according to school officials.

Details follow.Introduction

As Massachusetts policymakers have begun to pay serious attention to the status of their state’s bilingual education programs in recent months, they are doing so without well kept, reliable indicators of the success of those programs. In fact, when officials at the Salem Public Schools sought data from the state Department of Education tracking English learner test scores for reading and writing, they were informed that Massachusetts “has not analyzed these data for the last several years.”

This study seeks to address that void by examining one important segment of Massachusetts bilingual education programs, those supported by federal funding under the Bilingual Education Act. These grants are awarded through a competitive grants process in accordance with federal regulations by the federal Department of Education’s Office of Bilingual Education and Language Minority Affairs (OBEMLA).

One of these regulations dictates that, at a minimum, three-quarters of all funding under the act be reserved for programs to teach in students’ non-English native language, while a maximum of one-fourth be awarded to “special alternative” programs like English immersion. At this writing, this so-called “75/25 rule” has been targeted for elimination by votes in the current sessions of both chambers of the U.S. Congress, as part of President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” education plan. Until that change is signed into law, however, the regulation remains in effect.

Under Massachusetts’ rigid bilingual education law, schools are required to implement “Transitional Bilingual Education” when at least 20 students in a given district speak the same, non-English native language. The law defines such “transitional” programs as those that “provide students with instruction in their native language and in English in all mandatory subjects.” But the law does not stipulate that these programs be transitional in anything but name alone: in fact, there is no requirement that these programs graduate a single child into mainstream classes.

Currently, the state has over 45,000 students in bilingual education, an increase of 10,000 over the past decade.

In an August 2000 READ Institute study, Dr. Rosalie Porter, a member of the Governor’s Education Review Commission, found that mainstream students had outscored English learners in all but one school district in the state on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), and even there only at one grade level (fourth) and in only one subject (math). The study went on to point out that at the eighth grade level, 48 percent of English learners failed the English language arts portion of the MCAS, while 76 percent failed mathematics. Last year, English learners scored 21 points lower than mainstream students on the MCAS, and 19 points lower in math.

This paper utilizes data filed by participating programs with the federal Office of Bilingual Education. Data were obtained for 14 federally-funded Massachusetts bilingual education programs (The Department of Education declined to provide information for 6 additional programs receiving funding between 1996 and 2000). Total funding for these 14 programs totaled over $14 million. But student achievement in general was extremely low:

In one Springfield bilingual program, English learners at two of the program’s three schools scored lower on the post-test in reading than they did on the pre-test a year before in both English and Spanish. In another, reading scores of native English speakers who were included in the “two-way bilingual inclusionary program” declined in all four of the program’s schools.

In Worcester’s bilingual program, only 10 English learners of the 58 tested following the fourth full year of the program’s federally-funded activity were evaluated as “Competent English Readers” (17 percent).

Even in the shining star of the state’s bilingual programs, the Cambridge School System, native Spanish speakers trailed native English-speaking students at all grade levels, scoring 17 points lower at the third grade level.

Transition rates from bilingual to mainstream classes were also often extremely low. One program in the Boston Public Schools graduated only 9 percent of its English learners in 3 years. Annual transition rates in the Lowell Public Schools program ranged from 4 to 15 percent. The best annual transition rate recorded (in Worcester) was only 24 percent. In the Salem program, transition rates were deemed “not relevant” by school officials, and hence not reported.

While this presents a devastating picture of the state of these programs, it would be hard to learn this by asking school officials, many of whom appear preoccuppied with maintaining such tangential, but federally-funded program activities as these in the Boston Public Schools:

The translation of a dictionary into Cape Verdean Creole by school officials, and

‘Structured clubs’ in Chinese yo-yo and palm reading whose meeting times, school officials say, “regularly disrupt” regular classes.

Boston Public Schools, Boston, MA (T288S990030, $522,000)

Project BUILD (Best Uses of Instruction for Literacy Development) lists as its goals: (1) to enable Cape Verdean English learners to increase their literacy in Cape Verdean Creole and in English (in that order) and, (2) to “attain academ