[lg policy] Spanish in the US

Tue Nov 1 12:50:32 UTC 2016

Many thanks Myriam, 
At least , I can now confidently speak about this to my master students and the language policy teacher who mistook them relying on old literature of education in the US .I am eager to know more from US teachers and professionals 

BestDr Mostari 

    On Monday, October 31, 2016 11:20 PM, Miriam E Ebsworth <mee1 at nyu.edu> wrote:

 Dear Mostari,
About the only consistent thing in our schools is that everyone is supposed to become proficient in academic English by the time they graduate from High School. (Operationally defining proficiency raises many questions.)

While  the official law of the land is that cohorts of a certain size must be offered bilingual education (Lau vs. Nichols and the remedies), there was a subsequent local decision allowing more programmatic flexiblity, and as a practical matter the offerings are different in each state. ESL stand alone, pull out or push in, Sheltered English, even sink-or-swim immersion (decades of research are regularly ignored by politicians and policy makers).  There are a even a few states where bilingual education was actually outlawed by popular vote! California is one, but that is being reviewed as per the upcoming election.
Some schools do offer a range of bilingual programs with Spanish (or Mandarin, or the language of another community) used either as a transitional language (transitional bilingual) or a developmental one along with English (developmental or late exit bilingual). There is also a "dual" model where students learn each others' L1 and L2 together (dual bilingual, dual immersion, 2-way bilingual). But the labels are used inconsistently so you would really have to look at each program to see how the languages are actually distributed.
There is also a movement for States to confer a "Seal of Biliteracy" to high school graduates in order to promote and celebrate bilingualism and biliteracy. (California and New York have both signed on to that.)
The State of New York has recently approved revised regulations (Part 154) which you can google for more local information.
In contrast, there have been bilingual private schools for hundred of year. I attended one where we did everything in English from 9-12 and everything in Hebrew from 1-4. Elite schools for French abound and there are new charter schools offering bilingual programs (they are funded through public education but do not follow many of the public school regulations). 
Our Congress has just approved some new legislation that includes policy for ELLs (Emergent Bilinguals) and it is in the process of being interpreted. Overall, it gives more discretion to the states.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I hope it gives you a glimmer of the diversity and complexity in L1 support and/or development offered in our schools.

I'm sure other colleagues will chime in to explain more.
Cordially,Miriam
Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, PhD
Dir. of PhD & Post-MA Programs in Multilingual Multicultural Studies
NYU Steinhardt, 316 East Building
New York, NY 10003

Research Editor: Journal of Writing and Pedagogy
Member, NABE Research SIG Advisory BoardCo-chair, ELL Think Tank

office phone: (212) 998-5195
office fax: (212) 995-3636 

On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 3:01 PM, mostari hind <hmostari at yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi all , Is it true that the language of instruction in the American schools is English , and how about Spanish speaking areas in the US, is Spanish the language of instruction used in parallel with English ?
BestDr Mostari 
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