Pros and Cons of the Issue

Pro Bilingual Education:

• Drop-out rates of students in bilingual education are much lower than ones in immersion programs.
• It promotes a rich, multicultural environment.
• Bilingualism offers great advantages in society today.
• Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols states that it is a right of a child to learn in a language that they understand.
• Students will not fall behind in subjects such as math, science, and social studies during the process of learning English because these classes will be taught in their native language. They will not fall behind grade level for a lack of understanding the language they are taught in.
• When a child is accurate in reading in their own language, learning to read in English will come much quicker.

Con Bilingual Education

• Immersion programs offer a much faster way for students to lean English.
• Studies show that a majority of immigrant parents want their children to learn English firsthand, over other subjects in school.
• Students are segregated by being placed in bilingual classrooms.
• In an English speaking environment, students have more opportunities to hear the language, at which learning the language will come much quicker.
• Bilingual education programs are costly.

* Side Note: Because of the wide range of the quality of education systems across the United States, the results of statewide performance tests cannot be used to prove which method has the best results. Therefore, statistics about standardized testing are irrelevant to the issue.*

Overview of Bilingual Education

The controversy of how non-English speaking students learn in school has been a conflict for years, however; it is becoming more pertenant today than ever before. With more and more Latino immigrants arriving in America, the numbers of non-Enlgish speaking students is causing major issues in the education system. Until recent times, a bilingual education system has traditionally been used in teaching non-English speakers. In bilingual education, a student is taught in their native language for subjects such as math, science, and social studies. At the same time, these students learn the English language. Throughout this program, students make a progression from classes taught in their native languages to classes taught in all English. The controversy of this system is that many people feel that students who do not speak English should learn to do so as quickly as possible, and that bilingual education programs are expensive. Instead, they believe that students should be placed in immersion programs where a student learns English for a year, and then is placed in a mainstream classroom where the student can either "sink or swim". Supporters of this side of the issue believe the knowledge and understanding of the English language is more important than the quality of this student's education. Though a student may fall behind academically in this system, they will assimilate to the American culture and language at a faster rate.