bridging disciplines to critique a national research agenda for language-minority children's...

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378 Reading Research Quarterly Vol. 34, No. 3 July/August/September 1999 ©1999 International Reading Association (pp. 378–390) T eaching and learning English as a second lan- guage in the United States is a controversial topic. It is political, it is highly charged, and it is incredibly complex. Questions about schooling abound: Is bilingualism good? Should native-English speakers learn another language? How should English- language learners be taught? What language should be used in the classroom with English-language learners, the native language or English? If the student’s native language is used, how much instruction should be in the native language and how much in English? How do we best teach reading and writing to English-language learners? The book under review here, Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda, is the result of an ambitious effort to address many of the issues related to English-language education. A commit- tee of 10 individuals set out to review “what is known about the linguistic, cognitive, and social processes in- volved in the education of English-language learners; identify issues that are worthy of more focused attention; examine the strengths and weaknesses of various research traditions in the field; and make recommenda- tions regarding research priorities, the research infra- structure, human resource issues as they concern the supply and diversity of scientific evidence to inform and improve policy and practice related to the education of English-language learners” (p. x). The Committee’s primary focus is United States English-language learners “who are in the process of be- coming proficient in English” (p. 16). That is, while the Committee notes that all members shared the belief that “proficiency in language other than English and an un- derstanding of different cultures are valuable in their own right, and should be among the major goals for schools” (p. 17), the Committee’s work revolves around English. The authors state that their preferred label for the group of students of interest is English-language learners, although this term is often used interchange- ably with others such as language-minority learners. In this book, bilingual refers to “an individual with a lan- guage background other than English who has devel- oped proficiency in his or her primary language and enough proficiency in English not to be disadvantaged in an English-only school environment” (p. 16). Language minority refers to an individual from a home “where a language other than English is actively used, who therefore ha[s] had an opportunity to develop some level of proficiency in a language other than English. A language minority student may be of limited English pro- ficiency, bilingual, or essentially monolingual in English” (p. 16). Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda. Edited by Diane August and Kenji Hakuta. 1997. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. 504 pp. US$54.95 hardcover. ISBN 0-309-5497-4. Jill Fitzgerald University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Jim Cummins Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada Bridging disciplines to critique a national research agenda for language-minority children’s schooling ESSAY BOOK REVIEWS

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Page 1: Bridging Disciplines to Critique a National Research Agenda for Language-Minority Children's Schooling

378

Reading Research QuarterlyVol. 34, No. 3

July/August/September 1999©1999 International Reading Association

(pp. 378–390)

Teaching and learning English as a second lan-guage in the United States is a controversialtopic. It is political, it is highly charged, and it isincredibly complex. Questions about schooling

abound: Is bilingualism good? Should native-Englishspeakers learn another language? How should English-language learners be taught? What language should beused in the classroom with English-language learners,the native language or English? If the student’s nativelanguage is used, how much instruction should be in thenative language and how much in English? How do webest teach reading and writing to English-languagelearners?

The book under review here, Improving Schoolingfor Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda, isthe result of an ambitious effort to address many of theissues related to English-language education. A commit-tee of 10 individuals set out to review “what is knownabout the linguistic, cognitive, and social processes in-volved in the education of English-language learners;identify issues that are worthy of more focused attention;examine the strengths and weaknesses of variousresearch traditions in the field; and make recommenda-tions regarding research priorities, the research infra-structure, human resource issues as they concern thesupply and diversity of scientific evidence to inform and

improve policy and practice related to the education ofEnglish-language learners” (p. x).

The Committee’s primary focus is United StatesEnglish-language learners “who are in the process of be-coming proficient in English” (p. 16). That is, while theCommittee notes that all members shared the belief that“proficiency in language other than English and an un-derstanding of different cultures are valuable in theirown right, and should be among the major goals forschools” (p. 17), the Committee’s work revolves aroundEnglish. The authors state that their preferred label forthe group of students of interest is English-languagelearners, although this term is often used interchange-ably with others such as language-minority learners. Inthis book, bilingual refers to “an individual with a lan-guage background other than English who has devel-oped proficiency in his or her primary language andenough proficiency in English not to be disadvantagedin an English-only school environment” (p. 16).Language minority refers to an individual from a home“where a language other than English is actively used,who therefore ha[s] had an opportunity to develop somelevel of proficiency in a language other than English. Alanguage minority student may be of limited English pro-ficiency, bilingual, or essentially monolingual in English”(p. 16).

Improving Schooling for Language-MinorityChildren: A Research Agenda. Edited by Diane Augustand Kenji Hakuta. 1997. Washington, DC: National AcademyPress. 504 pp. US$54.95 hardcover. ISBN 0-309-5497-4.

Jill FitzgeraldUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Jim CumminsOntario Institute for Studies in Education, University of

Toronto, Canada

Bridging disciplines to critique a nationalresearch agenda for language-minoritychildren’s schooling

E S S A Y B O O K R E V I E W S

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Improving Schooling provides an executive summa-ry, an overview, and eight chapters. The first three chap-ters address basic research questions about bilingualismand second-language acquisition, cognitive aspects ofschool learning—including literacy development andcontent area learning—and the social context of schoollearning. The next five chapters address, in the authors’terms, more practical or applied issues: student assess-ment, program evaluation, school and classroom effec-tiveness, preparation and development of teachersserving English-language learners, and issues involved inthe collection of national education statistics. Lengthy ap-pendices are included that present the U.S. infrastructurefor research on English-language learners and bilingualeducation, funded research activities since 1980 relatedto English-language learners and bilingual education,and information about individuals who were resourcesfor the Committee’s work. The authors provide a list-likesummary about the state of knowledge at the beginningof each chapter, and they summarize research needs atthe end of each chapter. The details of these summariesare too lengthy to provide in this review, but readers arelikely to find many of these synopses helpful.

The Committee drew four overarching conclusionsacross all of the chapters. First, the state of knowledgevaries in quality and usefulness across the topic areas re-viewed. The authors determined that some topics, “suchas second-language acquisition and discourse patterns inbilingual settings, have been characterized by a cumula-tive progression of theories and data” (p. 3). Significantstrides have been made in mainstream research for con-tent area learning, but insights from such research havenot been extended to language-minority populations. Inprogram evaluation and effective schools research, therehas been significant activity, “but a serious redirection ofcurrent efforts is warranted” (p. 3). In second-languageliteracy, intergroup relations, and the social context oflearning, “a major effort to address the fundamental is-sues for English-language learners has yet to be mount-ed” (p. 3). Additionally, complete education statistics onEnglish-language learners have not been gathered todate. Finally, the authors propose that, as more researchis done, a grand model of instruction could be devel-oped that would be “grounded in the basic knowledgeabout the linguistic, cognitive, and social development oflanguage-minority children” (p. 4).

The second overarching conclusion the authorsdraw is that a number of serious obstacles hinder the de-velopment of an optimum research base in the schoolingof English-language learners. A major obstacle includesthe “vulnerability of the agenda-setting process to exter-nal politics [and] bureaucratic turf battles among variousoffices within the Department of Education” (p. 5).

Third, the authors set the following research priori-ties:

(a) “Priority should be given to important topics to whichinsufficient attention has been paid.... Under this princi-ple, the highest priorities are the topics of content arealearning, second-language English literacy, intergrouprelations, and the social context of learning” (p. 5).

(b) “Priority should be given to addressing important gapsin population coverage, such as certain age or lan-guage groups” (p. 6). Among the groups mentionedare preschool-age children, older students with littleor no formal education, students with native languageother than Spanish, and English-language learnerswith disabilities.

(c) “Priority should be given to legitimate research ques-tions that are of strong interest to particular con-stituencies, such as educators, policymakers, and thepublic at large.... The major areas of concern commonto these groups are program evaluation and account-ability” (p. 7).

(d) “Priority should be given to endeavors that would buildthe nation’s capacity to conduct high-quality researchon English-language learners and programs designed toserve their needs” (p. 7). The Committee identifies sev-eral areas of research in the cognitive sciences and ap-proaches that would “combine interpretive analysis andtraditional positivistic paradigms” (p. 7).

Fourth, the authors provide a detailed 13-item list for re-organizing and “building the nation’s infrastructure forresearch” (p. 7).

Literacy researchers should know about, read, andcritique Improving Schooling. It is a highly visible andpotentially powerful book about schooling andlanguage-minority children. It emanates from the samenetwork of organizations that produced PreventingReading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, &Griffin, 1998), a report previously reviewed in theReading Research Quarterly (Pearson, 1999). ImprovingSchooling is in part a companion volume to PreventingReading Difficulties in Young Children.

The group responsible for the report was theCommittee on Developing a Research Agenda on theEducation of Limited-English-Proficient and BilingualStudents. The Committee ultimately reports to the U.S.government. It was formed under the Board onChildren, Youth, and Families of the Commission onBehavioral and Social Sciences and Education, in turn re-sponsible to the National Research Council and theInstitute of Medicine, and those in turn to the U.S.National Academies of Sciences and Engineering. Thisbook has potential policy and funding clout.

The Committee members are, in general, highly re-spected and well-known scholars in their specializations.Their voices are likely to carry weight with researchers

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and policy makers. The chair, Kenji Hakuta, is a scholarof high standing in the second-language research com-munity. Widely seen as an advocate for bilingualism,Hakuta and his work are generally considered well rea-soned and forthright. Donna Christian, Richard Duran,Alba Ortíz, and Lucinda Pease-Alvarez have credentialsdirectly grounded in the second-language field. CatherineSnow has significant experience with second-languagelearning issues, and her roots in the general area of lan-guage learning provide a strong connection to the sec-ond-language field. James Banks is well known for hiswork in multicultural education, Gaea Leinhardt is per-haps best known for her analyses of cognitive aspects ofteaching and learning in specific subject matter areas, andDeborah Stipek’s research interests “focus on the effect ofclassroom contexts and instruction on children’s motiva-tion and learning” (p. 475). David Kenny has specializedin the critique of various research methodologies, andCarl F. Kaestle has written extensively on issues such asthe role of the U.S. government in education and adultliteracy. Diane August, a senior program officer at theU.S. National Research Council, served as the book’s co-editor and study director for the Committee, but she wasnot a Committee member. Notably, only Catherine Snowand Carl Kaestle present scholarly credentials in eitherfirst- or second-language literacy.

Members of the mainstream literacy research com-munity should reflect on their knowledge, culture, roles,responsibilities, and agendas in relation to the substantiveissues in this book because literacy connects to many ofthe issues. Though the report is not just about literacy is-sues involved in second-language learning, literacy takesa central place in the lives of English-language learners.This centrality is reflected in one of the report’s chapters,which is devoted to literacy and content area learning.Many other chapters allude to literacy in some regard, es-pecially in so far as literacy development is frequentlydiscussed as a desirable goal of English-language learningand literacy assessments are often used as research andevaluation outcome measures.

Reading and critiquing a compendium such asImproving Schooling also provide an excellent forum forinterdisciplinary learning and discussion. As researcherswith an active interest in reading, over the years wehave increasingly heard about the need for cross-culturaland interdisciplinary research, both in education in gen-eral and literacy in particular. Forward strides certainlyhave been made. Yet we are keenly aware of the isola-tion of groups with vested interests in language-minorityliteracy. Yes, there is cross-over, but by and large eachgroup moves within its own world, writes for its ownjournals, and talks and shares with its own members.

Numerous pockets of specialization exist within thesecond-language arena. Many educators primarily have aforeign language interest. In the U.S., workers in thisfield are mainly interested in helping native-Englishspeakers learn a second language. Educators of non-English speakers may have an English-as-a-second-lan-guage interest, a bilingual interest, an applied linguisticfocus, an English-for-special-purposes outlook, and auniversity or college English focus. Some educators whowork primarily in first-language literacy also are interest-ed in second-language literacy. Groups in the U.S. thatconsider language-minority learning their primary or sec-ondary focus include the National Association forBilingual Education, Teachers of English to Speakers ofOther Languages, and the American Association forApplied Linguistics, to name just three. Organizationsand research arenas that traditionally have focused onlanguage-related specialties such as English education,reading, or writing include, among others, theInternational Reading Association, the National ReadingConference, the National Council of Teachers of English,and the National Conference on Research in Languageand Literacy.

To further support our point about the tendencytoward isolation of fields of study, none of the technicalreviewers or authors of commissioned papers forImproving Schooling are noted as first-language literacyresearchers. And no prominent literacy organizationssuch as the International Reading Association, theNational Reading Conference, or the National Confer-ence of Teachers of English were invited to attend anopen meeting convened by the Committee.

In brief, by reading and critiquing ImprovingSchooling, individuals primarily rooted in first-languageliteracy can learn about significant language and literacyissues and trends in the English-learner literature.Equally important, mainstream literacy knowledge, theo-ries, and research can be brought to bear on the workand the interpretations.

In the spirit of learning and critiquing across disci-plines, we teamed up to talk about this book. We bringsomewhat different outlooks to the review. Jill’s career inacademe began as a mainstream reading researcher, andshe recently has studied English-as-a-second-language is-sues with a special emphasis on reading. Jim has spenthis career working in the second-language arena, oftenfocusing on English learning and reading-in-a-second-language issues. With the idea of bringing a strong per-spective from the English-as-a-second-language researchworld to the primarily mainstream reading research audi-ence of this journal, Jill convinced Jim that his voiceshould be more prominent in the critique.

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To begin our review, we independently read thebook and made notes. Next we shared a few initial reac-tions via e-mail, then we talked over the telephone, find-ing remarkable accord on the general strengths andlimitations of the book. At this point, we forged a tenta-tive list of topics or issues to write about. We decided topresent the main part of our effort as a written interviewin which Jill primarily poses questions to Jim while com-menting on and responding to selected issues. As Jillshaped the introduction to the review, Jim wrote exten-sive comments in reply to the tentative list of topics. Jimsent his draft to Jill, and Jill wove her additional com-ments, responses, and questions into the draft. In thenext go-round, Jim wrote further comments and sugges-tions in response to what Jill had written. Both Jim andJill made final revisions.

General impressions

To begin, we share our general impressions of theCommittee’s work. Our conversation centers on the needfor the book, the enormity of the undertaking, and thevalue of pulling so much information together in one re-source. At the same time, we share disappointmentabout the book’s lack of high-level synthesis and theo-retical grounding.

Jim Cummins (JC): The book is unique in bring-ing together a range of issues that derive from severaldifferent disciplinary perspectives and are seldom explic-itly related to one another. To have brought together theresearch in these areas in a coherent and balanced fash-ion represents a major undertaking, and the authors de-serve commendation for their efforts. For researchersand academics it’s a very useful volume.

Jill Fitzgerald (JF): Yes, I agree. This was a hugeundertaking, and there are many aspects of the book,such as the chapter entitled “Bilingualism and Second-Language Learning,” that I think would be especiallyhelpful to mainstream reading researchers. As these re-searchers work more and more with language-minoritystudents, it will be increasingly important to know how asecond language is learned and the benefits of bilingual-ism. The authors cite much of the important originalwork in bilingualism such as reports by Fishman (1978;Fishman, Nahirny, Hofman, & Hayden, 1966), Lambert(1975), and Weinreich (1953) that examine types ofbilingualism and the language shift of an ethnic groupfrom its original language to the socially dominant lan-guage. Further, readers might be surprised by some re-search findings provided in this chapter such as, “Olderchildren acquire a second language at a more rapid ratethan younger children” (p. 28) and “Many bilinguals inthe United States show a strong preference for English in

a number of conversational situations, and this shift inpreference results in a monolingual English upbringingfor their children” (p. 28).

Still, I believe readers, especially newcomers to thisliterature, might benefit from a clearer synthesis of thework in the area, a synthesis to move us to a higher lev-el. The biggest questions many readers are likely to haveare: What is the current predominant theory about howEnglish-language learners acquire English? Is second-lan-guage learning different from first-language learning,and, if so, how? How does someone learn a language(or a second language)? Yet the chapter does not pro-vide gist-level answers to these questions. There arepieces of information embedded in the chapter thatmight lead to some inferences about the information. Forexample, second-language learning is said to be com-plex and that age, native language ability, and some oth-er features matter. Much of the research onsecond-language acquisition is said to have been basedon the mainstream view of first-language learning. Butreaders are left to construct the big pictures.

JC: I think your point about the need for basic syn-theses of what is currently known relates to one of mybiggest concerns about Improving Schooling. Namely,the report could be much more informative, particularlyfor policy makers, if the authors had carried out theiranalyses in a more theoretically oriented way. Their im-plicit assumption appears to have been that there is a di-rect relationship between research and policy rather thana relationship that, for most educational issues, must bemediated by theory. The authors minimally integrate theresearch into coherent theoretical hypotheses or frame-works from which policy-relevant predictions can be de-rived and tested. Their review of theoretical constructsfrequently amounts to a very sketchy listing of whichscholar said what, with no attempt to integrate the vari-ous theoretical perspectives or draw out their implica-tions for policy.

Where theory could have been practical

As we moved into deeper examinations of thebook while preparing this review, we repeatedly re-turned to the belief that a more coherent theoretical un-derlay for the authors’ work would have enhanced theircritique and interpretations of the research as well as thepractical implications they drew. The report makes littleattempt to interpret research or to resolve contradictoryassumptions or policy orientations in light of research-supported theory. The following instances show thatbolder use of theory might have elevated the authors’ in-terpretations and conclusions. Most examples revolvearound the authors’ use of the phrase language profi-

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ciency. For example, do proficiencies refer to conversa-tional abilities, academic language abilities, aural/oralabilities, or literacy abilities? What proficiencies shouldbe considered when determining program entrance andexit criteria as well as program evaluations?

JC: The authors fail to address in a coherent fash-ion either what constitutes language proficiency or theo-ries of how language proficiency relates to academicachievement. Such theoretical outlooks are important be-cause a central (but very much oversimplified) premiseof most programs for language-minority students is thattheir academic underachievement is somehow caused bytheir lack of proficiency in English. Yet the report neverclearly portrays what constitutes proficiency in Englishfor academic purposes. For example, when the authorsdiscuss definitions of language proficiency in Chapter 2,they note that “some researchers have defined it narrow-ly around the control of grammatical rules, othersaround the ability to use language in accomplishing cog-nitive tasks, and still others around the social and com-municative aspects of language” (p. 33). They later makethe point that “language proficiency is multifaceted andvaries according to the task demands and content areadomain” (p. 117).

The overlooked core theoretical issue is this: Are thelanguage proficiencies relevant to academic developmentbetter conceptualized in terms of universal grammar, cog-nitive aspects of language, sociolinguistic components, orall of the above? There is a considerable amount of re-search available that could have informed such a discus-sion (e.g., Biber, 1986; Corson, 1995; Oller, 1979; O’Malley& Chamot, 1990; Solomon & Rhodes, 1995).

JF: To what theoretical position does that researchpoint?

JC: The research suggests that academic languageconstitutes a very different register than face-to-face con-versation. These differences are manifest in the muchlonger time periods that English-language learners re-quire to catch up academically in English (usually atleast 5 years) as compared to functioning in everyday so-cial situations. Corson’s (1995) work on the nature of theEnglish lexicon illustrates one of the major reasons forthis disparity. About 60% of the words in English text de-rive from Greek and Latin sources, whereas the bulk ofeveryday conversational vocabulary has its origins in theAnglo-Saxon lexicon. Greco-Latin vocabulary tends to bemultisyllabic and of relatively low frequency, whereasAnglo-Saxon words tend to be one or two syllables inlength and of high frequency.

These dramatic differences between conversationaland academic language have important implications forpolicy and practice. It is not surprising that English-lan-guage learners take longer to catch up in English acade-

mic proficiency because they reliably encounter thisform of language only in books. Proficiency in the con-versational language of the playground does not go farin the academic language of books and classrooms with-out additional support. For teaching practice, there areobvious implications in the fact that most of the high-sta-tus academic words in English have cognates in Spanish,where they tend to be everyday rather than literarywords. An obvious, but very much underutilized, strate-gy in promoting reading comprehension among Spanish-speaking students is to draw attention to these cognatesand encourage students to search their internal lexicaldatabase as an aid to inferencing unfamiliar vocabulary.My basic point is that in a volume that focuses onEnglish-language learners’ English academic achieve-ment, more attention should have been paid to ensuringthat we know what we are talking about when we dis-cuss English proficiency.

JF: Jim, I’m in complete agreement about the greatneed for a better understanding of the theoretical under-pinnings for important constructs in research, practice,and policy about English-language learning. I too amconcerned about the unclear theoretical bases for the def-inition of language proficiency. Naturally, practitioners,scholars, and researchers alike are interested in English-language learner’s English proficiency, yet students havethe biggest stake in the definition. They are the ones whomost feel the impact of our conceptual and operationaldefinitions. Their school careers, and in many cases theiridentities, are linked with the degree to which they areconsidered English proficient. They are included and ex-cluded in programs and assessments according to thesedefinitions. Poignant portrayals in the literature documenthow our adult-world definition of English proficiency isinextricably, and often negatively, woven into the core ofthe English-language learner’s life (Valdes, 1998).

My primary concern about the definition revolvesaround the oral/aural perspective of language proficien-cy that dominates the book. I had hoped that the au-thors might more boldly explicate a need to defineEnglish proficiency not just as it is reflected in oral/auralabilities, but also as it is reflected in literate abilities. Asyou say, on this point the authors send mixed messages.

What are the compelling reasons for including liter-acy in the definition of English proficiency? One reasonis that, as noted in the book, many state and federal def-initions of English proficiency already incorporate litera-cy. The authors seem to neither accept nor critique thesedefinitions. Further, when teachers believe that Englishproficiency refers only to oral/aural abilities, they oftenwithhold reading and writing instruction. Consequently,students might be denied the opportunity to develop

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their literacy abilities as well as a rich avenue to learningcontent.

JC: Theoretical clarification of what is meant byproficiency underlies many of the most contentious is-sues in the policy debates on educational provisions forlanguage-minority students. For example, what level ofproficiency in English do students need to participate ef-fectively in all-English classrooms? Is 1 year of intensiveinstruction in English sufficient for English-languagelearners to develop this level of proficiency (asProposition 227 passed in California in June 1998claims)? Should exit criteria from bilingual or ESL pro-grams be assessed by measures of oral fluency inEnglish, grammatical correctness in English, or standard-ized test performance in English? When should readinginstruction be introduced? Do we wait until English orallanguage is well developed (whatever that means) be-fore introducing print, or should we use big books andpredictable texts as a means of developing English orallanguage?

JF: I think most readers of the book would lookfor research-based answers to these questions. Whilethese issues receive some attention, it is difficult to comeaway from the book with a clear sense of what is and isnot known.

JC: Again, answers to these central instructionalquestions can be meaningfully posed only when termslike language proficiency are clear. Here is another ex-ample. In attempting to interpret the mixed findings withrespect to the relation between oral language and litera-cy performance, the authors note that “oral languageproficiency in face-to-face tasks may predict [reading]less well than performance in autonomous, connecteddiscourse tasks” (p. 57). This very tentative statement ig-nores the fact that there is a significant body of researchand theory that addresses exactly this question and per-mits predictions regarding which types of oral proficien-cy tasks will relate to literacy and academic performance.The report mentions some of this work in Chapter 2(e.g., Cummins, 1984; Snow, 1990), but then in Chapter3 ignores this research.

There is a considerable amount of research show-ing that face-to-face conversational tasks in a second lan-guage quickly lose their power to predict readingperformance, just as they do in a first-language context.For instance, rate of fluency in speaking or joke-tellingability are not strong predictors of academic achieve-ment or reading ability in either first- or second-languagecontexts. By contrast, range of vocabulary knowledge isan extremely strong predictor.

JF: Could you talk a little more about how the lackof theoretical perspective may have affected the conclu-sions and research priorities set by the Committee?

JC: In the research needs outlined at the end ofChapter 2 on second-language learning, the authors rec-ommend research on “the components of English profi-ciency and how these components interact” (p. 44).They also note the importance of the question of howproficiencies in the two languages of bilinguals are relat-ed and how these proficiencies interact. In Chapter 3,they highlight the importance of more research on thenature of the relationship between language proficiencyand literacy skill and whether this relationship is thesame across and within languages. They also prioritizethe importance of investigating the relationship of first-and second-language literacy (p. 71).

What is problematic about these recommendationsis the impression that we currently have minimal knowl-edge about these relationships. Nothing could be furtherfrom the truth. One of the most consistent findings in thebilingual literature is the significant relationship acrosslanguages for literacy-related skills. There is a vastamount of correlational and other research documentingthis relationship (see Cummins, 1991, 1996, for reviews).Hakuta’s own research is prominent among these stud-ies. For example, he found in a study conducted withRafael Diaz that the correlation between Spanish andEnglish academic skills went from zero at kindergartento .68 at Grade 3 (representing close to 50% shared vari-ance) among a sample of Latino/Latina students in abilingual program (Hakuta & Diaz, 1985).

Similarly, the California State Department’s (1985)case study project showed English and Spanish readingskill correlations, which ranged from .60 to .74, to beconsistently higher than the correlations between Englishreading and English oral language skills, which rangedfrom .36 to .59. Additionally, the relation betweenEnglish and Spanish reading became stronger as Englishoral communicative skills grew stronger (r = .71, N = 190for students in the highest category of English oralskills).

Because the authors of the report do not use exist-ing research to affirm or formulate a theory about rela-tionships among components of English proficiency,how proficiencies across native and second language arerelated, or how oral and aural language proficiencymight be related to literacy abilities, they never draw outthe policy implications of these findings for bilingualeducation and other programs for language-minority stu-dents. Indeed, the existing research findings document-ing consistently positive relationships between bilingualstudents’ first- and second-language literacy skills clearlysupport the theoretical notion of linguistic interdepen-dence (Fitzgerald, 1995). Interdependence in turn helpsaccount for the fact that bilingual programs around theworld, despite less instructional time through each lan-

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guage, show no adverse effects for both language-minor-ity and language-majority students when compared withmonolingual programs (see Cummins & Corson, 1997,for many examples).

Focusing on reading issues

Because this review is for an audience that is pri-marily interested in literacy issues, and because both ofus have special interests in English-language learner liter-acy, we spent some time focusing specifically on thesection of the book that addresses this. Jim begins bypointing to some positive features of the chapter on liter-acy and then follows with the point that, just as lan-guage proficiency can have many meanings, so can theterm literacy. He suggests that distinguishing betweenword recognition and comprehension is important topolicy and practice recommendations. Jill extends Jim’sintroduction of the relationship between phonologicalawareness and emergent reading, points to policies andpractices that might be inferred from the mainstreamreading research and theory of emergent literacy, andcompares this to the authors’ conclusions.

JC: Chapter 3, the chapter on literacy and contentlearning, generally gives a very useful overview of thepertinent major research trends. Like many researchersthese days, the authors recommend a balanced, or eclec-tic, approach that avoids the extremes of out-of-contextphonics instruction on the one hand and no direct in-struction on the other.

However, if the report had distinguished betweenacquisition of decoding skills and development of read-ing comprehension skills, its policy recommendationscould have been much stronger. There is overwhelmingevidence that the major predictor of reading comprehen-sion is the amount of reading that students engage in.Postlethwaite and Ross (1992), for example, in a large-scale international evaluation of reading achievement in32 systems of education showed that the amount of timestudents reported they spent in voluntary reading activi-ties was the second strongest predictor of overall readingperformance in a school. The first-ranked indicator wasthe perception of the degree of parent cooperation in aschool, which probably reflects socioeconomic status.The significance of reading frequency in promoting read-ing development is also evident from the high rankingsof variables such as amount of reading materials in theschool (8), having a classroom library (11), and frequen-cy of borrowing books from a library (12). With respectto teaching methods, a focus on comprehension instruc-tion was ranked 9th and emphasis on literature wasranked 17th, both considerably higher than whether ornot the school engaged in explicit phonics teaching (41).

Thus, many of the assumptions of literature-based andwhole language programs that emphasize immersing stu-dents in a literate environment are certainly appropriatefor promoting reading comprehension.

However, when it comes to decoding, the strongrelationship between phonological awareness and acqui-sition of early reading skills suggests that teachers shoulduse whatever measures are necessary, including directinstruction, to help students develop an awareness ofphoneme-grapheme mappings and other word recogni-tion skills. Many students will pick up these strategiesspontaneously, but others will benefit from more formaldirect instruction.

By failing to make this distinction, the report doeslittle to counter the misrepresentation of whole languageapproaches in the media and among policy makers. Theessential aspect of such programs is that they emphasizethe crucial importance for students of reading widely ina variety of genres. It is absolutely critical that language-minority students who are trying to catch up academical-ly with native speakers of English have the opportunityand the strong encouragement to read extensively be-cause the main place they find academic language is inbooks. They don’t find much academic language inphonics worksheets, and, unfortunately, in many schooldistricts the pendulum has swung right back to this levelof naiveté about the reading process.

JF: You alluded to the research on emergent litera-cy that supports phonological awareness as a criticalmarker in children’s early reading, and I am pleased tosee some reference to that research in the book. But Iam disappointed that the authors consider it, as well asother important features of emergent literacy such as “acertain level of vocabulary development…and oral con-nected discourse skills” (p. 55), to be prerequisites forbeginning reading. My interpretation of the work ofAdams (1990) and others (e.g., Tunmer & Nesdale, 1985)is that these understandings can be concomitants toemergent reading. That is, each may facilitate the other.In her widely acclaimed review of research on beginningreading, Adams says this about phonological awareness:

[T]he key to the development of word awareness may liein the child’s exposure to print…. Among those childrenwho will successfully learn to read but are not sensitive tophonemes before reading instruction is begun, phonemicawareness seems to develop alongside their word recog-nition skills…. [Further,] when reading instruction is me-thodically coupled with such training, the success ratesare dramatic. (pp. 328–329)

I think the theoretical notion of the concomitantdevelopment of phonological awareness and learningabout print is extremely important when we think about

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English-language learners. The theory and research fromfirst-language literacy studies provide a hypothesis aboutthe potential role that reading can play in fosteringphonological awareness for second-language learners.Since phonological awareness is a central feature of sec-ond-language learning, especially in the early phases ofsecond-language learning, we might predict that involv-ing the learner in teacher- and peer-supported readingactivities that draw attention to phonological features cansupport such aural learning.

Here is a good example of how misinterpretationof research findings and failure to consider theoreticalrelationships that are well established in the mainstreamreading research and theory result in a missed opportu-nity for explicating needed research and policy. Whilethe authors rightfully call for more research on “whetherliteracy can be used as a route to language learning” (p.75), they do not clearly lay out the available evidencesupporting reading and writing as avenues for assistingoral/aural English-language learning. The policy implica-tions of the mainstream reading research and theoryseem clear: Teachers should assist English-languagelearners in reading and writing activities as a means ofdeveloping both English literacy and English orality.Furthermore, researchers should investigate what hap-pens when teachers try to transfer the mainstream read-ing research and theory on emergent literacy toinstruction with language-minority students.

English-language learner programcomparisons

There are several types of educational programs forEnglish-language learners commonly used in U.S.schools, and detailed evaluations of these programs havebeen conducted. Improving Schooling presents the fol-lowing generic labels and definitions for these programs:

� In English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) programs, stu-dents “receive specified periods of instruction aimed atthe development of English-language skills, with a pri-mary focus on grammar, vocabulary, and communica-tion rather than academic content areas” (p. 19).

� In Content-based ESL programs, students “receive speci-fied periods of ESL instruction that is structured aroundacademic content rather than generic English languageskills” (p. 19).

� In Sheltered Instruction, students “receive subject matterinstruction in English, modified so that it is accessible tothem at their levels of English proficiency” (p. 19).

� In Structured Immersion, “all students in the programare English-language learners, usually though not alwaysfrom different language backgrounds. They receive in-struction in English, with an attempt made to adjust the

level of English so subject matter is comprehensible.Typically there is no native-language support” (p. 19).

� In Transitional Bilingual Education, “most students inthe program are English-language learners. They re-ceive some degree of instruction through the native lan-guage; however, the goal of the program is to transitionto English as rapidly as possible…” (pp. 19–20).

� In Maintenance Bilingual Education, “moststudents…are English-language learners and from thesame language background. They receive significantamounts of their instruction in their native language.Unlike transitional programs, these programs aim to de-velop English proficiency, but also to develop academicproficiency in the native language” (p. 20).

� In Two-way Bilingual Programs, “about half of the stu-dents…are native speakers of English, and the otherhalf are English-language learners from the same lan-guage group. The goal of the program is to developproficiency in both languages for both groups of stu-dents” (p. 20).

Determining which type of program is best hasbeen a highly visible topic since the 1970s. As the au-thors point out, “the most commonly studied are thosethat use the native language for some period of time forcore academics (e.g., transitional bilingual educationprograms) and those that do not use the native languagein any regular or systematic way (i.e., English as a sec-ond language [ESL] and its variants, such as structuredimmersion and content-based ESL, as well as ‘submer-sion programs’)” (p. 139). Many evaluations of these pro-grams include reading outcome measures.

In the following interchange, we consider the re-port’s critique of program evaluation. Jim leads the cri-tique back to the originating notion about the importanceof theoretical grounding for developing policy and prac-tice implications from the existing program evaluations.

JF: I have found the U.S. second-language programevaluations generally lacking in many ways. I see thatthe authors of the book do, too. For example, the con-clusion that “there is little value in conducting evalua-tions to determine which type of program is best” (p.138) makes a clear and much needed statement aboutfuture research, and I thought this led to a straightfor-ward policy implication—don’t expect one type ofprogram to work for all students. This sort of recommen-dation is entirely consistent with classic findings frommainstream reading research addressing best methodsquestions. One of the most comprehensive researchstudies in reading, the First-Grade Studies (Bond &Dykstra, 1967/1997), compared several different methodsfor teaching beginning reading. A main conclusion wasthat no single method was superior to others. This studypointed to the need for an end to best methods research.As Dykstra (1968) said:

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One of the most important implications of this study isthat future research should center on teacher and learningsituation characteristics rather than method and materials.The extensive range of classrooms within any givenmethod points out the importance of elements in thelearning situation over and above the materials em-ployed…. Reading instruction is more likely to improveas a result of improved selection and training of teachers,improved in-service training programs, and improvedschool learning climates. (p. 66)

In Improving Schooling the authors’ review of awide variety of program evaluations points to manyproblems, not the least of which is that a program labelcan cover a vast array of actual configurations, makingcomparisons based on labels less than useful. Notably,they aptly conclude in their summary of prior reviews ofprogram evaluations, “The beneficial effects of native-language instruction are clearly evident in programs thathave been labeled ‘bilingual education,’ but they alsoappear in some programs that are labeled ‘immersion’(Gersten & Woodward, 1995). There appear to be bene-fits of programs that are labeled ‘structured immersion’”(p. 147).

So I was pretty surprised to read in the next sen-tence, “the committee accepts the conclusion of the pre-vious National Research Council panel (Meyer &Fienberg, 1992), noted earlier: ‘the panel still sees the el-ements of positive relationships that are consistent withempirical results from other studies and that support thetheory underlying native language instruction’” [empha-sis added] (p. 147). I wrote in the margin of the book,“Wow! This sounds like they are now advocating forbilingual programs over others. Where did this comefrom?!?!” Jim, what do you make of this leap?

JC: I think many people will be confused aboutwhat the authors of the report are actually saying here.As noted above, the definition in the report of a struc-tured immersion program emphasizes that it is essential-ly a monolingual English program. Yet, the El PasoIndependent School District program in Texas, USA (ElPaso Independent School District, 1992; Gersten &Woodward, 1995) included between 60 and 90 minutesof daily instruction in Spanish up to Grade 4 to promotenative language cognitive development. Most observerswould regard the El Paso program as a form of mainte-nance bilingual education according to the definitionpresented above. Although the findings are reviewed ac-curately in the report, they are presented under theheading “Immersion Programs” (p. 154), giving the im-pression that the positive outcomes of this program sup-port structured immersion.

In short, part of the confusion in the report’s treat-ment of program evaluations derives from the fact that

the authors fail to adopt their own advice. They suggestthe need to think in terms of program componentsrather than program labels that may have more to dowith political than educational realities. Yet, much oftheir review in this chapter relies on these same programlabels as when they claim that there are benefits for pro-grams labeled bilingual education, immersion, andstructured immersion.

The authors miss an important opportunity to bemuch more explicit about the implications of the re-search. In the first place, when they say that “there ap-pear to be benefits of programs that are labeled‘structured immersion’” (p. 147), they are relying on theconclusions of the literature review conducted by Rosselland Baker (1996). Rossell and Baker reported that struc-tured immersion programs, which are supposedly de-fined as being conducted almost exclusively in English,were superior to transitional bilingual education pro-grams by a spread of 17% to 83%. The ImprovingSchooling report does not critique the review in any di-rect way, reporting at face value Rossell and Baker’sconclusion that “structured immersion is a more promis-ing program” (p. 145). If the Committee had examinedthe Rossell and Baker review in any depth, it wouldhave found that it provides strong validation for the the-oretical foundations of bilingual education. Of the 10methodologically acceptable studies that Rossell andBaker invoke to compare structured immersion and tran-sitional bilingual education, 9 of the 10 were actuallybilingual or trilingual programs taught by bilingual teach-ers, using 2 (or 3) languages of instruction, and aimed atdeveloping literacy skills in 2 (or 3) languages (seeCummins, in press, for a detailed critique). Other studiesthat have been invoked as evidence for structured im-mersion (e.g., El Paso Independent School District, 1992;Gersten & Woodward, 1995; Pena-Hughes & Solis, 1980)involved around 25% of the instruction in Spanish andwere designed to maintain Spanish and promote literacyin that language. As noted above, they could just as easi-ly have been labeled Spanish-maintenance programs.

JF: What do you think are the policy implicationsof the research and theory?

JC: The early impetus for transitional bilingual edu-cation in the United States subsequent to the SupremeCourt’s decision in the 1974 Lau v. Nichols case was thatsome initial instruction in the first language was neces-sary to help English-language learners succeed academi-cally on the grounds that students could not learnthrough a language they did not understand. I havetermed this theoretical assumption the linguistic mis-match hypothesis. It sounds plausible, but researchershave known for at least 25 years that it is very muchoversimplified.

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The opposing, and equally plausible, claim is thatif English-language learners are deficient in English onentry to school, then surely they need maximum expo-sure to English instruction in school. If instruction inEnglish is diluted as a result of bilingual education, thenEnglish-language learners will perform less well. I havetermed this the maximum exposure hypothesis, whileantibilingual education commentators have tended to re-fer to it as the time-on-task principle (e.g., Porter, 1990;Rossell & Ross, 1986).

These two theoretical assumptions yield diametri-cally opposing predictions regarding program outcomes.The linguistic mismatch assumption predicts that any im-mersion, or so-called submersion, of English-languagelearners into all-English programs would result in acade-mic retardation. The U.S. and international data make itabundantly clear that this prediction is not borne out.Many students from both minority and majority languagebackgrounds succeed academically despite immersion ina second language.

Canadian research on French immersion programsfor majority-language students has demonstrated this formore than 30 years. In these programs students fromEnglish-language home backgrounds are immersed in atotally or predominantly French instructional programduring the initial grades. English (as native language)language arts are introduced usually in Grade 2 and byabout Grade 4 instruction is equally divided betweenFrench and English. It should be noted that in spite ofthe initial immersion in a second language, these are ful-ly bilingual programs, taught by fluently bilingual teach-ers, whose goal is the development of bilingualism andbiliteracy.

So the commonplace theoretical assumptions un-derlying transitional bilingual education require modifi-cation or refinement. It should be noted that no seriousresearcher endorses the linguistic mismatch assumption.Most will agree that it probably is more difficult to learnto read or learn content through a second language, but,by itself, linguistic mismatch cannot explain the data;there is more going on in determining school failureamong English-language learners than just a home-school language shift (see Cummins, 1996, for a review).

How does the maximum exposure, or time-on-task, claim fare in relation to the research data? Equallypoorly. The results of virtually every bilingual programthat has ever been evaluated anywhere in the world re-fute the maximum exposure hypothesis. Practically everycountry in the world (with the possible exception ofIceland) has some form of bilingual education in placeeither for majority or minority students. My colleagueDavid Corson and I recently edited a volume of theEncyclopedia of Language and Education (Cummins &

Corson, 1997) where we documented bilingual programsin operation in countries throughout the world. The con-sistent finding that emerges from virtually all well-imple-mented programs is that instruction through a minoritylanguage entails no long-term adverse consequences forstudents’ academic development in the majority lan-guage. This finding holds whether we are talking aboutstudents from minority- or majority-language back-grounds (e.g., Beykont, 1994; Ramirez, 1992; Rossell &Baker, 1996).

The French immersion programs in Canada and thedata from dual-language, or two-way, bilingual immer-sion programs in the U.S. illustrate the pattern. TheseU.S. programs are similar to the Canadian programs inthe ratio of minority to majority language instruction butwith approximately equal numbers of students from bothmajority- and minority-language backgrounds in the pro-gram. Students in these programs suffer no loss inEnglish reading or writing development despite the factthat about two thirds of their instruction has beenthrough a minority language. Similarly, virtually all of theU.S. data on bilingual education show that instructionthrough a minority language entails no long-term ad-verse consequences for students’ academic developmentin English, the majority language. These data clearly re-fute the maximum exposure (time-on-task) claim.

JF: As I read certain parts of Improving Schooling—especially the parts on bilingualism, literacy, cognitiveabilities, and program evaluation—I thought a lot aboutthe notions of interdependence of cognitive abilitiesacross languages (Cummins, 1979), common underlyingproficiencies (Cummins, 1981), and transferable genericliteracies (Heath, 1986). It is remarkable to me that thebook mentions none of these. As I understand them, at abasic level each notion suggests that certain cognitiveabilities can be developed through input in either lan-guage, and these abilities will transfer to the other lan-guage. Each of these constructs has been well supportedby research (Hedgcock & Atkinson, 1993). An implicationfor practice, then, is that various sorts of programs, withdifferent configurations of when the new language isused and for how long, might potentially help students.Concomitantly, it would make sense to push for policythat embraced a variety of program configurations, allow-ing for variation in relation to local needs, resources, andphilosophical dispositions. Likewise, research would bemore productive if it focused on the conditions of stu-dents’ success or failure according to specific instructionalcontexts as opposed to centering on the grand questionof which way works best. Fortunately, the report authorscome to these points, but their case would be greatlystrengthened had these theoretical underpinnings andsupporting research been explicated.

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JC: I agree completely. The theory and supportingdata suggest that certain cognitive abilities learnedthrough reading instruction in either a new language ora native language will transfer to the reading in the otherlanguage. We certainly know quite clearly that instruc-tion through a minority language will promote bilingual-ism and biliteracy with no adverse consequences forEnglish-language or literacy development. This is not todeny that there are many important research questionsthat can be asked about the specific processes or mecha-nisms of cross-lingual transfer; but the big picture is clearin relation to cross-lingual relationships among literacy-related aspects of language proficiency. The authors ofthe report have ignored the big picture, thereby perpetu-ating the myth that we really know very little about read-ing in a second language.

Methodological issues in the researchand evaluation literature

Finally, we talk about Improving Schooling’s cri-tique—or lack of critique—of research and evaluationmethodologies in the English-language learner literature.We consider alternatives to comparing treatment andcontrol groups. Jim provides a specific example from thechapter on program evaluations. Jill summarizes an argu-ment against the necessity of control groups in programevaluation, and Jim closes with an example of methodsused in climatology that might work in English-languagelearner program evaluation.

JF: As I thought about the authors’ stances onmethodological issues in English-language learner re-search and evaluation, I noticed some tension on thepoint of whether qualitative methods should be em-braced. For the most part, the authors appear to valueand advocate methods that are quantitative and con-trolled. This was especially clear in the assessment chap-ter, the program evaluation chapter, and the school andclassroom effectiveness chapter. For instance, in a sum-mary of important features of the studies on school andclassroom effectiveness, the authors say, “There havealso been qualitative and ethnographic studies that haveexamined social context, language distribution, class-room interaction, and sociocultural enactments of class-room pedagogy…. Although these studies provide richdescriptions of educational environments, many do notrelate practice to learning outcomes” (p. 170). We areleft to infer that the authors feel such studies are lessuseful than quantitative ones. I wondered, “But whatmight be uniquely learned from the qualitative andethnographic studies?”

JC: I thought about this, too. Let me talk about thisin relation to program evaluation for a minute. Here, theauthors make a number of very reasonable and usefulsuggestions about how to improve the quality of pro-gram evaluations. For example, they suggest a focus onprogram components rather than whole program labelssuch as structured immersion, transitional bilingual, andso forth. However, their methodological suggestions arestill predominantly within the treatment versus controlgroup comparison paradigm. I don’t want to dispute thevalue of this paradigm, but I think there are importantalternatives that have not been adequately considered.

There are a huge amount of theoretically importantand policy-relevant data that have been consigned to thegarbage dump of methodologically unacceptable studiesas a result of concerns about the comparability of treat-ment and control groups. The reality is that if the bestminds in North America cannot come up with method-ologically acceptable program evaluation designs in thearea of language-minority education (and many other ar-eas of education) after 30 years of trying, maybe it hasmore to do with the linguistic and sociopolitical com-plexities of the real world of education than with thesloppiness of researchers.

JF: Your comments remind me of points made byPogrow (1998) who questioned whether control groupcomparisons are “the best, or even an appropriate, wayto judge whether programs are effective” (p. 23). Hesuggested several problems with the proposition thatcontrol groups are necessary for determining programeffectiveness, not the least of which is that what mattersto practitioners is the “likelihood that the program willwork effectively at their site, which in a large-scale pro-gram is a function of the consistency of success and theclarity of implementation requirements” (p. 24). He saysthat the fact that results were generated from a controlgroup study is irrelevant. For practitioners, likely effect ismore important than cause and effect.

JC: The real issue is one of credibility of claims.You don’t need to rely predominantly on experimentalor quasi-experimental designs to evaluate the credibilityof the theoretical claims and their policy-related implica-tions that have been made in the literature. Take an exam-ple from another discipline: meteorology or climatology—the understanding and prediction of weather patterns.What scientists do to generate knowledge in this disci-pline (and many others) is to observe phenomena (e.g.,the conditions under which hurricanes appear) and buildup theoretical models that attempt to predict these phe-nomena. With further observations they test and refinetheir predictive models. There is no control group, forobvious reasons, yet theory-based predictions are beingconstantly tested. In the same way, I would suggest that

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a much wider body of research is theory and policy rele-vant than typical reviews in the area of bilingual educa-tion have suggested. For example, case studies ofparticular programs or evaluations that assess studentprogress in relation to grade norms are potentially theo-retically relevant.

Here’s a hypothetical example. Suppose that dual-language or two-way bilingual immersion programs(which usually have between 50% to 90% minority-language instruction in the early grades for bothminority- and majority-language students) were to showconsistently the pattern that most of those that havebeen evaluated to this date apparently do show: byGrade 6 students from majority-language (native English-speaking) backgrounds in these programs develop highlevels of biliteracy skills at no cost to their English acade-mic development; students from minority-language(Spanish) backgrounds by Grade 6 show above averageSpanish literacy development and come close to gradenorms in English academic skills (e. g., Christian,Montone, Lindholm, & Carranza, 1997; Dolson &Lindholm, 1995). Let us suppose, hypothetically, that wehave 100 such programs demonstrating this pattern fromaround the United States, and the few programs that donot demonstrate this pattern can be shown to have beenpoorly implemented or not to have followed the pre-scribed model in some important respects. However,none of these programs has acceptable control groupsfor comparison purposes, if only because they werefreely chosen by parents (as is the case for all French im-mersion programs in Canada), whereas students in com-parison programs just enrolled in their neighborhoodschool.

Do these 100 programs demonstrating a consistentpattern of achievement in relation to grade norms tell usanything that is policy relevant? The book’s authorswould say that this pattern is totally irrelevant to policydecisions regarding the efficacy of any form of bilingualeducation because no truly comparable control group ispresent. I would argue, by contrast, that such a pattern isdirectly relevant to policy because it permits us to testcertain theoretical predictions against the research data.The data from two-way bilingual immersion programs,for example, are clearly inconsistent with both the lin-guistic mismatch and maximum exposure hypotheses.The fact that the data may be from case studies and re-port students’ achievement levels in relation to standardscores is not an impediment to examining the consisten-cy of the data with theoretical predictions. It takes onlyone contrary finding to invalidate a theoretical hypothe-sis or cause it to be refined in some way to accommo-date the new data.

Wrapping up

The authors of Improving Schooling have succeed-ed in laying out the major contemporary issues aboutEnglish-language learners’ schooling. At the same time,the book provides a consolidated base of research andevaluation on a broad range of issues never beforebrought together in one resource. As such, it is likely tobe useful to workers in many fields. However, both ofus have concerns about aspects of the authors’ analysesand conclusions, and we are in agreement that theymissed important opportunities to clarify research find-ings, especially as the research points to or supports par-ticular theoretical frames. Policy options are bestinformed by such theoretical frames and by careful cri-tiques of research and high-level syntheses of researchoutcomes.

What impact will the report have? Time will tell.We know the stakes are high. Because the topics of thebook are so important to daily educational practices, andbecause English-language learning is so controversial,practitioners, legislators, journalists, and others mighteasily turn to the Executive Summary in this book forquick guidance. It is incumbent upon practitioners andresearchers across related disciplines to read and discussthis book and to bring all of their background knowl-edge with them as critical readers. We offer our critiqueas a singular interpretation, though it comes from twodifferent vantage points. We wonder what other inter-pretations might arise from readings done by practition-ers, by researchers in foreign-language education, byEnglish education researchers, and others.

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Received November 5, 1998Final revision received December 15, 1998

Accepted January 28, 1999

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