A Speech Community Model of Bilingual Education: Educating Latino Newcomers in the USA

Abstract

With the rapid increase in immigration from Latin America to the USA, many US high schools are struggling with the thorny question of how best to educate newcomer immigrant youth with low levels of English proficiency. This paper examines what some might consider an anachronistic educational model – a segregated bilingual high school for Latino newcomers. Drawing on a qualitative case study of an unusually successful high school in Washington Heights, New York City, the paper argues that the school's vision of second language acquisition as a social process building on the speech community itself, and not just as the individual psycholinguistic process of students, is the key to its success. The paper specifies the factors characterising this speech community model of bilingual education. This school's anomalous success educating its immigrant Spanish-speaking population holds important lessons for the schooling of immigrant youth in an era of standards.