Response to “Evaluation and Incrementalism: The AIR Report and ESEA Title VII”

Abstract

Berke (1983), in discussing impact of AIR evaluation of federal bilingual program in a previous issue of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, concludes by pointing out that controversy over effectiveness of bilingual has been stirred up again by a recent evaluation of bilingual As authors of report to which Berke refers, we would like to correct several statements she made that could mislead readers who are not fully familiar with report (Baker & de Kanter, 1981). After alleging that Administration is openly hostile to bilingual education, Berke identifies authors of report as Administration staff and states that report negative toward bilingual education. The federal government is made up of two types of employees: political appointees, who constitute and civil service employees, who continue from one Administration to next and whose job is to carry out programs established by Congress. The authors of report are civil service employees of U.S. Department of Education and not officials of Reagan Administration. More important, our research was undertaken at request of Carter Administration, not Reagan Administration. Our conclusions were reached and presented to Carter Administration as part of process of reviewing a regulation proposed by Carter Administration. Although there is no question our conclusions are more compatible with philosophy of Reagan Administration than with that of Carter Administration, we must take exception to Berke's implications that our research was undertaken as part of some supposed Reaganite attack on bilingual As for Berke's conclusion that we were extremely negative toward bilingual education, our two major conclusions were that the literature makes a compelling case that special programs in schools can improve achievement of languageminority children and that the federal government should not place exclusive reliance on transitional bilingual education because while transitional bilingual has been found to work in some settings, it has also been found ineffective and even harmful in other places. Therefore, we recommended that federal policy should be more flexible and allow schools to experiment with a variety of instructional methods. Neither of these two conclusions should