Transitional Bilingual Education Program Research Articles

The Literacy Development of English Language Learners in Transitional Bilingual Education Program

The Literacy Development of English Language Learners in Transitional Bilingual Education Program

“What are you doing to us?!”: mediating English-only policies to sustain a bilingual education program

ABSTRACT Although U.S. schools that provide bilingual education typically must negotiate English-only policies and pressures to sustain their programming over time, little is known about what this entails at the individual school level. Our research examines in detail how the leaders of an elementary school in New York City with a Spanish-English transitional bilingual education program navigated a range of language education policies over a five-year period. We found that federal, state, and school district policy mandates for English literacy instruction during those years resulted in the imposition of English-only curricula on the school, which undermined its bilingual education program. We identified the following three stages in the school’s efforts to mediate those policies: (1) establishing a vision for biliteracy, (2) (barely) surviving English-only literacy reforms, and (3) restoring and advancing the vision for biliteracy. These findings shed light on the work of school leaders and educators to maintain bilingual education programs in U.S. schools and, in the absence of coherent language policies that truly support the implementation of bilingual education, highlight the need for school leaders and educators to establish a clear vision and receive ongoing targeted supports to be able to negotiate policy mandates.

Using Culturally and Linguistic Responsive and Translanguaging Pedagogy to Teach Science

More and more students in today’s secondary subject matter classrooms in America are bilingual ELLs (English language learners), a fast-growing student population in the U.S. public schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). In New York City, about 50% of the total public-school students speak a language other than English at home and one out of every six secondary school students are an ELL (New York City Department of Education, 2019). Those ELLs are served by the three language programs: TBE (Transitional Bilingual Education program, mostly for middle and high school students), DL (Dual Language Program, mostly for elementary and middle school students), ENL (English as a new language program, formerly ESL, for almost all ELLs). In this article, I focus on bilingual subject matter instruction for high school students in the TBE program. Every day, the secondary ELLs in the TBE program attend subject matter classes taught by bilingual subject matter teachers using the bilingual education pedagogy.

Incorporating oral language assessment into MTSS/RTI frameworks: The potential of personal narrative assessment

ABSTRACT In Multi-tiered System of Support (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) models, the reading achievement of English Learners (ELs) is assessed multiple times during the school year to monitor students’ progress toward meeting grade-level reading standards. Most MTSS/RTI frameworks do not include a comparable system for assessing oral language development. The English Learner Oral Narrative Scale (ELONS) was developed as an informal, criterion-referenced instrument to assess the personal narrative skills of ELs (i.e., skills in recounting personal experiences). The ELONS was piloted with 28 third grade ELs in a transitional bilingual education program to describe participants’ personal narrative skills and to explore relationships between narrative skills and reading achievement. Mean scores were at the Advanced level for English global narrative proficiency and vocabulary, grammar, and fluency; mean ratings for oral comprehension and pronunciation were at the Advanced High level. Twelve of 28 ELs produced Spanish narratives of sufficient length to score. Mean global and subskill scores were at the Advanced level except for fluency (Intermediate level). ELONS global proficiency scores showed moderate correlations to state assessments of English language proficiency and English reading. Implications for oral language assessment in MTSS/RTI frameworks and future research directions are discussed.

Spanish Heritage Language Learners: A Review of Literature Analyzing Their Preference of the English Language

The increased number of Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) speakers in American schools has called for the need of new research focused on SHL students, their parents, their teachers, and a profound analysis of best instructional practices for this individualized group of students. The purpose of this thorough analysis of peer-reviewed literature is to evaluate language programs for the growing SHL student population in elementary schools. A careful look into this growing population will help evaluate the educational programs provided to SHL students such as the Dual Language (DL) immersion program and the Transitional Bilingual Education program (TBE). This review addresses why students walk into an elementary classroom as an SHL and English language bilingual and subsequently become monolinguals as they progress in their elementary school years. Recognizing the factors that lead to a student’s language preference can assist parents, teachers, and the education system in developing an academic structure that will promote bilingualism and biliteracy for SHL learners.

Transitional Bilingual Education and Two-Way Immersion Programs: Comparison of Reading Outcomes for English Learners in the United States

Transitional Bilingual Education and Two-Way Immersion Programs: Comparison of Reading Outcomes for English Learners in the United States

The academic preparedness of Latino students in dual language and transitional bilingual education programs

ABSTRACTThis causal-comparative study analyzed the college readiness of Latino ELLs educated in two different bilingual education programs, Transitional Bilingual (TB) and Dual Language (DL), by examining science and mathematics scores on the nationally recognized college entrance exam, the ACT. A statistically significant difference was found in the performance of the participants in the areas of mathematics and science via a series of t-tests. The descriptive statistics report that DL participants had a 29.6% higher probability in science and a 15.2% higher probability in mathematics of being college ready, per the Texas Uniform Admission Policy. Over all, DL participants outperformed TB participants.

“School within a school”: Examining implementation barriers in a Spanish/English transitional bilingual education program

ABSTRACTThis article explores the ways that general education and bilingual teachers make sense of a Spanish/English transitional bilingual program housed at one elementary school in a Midwestern school district. An in-depth examination of perceptions and attitudes unmasks key factors regarding the implementation and interpretation of bilingual programs and how these factors impact school climate and the overall functioning of the program. Primary themes indicated that the use of specific terms, such as “school within a school,” exacerbated the sense of division between the general education and bilingual programs, adding to the challenges of achieving opportunities for bringing students together across programs.

English Language Learner Boys and Girls Reading and Math Achievement as a Function of Early-Exit and Late-Exit Bilingual Programs: A Multiyear, Statewide Analysis

We examined the reading and math performance of English Language Learner boys and girls in Grades 3, 4, 5, and 6 as a function of early-exit or late-exit transitional bilingual education program. Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills Reading and Mathematics scores of all English Language Learner boys and girls who were enrolled in either early-exit or late-exit bilingual education programs were analyzed for the 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011 school years. Results were not consistent across reading and math, across the 4 grade levels, and across the 3 school years. On the TAKS Reading test, 5 instances were present in which statistically significant differences were revealed for boys and 11 for girls. On the TAKS Mathematics test, 8 statistically significant results were revealed for boys and 6 for girls. These statistically significant differences were not consistently in favor of either the early-exit or the late-exit bilingual education programs. Moreover, the differences that were present reflected small to trivial effect sizes. As such, neither the early-exit nor the late-exit bilingual education program was demonstrated to be more effective than its counterpart.

Translanguaging, TexMex, and Bilingual Pedagogy: Emergent Bilinguals Learning Through the Vernacular

This article presents an ethnographic study of how bilingual teachers and children use their home language, TexMex, to mediate academic content and standard languages. From the premise thatTESOLeducators can benefit from a fuller understanding of students' linguistic repertoires, the study describes language practices in a second‐grade classroom in a transitional bilingual education program in a well‐established Mexican American community in San Antonio, Texas. The data suggest that the participants move fluidly between not just Spanish and English, but also the standard and vernacular varieties, a movement that is calledtranslanguaging(O. García, 2009). Translanguaging through TexMex enables the teacher and students to create discursive spaces that allow them to engage with the social meanings in school from their position as bilingual Latinos. The teacher's adoption of a flexible bilingual pedagogy (Creese & Blackledge, 2010) allows for translanguaging in the classroom not only as a way of making sense of content and learning language, but also as a legitimized means of performing desired identities.

The Discourse of Transition: Teachers' Language Ideologies Within Transitional Bilingual Education Programs

Transitional bilingual education (TBE), the most common form of bilingual education in the United States, is too often entrenched in a subtractive, English-dominant ideology. This article explores the conflicting language ideologies of teachers in TBE programs, posing the question, “In what way do TBE teachers' discourses reflect/reinforce and simultaneously confront/counter the ideology of the program model within which they operate?” The article draws on two datasets: interviews with 16 TBE teachers at 6 schools in a large, urban school district in Texas and participant observations; and interviews of 2 TBE teachers as they struggled to move their classrooms away from English dominance and toward a more balanced, additive bilingual space. Based on Bourdieu's conception of legitimate language and Bakhtin's conception of dialogue, the article argues that TBE teachers demonstrate a tension between their stated positive orientations toward bilingualism and the restrictive influences of what is termed the “discourse of transition” as they talk about their students, about their classrooms, and about their own decision-making in TBE programs. Essentially, teachers practicing under the structures of a TBE program struggle to simultaneously offer children a “transitional” and a “bilingual” education.

How does size matter? The impact of the rise of small schools on Latinos and emergent bilinguals in New York City

Since the dawn of mayoral control in 2002, New York City high schools have undergone a major overhaul. Part of this reform effort has been the replacement of underperforming large high schools with new small high schools. This study more closely examines the effects of a transition to small high schools on students who are Latino and students who are emergent bilinguals (EBs). The data includes the demographic data from the New York State Department of Education Comprehensive Education Plan and the New York City Department of Education Progress Report for each school. This study finds that although a majority of Latinos and EBs continue to attend large schools of more than 1200 students, they are unevenly distributed across different school sizes. In addition, large high schools are far more likely to offer Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) programs. Findings also indicate that small schools of no more than 500 students have higher academic outcomes based on credit accumulation and higher four and six-year graduation rates for EBs than medium and large schools. These differences are most significant at schools with high EB and Latino student populations. The article concludes with a call for qualitative studies identifying successful practices for EBs across school sizes framed around more fluid notions of language support that move beyond the dichotomy of bilingual education vs. English as a second language (ESL).

English and Spanish Acquisition by Hispanic Second Graders in Developmental Bilingual Programs

The authors studied a longitudinal English intervention in a 70/30 (Spanish/ English) developmental bilingual education (DBE) program ( n = 302) and compared this model with a typical-practice, 80/20, late-exit transitional bilingual education program ( n = 187) in terms of students' language and literacy acquisition from kindergarten to second grade in an urban school district in southeastern Texas. The findings revealed significant differences ( p values < .05) in favor of DBE students on (a) English measures of oral language, preliteracy skills, and reading fluency and comprehension (effect sizes of .12 to .71) and (b) Spanish measures of letter name and sound, preliteracy skills, and reading comprehension (effect sizes of .19 to .38). It was concluded that quality English instruction that incorporates direct and focused instruction, context-embedded vocabulary learning, and ongoing professional training in DBE programs is much needed to promote bilingualism and biliteracy.

Bilingual phonological awareness: Multilevel construct validation among Spanish-speaking kindergarteners in transitional bilingual education classrooms.

The construct validity of English and Spanish phonological awareness (PA) tasks was examined with a sample of 812 kindergarten children from 71 transitional bilingual education program classrooms located in 3 different types of geographic regions in California and Texas. Tasks of PA, including blending nonwords, segmenting words, and phoneme elision, were measured in Spanish and in English and analyzed via multilevel confirmatory factor analysis at the task level. Results showed that the PA tasks defined a unitary construct at both the student and classroom levels in each language. English and Spanish PA factors were related to each other (.93 and .83 at the student and classroom levels, respectively) as well as to word reading, both within languages (correlations estimated between .74 and .93) and across languages (correlations estimated between .47 and .79). Although the PA constructs were statistically separable in each language, the high correlation between Spanish and English PA indicates considerable overlap in these abilities.

The Big Picture: A Meta-Analysis of Program Effectiveness Research on English Language Learners

This article presents a meta-analysis of program effectiveness research on English language learners. The study includes a corpus of 17 studies conducted since Willig's earlier meta-analysis and uses Glass, McGaw, and Smith's strategy of including as many studies as possible in the analysis rather than excluding some on the basis of a priori “study quality” criteria. It is shown that bilingual education is consistently superior to all-English approaches, and that developmental bilingual education programs are superior to transitional bilingual education programs. The meta-analysis of studies controlling for English-language-learner status indicates a positive effect for bilingual education of .23 standard deviations, with outcome measures in the native language showing a positive effect of .86 standard deviations. It is concluded that bilingual education programs are effective in promoting academic achievement, and that sound educational policy should permit and even encourage the development and implementation of bilingual education programs.

Bilingual Education Within the Context of English-Only Policies: Three Districts' Responses to Question 2 in Massachusetts

This article describes three medium-sized districts'responses to the successful passage of an English-only ballot initiative in Massachusetts. Through interviews with bilingual directors and document analysis the study found that programmatic changes as a result of the new law were primarily limited to elementary-level transitional bilingual education programs. Key leaders'detailed knowledge of the law and commitment to bilingual education, and the local context, influenced how the state-mandated policy was translated into practice.

Bilingual education & bilingualism

05–195Colina, Sonia & Sykes, Julie (Arizona State U, USA), Educating parents in the Spanish-speaking community: a look at translated educational materials. Bilingual Research Journal (Tempe, AZ, USA) 28.3 (2004), 299–318.05–196Coupland, Nikolas, Bishop, Hywel, Willams, Angie, Evans, Betsy & Garrett, Peter (Cardiff U, UK; coupland@cardiff.ac.uk), Affiliation, engagement, language use and vitality: secondary school students' subjective orientations to Welsh and Welshness. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK) 8.1 (2005), 1–24.05–197Dickinson, D. K. (Education Development Centre, USA; dickindb@bc.ed), Mccabe, A., Clark-Chiarelli, N. & Wolf, A., Cross-language transfer of phonological awareness in low-income Spanish and English bilingual preschool children. Applied Psycholinguistics (Cambridge, UK) 25.3 (2004), 323–347.05–198Dixon, Quentin (Harvard U, USA; Quentin.Dixon@abtassoc.com), Bilingual education policy in Singapore: an analysis of its sociohistorical roots and current academic outcomes. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK) 8.1 (2005), 25–47.05–199Hofstetter, Carolyn H. (California U, Berkeley, USA), Effects of a transitional bilingual education program: findings, issues, and next steps. Bilingual Research Journal (Tempe, AZ, USA) 28.3 (2004), 355–377.05–200Mackay, I. R. A. (Ottawa U, Canada) & Flege, J. E., Effects of the age of second language learning on the duration of first and second language sentences: the role of suppression. Applied Psycholinguistics (Cambridge, UK) 25.3 (2004), 323–347.05–201Papadopoulou, Despina (Aristotle U of Thessaloniki, Greece), Reading-time studies of second language ambiguity resolution. Second Language Research (London, UK) 21.2 (2005), 98–120.05–202Tsokalidou, Roula (U of Thessaly, Greece; tsokalid@uth.gr), Raising ‘bilingual awareness’ in Greek primary schools. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Clevedon, UK) 8.1 (2005), 48–61.

Effects of a Transitional Bilingual Education Program: Findings, Issues, and Next Steps

This study examined the effectiveness of a transitional Spanish–English bilingual program, Academic Language Acquisition (ALA), in enhancing K–5 students' English-language proficiency, as well as their English performance in academic subject areas, in comparison with the Structured English Immersion (SEI) process.1 An existing reading program, Success for All (SFA), served as a confounding influence because it had similar goals for reading development and included English-and Spanish-language curricula. Given 4 years of enrollment in their respective programs, ALA and SEI students, regardless of participation in SFA, were scoring on par with one another as a group. This phenomenon occurred with content-based tests (reading, mathematics, and language arts) and in the reading and listening and speaking portions of the California English Language Development Test, an English-language proficiency measure. The only statistically significant difference among student groups was that students in both ALA and SFA appeared to be scoring at a lower level on the California English Language Development Test writing portion than matched peers in the other three groups of interest (participants in ALA but not SFA, participants in both SEI and SFA, and participants in SEI but not SFA). Additional findings, theoretical and methodological issues, and implications for future research are featured.

Effective Second-Language Reading Transition: From Learner-Specific to Generic Instructional Models

This study examines two questions involving students in a transitional bilingual education program learning to read in a second language. The first question deals with the impact of second-language (L2) text structure on comprehension processes, while the second deals with the level of oral language proficiency necessary to comprehend L2 texts. Findings demonstrate that comprehension “errors” begin at the word level and expand to the sentence level (or beyond) in order for the reader to make meaning from the texts. Oral language proficiency proved to be an inadequate measure in determining “correct” comprehension of L2 texts. A generic processor or whole group model of instruction is inadequate in meeting L2 readers' needs because the generic processor perspective assumes that L2 learners come to school with similar linguistic backgrounds, experiences, and cultural perspectives. The focus of transition instruction should be on individual learning needs, assessed in a manner that enables the teacher to determine the cultural, linguistic, and cognitive interplay between the text and the reader. Knowing students and their families, along with their instructional needs, will enable teachers to help L2 learners move towards a generic processor model with more success.

The False Dichotomy Between ESL and Transitional Bilingual Education Programs: Issues That Challenge All of Us

The False Dichotomy Between ESL and Transitional Bilingual Education Programs: Issues That Challenge All of Us