Evaluating the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education Programs for Kindergarten and First-Grade Levels in North Carolina

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Recommended: Language and literacy development preschool

This paper describes an evaluation of the effectiveness of bilingual education programs in developing literacy skills for children in kindergarten and first-grade levels in North Carolina. This will be done through comparing the effectiveness of two literacy skills programs- the English-only program and English-Spanish program- in developing native and second languages’ literacy skills. The English-Spanish classes follow the transitional bilingual education (TBE) program. Teachers in the said bilingual program have attained their bilingual education certifications. State law also mandates that the teachers assigned to teach in bilingual programs in North Carolina must have the suitable bilingual teacher certification (De Ramírez & Shapiro, 2007, p.798).

The TBE is composed of an incremental approach to learning English for young students. This evaluation focuses on young students, because they are the main recipients of TBE programs and they are also the primary interest of the evaluator. At the participating schools, the bilingual education program provides content area instruction in Spanish, while English is introduced progressively. In kindergarten, students obtained instruction in Spanish 90% of the time, but as they go to higher grade levels, the amount of instruction that use native language is lessened to include more instruction using English. For instance, by grade 5, the amount of instruction provided in English was greater (80%) than the amount of instruction provided in Spanish (20%) (De Ramírez & Shapiro, 2007, p.798).

The importance of this evaluation is that it will ascertain if it is true that TBE is a successful program in assisting native and second language literacy skills. The study by De Ramírez and Shapiro...

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...ey also have their own school obligations. It is even possible that they are also conducting studies of their own, especially when they are pursuing graduate studies. They may not have the time or energy to help me conduct this evaluation. Also, if there is not monetary incentive, taking them away from more productive or paid time may be more difficult. Furthermore, it will not be easy to get the participation of school administrators, if they know that this is a private evaluation undertaking, because although the findings of this evaluation will be submitted to related public offices, it is not commissioned by any government agency. They might find this study quite intrusive and time-consuming, without feeling any of its urgency or relevance. In addition, even if school administrators allow the evaluation to proceed, there will be time and budgetary constraints.

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