Overhauling NCLB

NCLB: A Diminished Vision of Civil Rights, by James Crawford, Education Week, June 6, 2007

Testing the limits of No Child Left Behind, by James Crawford, Hispanic Link News Service, February 25, 2007

Stranger Than Fiction Dept.

James Crawford and Stephen Krashen: NABE Honors Enemy of Bilingual Education

Denial by NABE President Pedro Ruiz and a response by James Crawford

Hispanic Link Weekly Report: Disinvited or a 'Typo'?

Bilingual Education - Recent Articles on Research and Policy

Stephen Krashen and Grace McField: What Works? Reviewing the Latest Evidence on Bilingual Education

Jeff McQuillan: An Urban Myth: The 'Poor Quality' of Bilingual Education Research

Josefina Tinajero: Bilingual Education in Texas: Lighting the Path, Leading the Way

James Crawford: 'Science' in Rhetoric and Reality

Recent Publications by James Crawford

Loose Ends in a Tattered Fabric: The Inconsistency of Language Rights in the United States (2007)
Forthcoming in J. Magnet, Ed., Language Rights in Comparative Perspective

The Decline of Bilingual Education: How To Reverse a Troubling Trend?
Forthcoming in International Multilingual Research Journal (2007).

Official English Legislation: Bad for Civil Rights, Bad for America's Interests, and Even Bad For English
Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Education Reform, July 26, 2006

Frequently Asked Questions about Official English

English as the "National Language"? A Political Blunder by Republicans

Boom to Bust: Official English in the 1990s
From At War with Diversity: U.S. Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety (2000).

No Child Left Behind: Misguided Accountability System for ELLs
Presentation at a forum sponsored by the Center on Education Policy, September 2004.

Educating English Learners: Language Diversity in the Classroom, 5th ed.
A much expanded edition of my textbook (formerly entitled Bilingual Education), updated to include Census 2000, No Child Left Behind, the impact of English-only initiatives in California and other states, recent research on bilingualism and bilingual education (Thomas-Collier studies, BICS/CALP debate), a complete guide to ELL program models, and much more. Also features a companion CD-ROM disk, the Online Resource Guide, to stimulate further research.

"By far the most complete, the most thorough, and the most insightful volume of its kind ever done in the field."
– Stephen Krashen

Hard Sell: Why Is Bilingual Education So Unpopular with the American Public?
Advocates for bilingual education need to rethink their assumptions and strategies in opposing English-only mandates. Otherwise they should expect to suffer more disastrous defeats (article for the Language Policy Research Unit of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University).

Agenda for Inaction: A Critique of the National Research Council Report Improving the Schooling of Language-Minority Children
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 155/156 (2002). Researchers in bilingual education can – and should – be political without becoming politicized.

La Educación Bilingüe en Estados Unidos: Política versus Pedagogía
Paper presented at I Jornadas Internacionales de Educación Plurilingüe, Ayuntamiento de Vitoria-Gasteiz, País Vasco, España, 20 November 2001. Translation into Spanish by Teresa Fernández Ulloa.

Making Sense of Census 2000
Recently released data illustrates the linguistic diversity brought on by immigration. Unfortunately, the Census tells only half the story because of the way it surveys Americans on language usage (article for the Language Policy Research Unit of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University). 

Guide to Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act
A summary of the arcane details of the new education law relating to English language learners (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader). Part of a comprehensive ESEA Implementation Guide published by the Title I Report newsletter. Click here for ordering information. 

"Accountability" Versus Science in the Bilingual Education Debate
Claims and counterclaims about Stanford 9 achievement test scores in California prove nothing about the impact of Proposition 227, pro or con. What they do show is how misleading "accountability" measures can be when crudely applied to English language learners (article for the Language Policy Research Unit of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University). 

Obituary: The Bilingual Education Act, 1968-2002
The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law on January 8, dismantles the federal Title VII program and turns most funding decisions over to the states. The word bilingual has been expunged from the new law, along with the goal of proficiency in two languages. All this happened with barely a peep from the traditional political allies of bilingual education.

Census 2000: A Guide for the Perplexed
The U.S. language-minority population continued to expand in the 1990s, along with the foreign-born population, and the percentage of U.S. residents who speak English "very well." (So what else is new?) Alarmists notwithstanding, these groups appear to be learning English more rapidly than ever, especially in the 5-17 age group. 

10 Caveats about Language Data from Census 2000 – Before jumping to any big conclusions, it's important to know how crude these numbers are, and why.

Bilingual Blame Game – Response to a Washington Post editorial attributing the "shameful" increase in limited-English-proficient children to bilingual education. Editorial boards used to do their own research on such matters, but with Ron Unz to confirm their biases, why bother?

A Few Things Ron Unz Would Prefer You Didn't Know about English Learners in California
Contrary to media reports, Language Census data show that bilingual education is alive and well in California. Meanwhile, "structured English immersion" broke its promise to teach English within one year to nearly 1.5 million children in 2002-03.

No Politician Left Behind, by Deborah Meier – "The defeat of Bush is a necessity for the future of public education, but it won't rest easy in the hands of a Kerry administration either. Better funding for a host of bad practices won't improve matters. It's just that the fight for good schooling will be easier to mount, and the wild explosion of gaps in every other domain of children's lives may be brought to a halt. Oddly enough, what matters more, for strictly schooling 'outcomes,' is not what happens inside our schools but inside our society."
The Nation, 14 June 2004

School Pushes Reading, Writing Reform – No Child Left Behind threatens to destroy a dual language program in Wheaton, Maryland.
Washington Post, 31 May 2004

No Child Left Behind Fails To Pass Fairness Test, by Lois Meyer – A firsthand account of high-stakes testing for English language learners.
Albuquerque Journal, 27 May 2004

Federal

• H.R. 300 (King - NY) – Bill to repeal Executive Order 13166, issued by President Clinton to ensure that federal agencies accommodate the needs of limited-English speakers; referred to Committee on Government Reform
  
• H.R. 931 (King - NY) – "National Language Act"; would also repeal the Bilingual Education Act; referred to Education & Workforce and Judiciary Committees
• H.R. 997 (King - IA) – "English Language Unity Act"; similar to HR 123, the federal Official English measure that passed the House in 1996 but failed in the Senate; referred to Education & Workforce and Judiciary Committees
• H. Con. Res. 5 (Serrano) – English Plus resolution; a nonbinding policy statement in opposition to English Only measures; referred to the Subcommittee on Education Reform

Colorado

Colorado Hands English Immersion Backer His First Loss – Anti-bilingual initiative rejected by voters, 44% to 56%. Opposition consultants explain their "Chaos in the Classroom" strategy of scaring Anglo soccer moms.
Rocky Mountain News, 6 November 2002

Massachusetts

Legislature Loosens Law on English Immersion – Two-way bilingual education will be exempted from the English-only school law, thanks to action by the Massachusetts legislature. Gov. Mitt Romney, the state's new Republican governor, had previously vetoed the exemption. But Democratic lawmakers mustered more than the two-thirds majority they needed in the Massachusetts House and Senate to override the veto. Most of the state's 51,000 English language learners must still be enrolled in English-only immersion programs this fall; about 1,800 are currently enrolled in two-way bilingual education.
Boston Globe, 15 July 2003

English Immersion Wins over Bilingual Ed – Unz measure wins by 68% to 32% in an allegedly liberal state; 92% of Latinos opposed.
Boston Globe, 6 November 2002

Oklahoma

• HB 1020 – Official English Measure introduced
  

Evidence Suggesting That Public Opinion Is Becoming More Negative, a Discussion of the Reasons, and What We Can Do About It, by Stephen Krashen (April 2002)
Recent polls suggest that an enormous attitude shift is under way. In recent years, about one-third of the American public has moved from support for bilingual education to support for all-English alternatives. Krashen's conclusion: "Without a serious, dedicated, and organized campaign to explain and defend bilingual education at the national level, in a very short time we will have nothing left to defend."