Multilingual learners (MLs) are the country's fastest-growing student population: One in five students speak a language other than English at home, and 10 percent of the student population across the country is identified for language development services in school. Despite these students' growing presence nationwide, relatively few best practices…

A survey of 724 families of students at eight dual language schools in the southwest United States that focused on parents' satisfaction with their child's academic skills and with program characteristics is reported. Results are explored for parental language, parental education level, program model type, grade level of the child, and years the…

This article, also available in Spanish, describes what happened when a bilingual kindergarten class in West Liberty, Iowa, investigated a combine. The dual-language Kindergarten program supports content area instruction in both Spanish and English. The first part of the article tells the story of the Combine Project, this class's first project…

Describes Special Parents Are Reading to Kids (SPARK), a program at an elementary school in Clute, Texas, which is a family literacy program for both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking parents, which teaches them how to share books with their children. (SR)

Project PIAGET (Promoting Intellectual Adaptation Given Experiential Transforming) is a federally-funded bilingual early childhood and parent program serving limited-English-speaking bilingual children aged 2-8 years and their parents. The project is designed to promote English language and conceptual growth among young children and influence…

Explores the effectiveness of parent-community involvement in bilingual education programs, and the impact an effective training program can have in formulating organizational goals. Describes the impact of a Bilingual Parent Training Institute for Hispanic parents in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (JAC)

The District of Columbia Board of Education declared the 1990-1991 school year "The Year of the Young Child." During this year, the district encouraged programs that: (1) responded to the learning patterns of children; (2) involved parents in their children's development; (3) provided a range of services such as health and nutrition…

An exemplary prekindergarten television program, developed by the Brownsville, Texas Independent School District, is described. The program, intended for Spanish-speaking four-year-olds, is an alternative to providing an in-school program necessitating classrooms, teaching staff, materials, and equipment. The program prepares students for formal…

The final report of a five-year federally-funded bilingual education program in four schools of the the Sunnyside School District in Tucson, Arizona, is presented. The following areas are addressed: (1) student enrollment patterns, (2) the instructional program for kindergarten through fifth grade and its development, (3) staff development efforts…

This bilingual handbook, presented in both Hmong and English, is designed to assist parents of language minority students who live in California. The book is part of the technical assistance effort of the State Department of Education to clarify the operations of the California schools to language minority parents so they can better support the…

El Arco Iris is a supplementary pre-school program for Hispanic 4- and 5-year-old children and their parents. The Brownsville (Texas) Independent School District operates the program. Ninety-five percent of the kindergarten children in this district begin school speaking little or no English and median family incomes are among the lowest in the…

Describes Project LOWELL, a K-8 bilingual education program developed by Lowell (MA) Public Schools to cope with the dramatic influx of Southeast Asian pupils since 1979. Discusses five project areas: instruction, curriculum development and coordination, staff development and training, parent and community involvement, and dissemination. Issues of…

Describes the development and implementation of EL Paso Community College's model Intergenerational Literacy Project, which brings Spanish-speaking parents and their children together in the classroom in an effort to improve the two groups' literacy skills in English and Spanish. (BB)

Since 1990, growing numbers of migrant students have prompted Cobden School District (Illinois) to develop a bilingual education program incorporating native-language instruction for students who speak Spanish, content courses in Spanish, and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classes. The Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery is used to determine…

This bilingual handbook, presented in both Laotian and English, is designed to assist parents of language minority students who live in California. The book is part of the technical assistance effort of the State Department of Education to clarify the operations of California schools to language minority parents so they might better support the…