A study in five schools investigated issues in the integration of language-minority students from bilingual education classes and native English-speaking students in academic subject area classes. Participating teachers, six grade-level teachers and six bilingual teachers, the latter selected for their experience with transitional bilingual…

This digest presents recommendations for a staff development program for a multilingual multicultural teaching staff that has been tested and shown to be effective. Effective instruction in bilingual and multicultural schools requires that teachers combine a sophisticated knowledge of subject matter with a wide repertoire of teaching strategies…

This guide helps parents understand how schools assess their child's English language ability and suggests ways for them to help schools place their children in the most useful language program. All districts must decide which students to test, and then how to test them. Some schools attempt to find out the English skills of all students, and…

This report explores the characteristics of giftedness in minority, language minority, and economically disadvantaged student populations and ways to assess giftedness in these populations. A qualitative content analysis is used to analyze gifted literature to determine characteristics of gifted children in general (n=262) and characteristics of…

This guide for French speakers describes the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process in Alberta, Canada. Different sections address: (1) components of the IEP; (2) when an IEP is necessary; (3) the process of developing the IEP (includes a flowchart); (4) how evaluation information is collected through the student, parents, professionals,…

This paper studies the similarities and differences between the goals of bilingual education in China and the United States. China and the U. S. have similar purposes in providing bilingual education to language minorities at the elementary-secondary school level. The Americans use bilingual education as a remedy, but most Chinese treat it as a…

In Portugal's monolingual school system, foreign students are expected to succeed just like Portuguese native students, despite their linguistic and cultural needs and differences. This study characterized the attitudes and motivation of four 9th grade foreign students toward Portuguese and English language classrooms in two Portuguese public…

This digest discusses the difficulty of assessing the speech and language of culturally and linguistically diverse students and recommends strategies for identifying communication disorders. It begins by reviewing what qualifies as a communication disorder, discussing the limitations of speech and language tests, and outlining test considerations.…

This edited volume describes the population of heritage language speakers in the United States and outlines what needs to be done to help them develop their languages for use in academic and professional arenas. The book is divided into an introduction plus 14 chapters in 5 sections. The introduction, "Charting a New Course: Heritage Language…

A central goal of America Reads Challenge sites is to serve children who most need help in reading. This booklet provides tip sheets on finding and serving economically disadvantaged Title I children, children with disabilities, linguistically and culturally diverse children, migrant children, and preschool children so that they can benefit from…

This document contains the English and Spanish texts of an annual publication which examines political, social, environmental, and educational issues concerning indigenous peoples around the world in 2001-02. Part 1 describes current situations and events in 11 world regions: the Arctic; North America; Mexico and Central America; South America;…

This study examined the efforts of parents and children of Japanese extraction in the San Francisco Bay Area to preserve bilingualism. First, an ethnographic study of the children was carried out at home and school. Second, interviews with the bilingual children's mothers were conducted. Finally, in order to measure each child's bilingual verbal…

This final report discusses the activities and outcomes of a project that explored the effectiveness of strategies for teaching reading comprehension to English language learners with learning disabilities who are failing to acquire the comprehension skills to learn from print. A series of studies was conducted over a 3-year period that…

This annotated bibliography provides a list of books appropriate for preschoolers that help teachers develop class routines and expectations. Two topics have emerged from this review: classroom and school activities and first school experiences, including feelings. This has helped provide a way to organize books and will hopefully help teachers…

The United States has at least three historically established patterns of language use: English monolingualism, multilingualism, and bilingualism. The United States could best be described at present as a multilingual nation in which English is the dominant language. English is promoted to varying degrees, but linguistic diversity is tolerated.…