Bilingual Education Across the United States

This brief is the first of a four-part series that focuses on bilingual education, bilingual educators, and addressing the bilingual teacher shortage in contexts across the United States. This research was commissioned by the New Jersey State Department of Education, which is committed to providing quality bilingual education to its linguistically diverse student population. Multilingual learners and students classified as English learners (ELs), a growing population nationwide, come to school with tremendous assets, among which are proficiency in a language other than English and the potential to become bilingual. Yet without school-based opportunities to develop biliteracythat is, literacy in both their home language and Englishtheir linguistic potential can remain underdeveloped. Many states recognize these students' multilingual potential and have prioritized bilingual education: Some states require bilingual education, while others ncourage or allow it in certain contexts. In this brief, we define some of the key terms in bilingual education and then provide an overview of the different state policies for the provision of bilingual education to English learners.