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What Do Parents Think of Two-Way Bilingual Education? AnAnalysis of ResponsesFrancisco Ramos aa Department of Teacher Education , LoyolaMarymount University , Los AngelesPublished online: 05 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Francisco Ramos (2007) What Do Parents Think of Two-WayBilingual Education? An Analysis of Responses, Journal of Latinos and Education, 6:2,139-150, DOI: 10.1080/15348430701304807

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What Do Parents Thinkof Two-Way Bilingual Education?

An Analysis of Responses

Francisco RamosDepartment of Teacher Education

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

Three hundred sixty-six parents of children enrolled in a school-wide English–Span-ish two-way bilingual program participated in this study. They were asked to answera survey that attempted to elicit information about their degree of satisfaction withthe program, as well as the reasons that led them to select it, and their perception ofand support for Spanish. In their responses, the parents showed strong support for theprogram, valued its academic and linguistic emphasis, had positive opinions aboutSpanish, and created home environments that facilitated their children’s develop-ment of literacy skills in this language.

Key words: two-way programs, bilingual education, parents’ opinions

Two-way bilingual education is a form of dual-language education that places abalanced number of language majority and language minority students in inte-grated settings for all or most of the day to receive literacy and content instructionin and through two languages (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2005b; de Jong,2002). This educational approach has four central goals: development of high lev-els of linguistic and academic proficiency in both languages of instruction for bothstudent groups, students’ development of positive cross-cultural attitudes and be-haviors, and in maintenance of academic standards and curriculum similar to thosewhich must be met by students in other programs (Howard, Sugarman, & Chris-tian, 2003).

JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION, 6(2), 139–150Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Correspondence should be addressed to Francisco Ramos, Department of Teacher Education,Loyola Marymount University, 1 LMU Drive, Suite 2743, Los Angeles, CA 90045. E-mail: framos@lmu.edu

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To achieve their goals, two-way programs may adopt different implementa-tion models. The most common ones are 90/10 or “minority-language domi-nant,” 50–50 or “balanced,” and “differentiated” (Howard, Sugarman, & Chris-tian, 2003). Students in a 90–10 model receive most of their instruction in theminority language initially. As they progress throughout the grades, the amountof primary language decreases and that of English increases until, usually byfourth grade, the two languages are used in equal amounts of time. Students in a50–50 model receive instruction in the two languages in equal amounts of timefrom the beginning. Finally, students in differentiated programs receive varyingpercentages of instruction in the two languages (Howard, Sugarman, & Chris-tian, 2003).

Research has shown the effectiveness of two-way bilingual education. Studentsattending these programs achieved high levels of bilingualism and biliteracy(Cazabon, Lambert, & Hall, 1993; Howard & Christian, 1997; Howard, Christian,& Genesee, 2003), while performing well academically (Alanis, 2000; de Jong,2002; Lindholm-Leary; 2001; Lopez & Tashakkori, 2004; Thomas & Collier,2002). Furthermore, they also developed favorable attitudes toward the programs,bilingualism, and other cultural groups (Cazabon, 2000; Lambert & Cazabon,1994; Lindholm & Aclan, 1993; Lindholm-Leary, 2001). Needless to say, thesebenefits have positively contributed to the growth and spread of two-way bilingualprograms in the U.S. Relatively unknown until recently, the 315 programs existingin 2005 represented a nearly 300% increase in the last decade (Center for AppliedLinguistics, 2005a).

These programs seem to be strongly supported by teachers (Howard & Loeb,1998; Lindholm-Leary, 2001) and by parents with children enrolled in them(Craig, 1996; Lindholm-Leary, 2001; Shannon & Milian, 2002). Parents, espe-cially, have valued two-way bilingual education as an enriching educational expe-rience for their children; moreover, they have shown their appreciation for whatthey considered two fundamental assets of the programs: their academic emphasisand the opportunity for their children to be exposed to other languages and cultures(for a review of the research, see Howard, Sugarman, & Christian, 2003). This arti-cle is intended to add to the body of research in this area by examining the reasonsparents enroll their children in a two-way bilingual program, their degree of satis-faction with various components of the program, and their opinions about and sup-port for Spanish, the minority language in this case.

METHOD

Setting

The project was conducted in a pre-K–5 public school located in a large urban dis-trict in South Florida. The school was the district’s second most recent addition to

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the already-existing elementary sites housing whole-school two-way bilingual ed-ucation programs (Freeman, Freeman, & Mercury, 2005) in the area. Although itwas a neighborhood school, due to the special characteristics of its program, stu-dents living in the area but not wishing to attend it were allowed to request transfersto other sites.

The objectives of the program, according to the informational bulletin of theschool, were to develop and promote its students’ bilingual, biliterate, and criti-cal-thinking skills, as well as their cultural heritage and respect for others. Toachieve these objectives, the academic curriculum consisted of English and Span-ish Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, and Science, plus English for Speakers ofOther Languages (ESOL), Spanish as a Second Language (SSL), Spanish forSpanish Speakers (SSS), Curriculum Content in Spanish (CCS), and second-lan-guage reinforcement classes. Following the district’s original model, establishedin the 1960s, students in the program were placed in integrated settings where theyspent 60% of their school day in and through English and 40% in and throughSpanish in each grade.

At the time the project was conducted, the administrative team of the schoolconsisted of the principal and two assistant principals. There were also 56 regularclassroom teachers as well as 5 exceptional student teachers and 2 guidance coun-selors. School enrollment consisted of 1,072 students, 58% of whom qualified forfree or reduced lunch. Students represented 26 countries, 18 of which were fromNorth and South America, 4 from Europe, and the remaining 4 from Asia. Lan-guages spoken by the students included Spanish, Chinese, Malay, Korean, Roma-nian, English, and German. By ethnicity, 94% of the student body was classified asHispanic, 4% as White–Non-Hispanic, 1% as Black–Non-Hispanic, and the re-maining 1% as Asian–Multiracial. Although most of the students were of Hispanicorigin, English was the primary language of a large majority of them (Oller &Eilers, 2002). In fact, only 24% of them were officially classified as Limited Eng-lish Proficient.

Instrument and Data Collection

The instrument used to collect information for this project was the parent surveyincluded in Lindholm-Leary’s (2001) book, “Dual language education.” The sur-vey consisted of 41 items, divided into four sections: background information (9items), participation in school activities (7 items), support for different compo-nents of the program (20 items), and support for biliteracy (5 items). The first sec-tion attempted to gather information about the parents’ educational and linguisticattainment, ethnicity, and language use at home. The second section asked them todescribe their involvement and participation in school activities, such as volunteer-ing in classrooms, helping at school, or attending parent group meetings. The thirdsection examined parents’satisfaction with various components of the two-way bi-

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lingual program as well as their perception of the benefits of learning Spanish fortheir children. Finally, the last section of the survey sought to determine how oftenparents read with their children in English and in Spanish and whether they facili-tated their children’s interaction with other Spanish-speaking children. Partici-pants were asked to rate their responses to the last two sections on a 5-pointLikert-type scale, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

The researcher placed the parent surveys and consent letters in envelopes bear-ing the different classroom numbers. He handed the envelopes to one of the schoolvice principals, who, in turn, handed them to the teachers during one of their regu-larly scheduled staff meetings. The teachers were asked to distribute the surveysamong their students and to collect them back as soon as possible to ensure a highreturn rate.

Participants

Because the 1,072 students enrolled at the school included several siblings fromthe same families, the consent letter attached to the survey asked the parents to re-spond to only one survey per family, using their oldest child as a model (as indi-cated in the original by Lindholm-Leary [2001]). As a result, the number of poten-tial participants in the project decreased to 745. Three hundred sixty-six surveyswere returned, which accounted for 49.13% of the total. Two hundred eighty-six ofthem were completed by mothers, 49 by fathers, and 2 by “others”; the remaining29 did not provide an answer to this question. Nearly 94% of the respondents de-scribed themselves as Hispanic-Latino, 2.2% as Caucasian, 1.4% as Asian-Ameri-can, 0.8% as African American, and 0.3% as American Indian–Alaskan Native.

FINDINGS

Tables 1 and 2 contain background information about the participants. As can beseen, a majority of the subjects were highly educated, with more than two thirds ofthe mothers and more than half of the fathers having attended institutions of highereducation. On the other hand, only a very small percentage of both mothers and fa-thers did not have a high school degree. Language-wise, Spanish was the nativelanguage of nearly 86% of the mothers and 78% of the fathers. Although nearly52% of the mothers and more than 43% of the fathers considered themselves bilin-gual, slightly more than 38% of the former and 37% of the latter remained Spanishmonolingual. As revealed in Table 2, around half of the mothers and fathers usedSpanish to talk to their children, and nearly 58% of the parents used Spanish tocommunicate with each other, but more than one fourth of the mothers and almost23% of the fathers used English to communicate with their children. An additional

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22% of the mothers and nearly 16% of the fathers used both languages for thispurpose.

Table 3 shows the top three reasons parents enrolled their children in the pro-gram. Nearly 30% of them selected the opportunity for their children to develop astrong bilingual–bicultural identity as their top reason, and an additional 33.4%valued the academic quality and career-related advantages of the program. Notice-ably, the percentage of parents who chose the program simply because it washoused in their “neighborhood school” as their first, second, or third reason wasconsiderably lower than that of those who chose it because of its academic, social,and cultural benefits combined.

Table 4 reveals parents’ degree of satisfaction with the program as well as theirperception of the advantages of learning Spanish for their children. Overall, theparents were pleased with the academic rigor of the program. More than 82% ofthem believed it gave their children access to subject matter; 83.1% and 66.1%thought it helped their children develop their English reading and writing abilities,respectively; and 72.4% believed it helped their children develop communication

PARENTS’ VIEWS OF TWO-WAY BILINGUAL EDUCATION 143

TABLE 1Parents’Educational Level and Language(s) Spoken

Mother Father

Highest educational levelGraduate school 19.4 15.04-year college 18.3 15.0Community college 28.7 22.7High school 25.1 25.7Less than high school 3.8 6.0

Language(s) spokenEnglish 4.6 4.1Spanish 38.5 37.4Both 51.9 43.7

First language learnedEnglish 6.3 3.8Spanish 85.8 78.1Both 2.2 0.8

TABLE 2Language Use at Home

Language Spoken Mother to Child Father to Child Parents to Each Other

English 25.4 22.7 13.1Spanish 48.4 51.4 57.7Both 22.4 15.8 15.3

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skills in Spanish. A large majority of the parents held Spanish in high regard.Nearly 90% of them thought that Spanish was important for the future careers oftheir children, and more than 90% of them believed that learning Spanish would al-low their children to communicate with more people, to feel more comfortablewith other Spanish speakers, and to better understand Hispanic and other cultures.Not surprisingly, given these figures, more than 87% of the parents were willing torecommend the program to others.

As shown in Table 5 the parents valued the efforts of the school to reach to thecommunity. Around 80% of them recognized the faculty and staff’s drive to pro-mote diversity, to balance the needs of the English- and Spanish-speaking commu-nities, and to make Hispanic parents feel welcome at school. In contrast, only 61%of the parents believed that the school administration was supportive of these ef-forts, although an additional 20.5% were simply “not sure.”

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TABLE 3Reasons for Children Enrollment in Program

First Second Third

Neighborhood school 20.8 5.2 9.0High-quality academic program 11.5 10.1 8.2Ability to communicate with Spanish speakers 12.6 13.7 31.4Academic or career advantages 21.9 32.2 10.9Stronger bilingual–bicultural identity 29.2 20.5 19.9

TABLE 4Satisfaction With Program and Advantages of Learning Spanish

Strongly Agree Not Sure Strongly Disagree

Program gives children access to subject matter 82.2 7.7 6.3Program does not develop ability to

communicate in Spanish12.0 7.4 72.4

Program develops ability to read in English 83.1 7.4 6.0Program does not develop ability to write in

English14.2 11.7 66.1

Spanish important to make child smarter 65.3 15.6 14.5Learn Spanish to be comfortable with Spanish

speakers92.6 1.1 2.8

Learn Spanish to converse with more people 91.8 0.8 3.3Learn Spanish to understand Hispanic culture 91.5 1.4 3.8Learn Spanish to participate in activities of

other cultural groups91.3 2.5 2.7

Spanish important for future career of children 89.7 3.8 2.4Recommend program to others 87.4 5.2 4.1

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Table 6 reflects parents’ involvement in the education of their children. Very re-markably, more than 86% of the parents agreed that their own involvement inschool activities benefited the school community and about 90% of them believedthey possessed the necessary academic and linguistic abilities to help their chil-dren with homework.

Table 7 shows how parents supported the school’s goal of biliteracy for all. Ap-proximately two thirds of the parents read frequently with their children in Englishand in Spanish, and more than 60% of them provided access to Spanish books for

PARENTS’ VIEWS OF TWO-WAY BILINGUAL EDUCATION 145

TABLE 5School–Community Relations

Strongly Agree Not Sure Strongly Disagree

Hispanic parents valuable part of school culture 82.5 8.7 3.2Faculty and staff promote diversity 80.1 11.5 4.7Faculty–Staff balance needs of English and

Spanish communities79.5 10.7 5.0

School community needs are supported byadministration

11.5 20.5 61.2

TABLE 6Parental Involvement

Strongly Agree Not Sure Strongly Disagree

Involvement important for school community 86.3 7.9 1.9Possesses academic skills to help with

homework90.2 4.1 2.1

Possesses language skills to help withhomework

89.1 5.2 1.6

TABLE 7Parental Support for Spanish

UsuallyDaily

1 to 2 TimesPer Week

1 to 2 TimesPer Month

1 to 2 TimesPer Year

AlmostNever

Read with child in Spanish 23.8 39.3 21.0 4.9 8.5Read with child in English 32.5 34.4 15.6 3.6 11.7Check out or buy books in

Spanish14.5 11.7 35.5 17.8 18.0

Invite home Spanish-speaking friends

29.5 33.3 24.0 4.1 6.6

Child visits Spanish-speaking children

25.7 34.4 24.3 3.6 9.3

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their children on a regular basis. Finally, more than 84% of the parents facilitatedtheir children’s periodic encounters with Spanish-speaking friends in an effort topromote and develop their children’s Spanish skills.

DISCUSSION

The results of the survey used in this project revealed that a large majority of theparents were very supportive of the two-way program. Most of the parents believedthat the program provided their children with the subject-matter knowledge theyneeded, exposed them to two languages and cultures, and expanded their culturaland linguistic horizons. In addition, they valued its academic and linguistic priori-ties and appreciated its positive impact on their children’s linguistic and academicskills. These results are consistent with other studies showing similar levels of sup-port for two-way bilingual education among parents (Howard, Sugarman, &Christian, 2003; Shannon & Milian, 2002).

A majority of the parents believed that the program provided their children withadequate subject matter and helped them develop their English literacy as well astheir oral skills in Spanish. Moreover, they thought that their children benefittedfrom cultural and career-related advantages, such as being more comfortableamong Spanish speakers, being able to converse with more people, and achieving abetter understanding of Hispanic and other cultures. Interestingly, the two itemsphrased negatively (“the program does not help children develop ability to com-municate in Spanish” and “the program does not develop the ability to write inEnglish”) were the ones receiving the least amount of support (although still a veryremarkable 72.4% and 66.1%, respectively). Responses to these two items, there-fore, should be examined with caution because they might be due to an erroneousinterpretation on the part of the parents. Given the parents’ strong support for theremaining items in the category and the nearly 90% of them who were willing torecommend the program to others, this is certainly a possibility.

When asked why they had chosen the program, the top reason for 41.8% of theparents was either the opportunity for their children to develop a stronger bilin-gual–bicultural identity or an increase in their children’s ability to communicatewith other Spanish speakers. An additional 33.4% of the parents selected aca-demic- and career-related advantages and the academic quality of the program.The percentages of parents who opted for the same choices as their second or thirdelections were 34.2% and 42.3%, and 51.3% and 19.1%, respectively. Interest-ingly, only 20.8%, 5.2%, and 9.0% of the parents chose “neighborhood school” astheir first, second, and third reason, respectively, despite the fact that the site was aneighborhood school for all the participants. Parents were not asked to elaborateon their responses, and therefore, no additional information could be obtainedabout this specific choice. However, some speculations are possible. It might be

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that many parents only enrolled their children in the program because of theirproximity to the school. It might also be that their response did not explicitly ex-clude their recognition of the academic and linguistic value of the program. Inother words, the parents’ top reason for choosing the school was proximity to thesite, but, in addition, they were happy with the characteristics of the program. Thehigh percentage of parents who were drawn to the program by its academic and lin-guistic emphasis appears to indicate their genuine appreciation for the additive ap-proach toward languages embraced by the school (Ovando, Collier, & Combs,2003), thereby surpassing mere closeness to the site as their preferred option.

Nearly 90% of the parents believed that the school community benefitted fromtheir own participation in the education of their children, and a large majority ofthem worked proactively in this endeavor. Undoubtedly, their involvement was fa-cilitated by their high Spanish proficiency and educational attainment. Linguis-tically, more than 85% of the mothers and 78% of the fathers were native Spanishspeakers, and nearly 52% of the mothers and 44% of the fathers acknowledged be-ing bilingual in English and Spanish. Educationally, more than 66% of the mothersand more than 52% of the fathers had attended institutions of higher education, andan additional 25.1% of the mothers and 25.7% of the fathers had completed highschool. Their preparation enabled the parents to help their children with home-work, become more knowledgeable about the inner workings of the program, andunderstand the decisive role they played in the academic and linguistic progress oftheir children. Thus, most of the parents were familiar with the academic and lin-guistic components of the program, appreciated their benefits, valued Spanish ac-cordingly, and actively supported their children’s progress toward biliteracy. As anexample, a large majority of them read with their children in English and Spanishand made concerted efforts to promote Spanish in their families by checking outfrom the library or buying Spanish books, by reading to and with their children inthis language, and by facilitating their children’s encounters with other Span-ish-speaking children. Their combined efforts contributed to their children’s ac-quisition of English because of the existing transfer of skills between languages(Krashen, 1996) and the constant access to comprehensible input they provided inboth English and Spanish (Krashen & Biber, 1988). Their supplemental explana-tions and clarifications made the texts more understandable for their children andthis, in turn, eased their children’s English acquisition process (Krashen & Biber,1988). Reading was also a powerful force throughout this process because of itspositive impact on the development of literacy, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax(Krashen, 2004).

These results were comparable to those obtained by Shannon and Milian (2002)in their analysis of Colorado parents’ opinions about two-way programs. The ef-fective combination of the aforementioned factors contributed to the creation of afavorable learning environment at home that supported, continued, and enrichedthe efforts of the school. Furthermore, the supplemental help provided by the par-

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ents had a direct impact on the academic success of their children (Tapia, 2000)and helped reinforce the importance of education among the latter (Sampson,2004).

The parents’ favorable perception of Spanish resulted in their frequent use ofthis language at home. Nearly half of the mothers and the fathers addressed theirchildren exclusively in Spanish, and more than half of the parents used Spanish tocommunicate with each other, to read to their children, and to facilitate their chil-dren’s encounters with other Spanish-speaking friends. These activities helpedprevent (or, at least, delay) heritage language loss (Krashen, 1998), something thatwas not possible in other studies on the same issue. For example, Lao (2004), in herstudy of Chinese parents’ attitudes toward Chinese–English bilingual educationand Chinese language use found out that Chinese parents’ efforts to promote theirheritage language at home were thwarted by their own limited proficiency in Chi-nese. What the parents in our study could not avoid, despite their Spanish profi-ciency, was a perceptible and progressive switch to English. Thus, although 85.5%of the mothers and 78.1% of the fathers reported being native Spanish speakers,25.4% of the mothers and 22.7% of the fathers used English to interact with theirchildren, and an additional 22.4% of the former and 15.8% of the latter used bothlanguages for the same purpose.

Lastly, it is interesting to point out that approximately 38% of both mothers andfathers remained Spanish monolinguals. It might be that many of them were recentarrivals in the United States and, therefore, had not had time to learn English. Itmight also be that the powerful presence of Spanish in the area had allowed them tosubsist without having had to learn English. Finally, it might be that some of theparents spoke some English but did not feel they had sufficient command of thislanguage to describe themselves as bilingual. Because the questionnaire did notask the respondents about their country of birth or the length of their stay in theUnited States, it was not possible to investigate the causes of this linguisticisolation.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The results of this project reveal that a large majority of the parents supportedthe two-way program because of its academic and linguistic focus, and its positiveimpact on their children. Most of the parents believed that the program providedtheir children with subject-matter knowledge and literacy skills in English andSpanish, exposed them to two languages and cultures, helped them better under-stand Hispanic and other cultures, and expanded their cultural and linguistichorizons.

Remarkably, the parents in this study were not passive agents in the schoolingof their children. Rather, they understood that their active participation after the

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end of the school day supported the efforts of the school and contributed to theirchildren’s success (Sampson, 2004). Creating an effective home–school partner-ship encompassed reading with their children in two languages, using Spanish athome as the preferred vehicle of communication, and increasing their children’sopportunities to use Spanish with family and friends.

This study has two implications. First, the parents in this study made it clear thatthey valued the academic and linguistic benefits of the program. Therefore, itseems evident that high academic and linguistic quality must become two-way’strademarks and, most important, pillars. The implementation of solid programsfirmly anchored on the development of academic knowledge and biliteracy skillswill improve two-way’s marketability and acceptance among the public as an en-riching educational alternative. Parents and educators must be embarked in this en-deavor (Shannon & Milian, 2002) to ensure the creation of a strong support net-work that helps reach adequate levels of funding for the programs and thedevelopment of high academic and linguistic standards.

Second, this study revealed the crucial role of the parents in the maintenanceand development of minority languages. Parental support for Spanish at home con-tinued the efforts of the school and conveyed to children the unequivocal messagethat Spanish was alive, useful, and worth being maintained. Although many par-ents had achieved fluency in English, the allure of biliteracy and its acknowledgedrewards acted as catalysts that motivated them to embrace the challenge. As thisstudy reveals, heritage language maintenance is a continuous struggle. However,minority languages will continue to be treated as second-class languages unlessthey are adequately promoted at school and equally supported at home (Alanis,2000).

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