The long-term academic effects of bilingual education programs on a national sample of Mexican-American sophomores : a component analysis

In this study, a paradigm is developed and used to investigate the long-term academic effects of elementary-level, bilingual education programs on a national cohort of Mexican-American sophomores, sampled in 1980. Elementary-level bilingual programs used in this analysis were in place during the late 1960's and early to middle 1970's in the United States. The High School and Beyond data base, developed by the National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, D.C., was used for this analysis. Bilingual programs were categorized according to the presence or absence of four different components: a) English as a second language, b) reading and writing in Spanish, c) other subjects taught in Spanish and d) cultural/ancestral history. Sixteen possible programs, made of different combinations of these components, were identified. Hierarchical component analysis was developed to provide a manageable way of analyzing the various program combinations in an organized and understandable fashion. The observed trends in academic achievement associated with each of the components were further analyzed through t tests. To distinguish between the effects of social background variables and academic variables, extensive t tests were performed. Analysis of variance further clarified interactive effects of bilingual education components. The purpose of this study was to determine whether each of the four bilingual education components mentioned above would have a different long-term effect on academic achievement Further, this study sought to identify achievement patterns associated with each component. [...]