The educational effectiveness of bilingual education

Bilingual education is the use of the native tongue to instruct limited Englishspeaking children. The authors read studies of bilingual education from the earliest period of this literature to the most recent. Of the 300 program evaluations read, only 72 (25%) were methodologically acceptable - that is, they had a treatment and control group and a statistical control for pre-treatment differences where groups were not randomly assigned. Virtually all of the studies in the United States were of elementary or junior high school students and Spanish speakers; The few studies conducted outside the United States were almost all in Canada. The research evidence indicates that, on standardized achievement tests, transitional bilingual education (TBE) is better than regular classroom instruction in only 22% of the methodologically acceptable studies when the outcome is reading, 7% of the studies when the outcome is language, and 9% of the studies when the outcome is math. TBE is never better than structured immersion, a special program for limited English proficient children where the children are in a self-contained classroom composed solely of English learners, but the instruction is in English at a pace they can understand. Thus, the research evidence does not support transitional bilingual education as a superior form of instruction for limited English proficient children

Predicting instrumental mass fractionation (IMF) of stable isotope SIMS analyses by response surface methodology (RSM) [Dataset]

The dataset contains four files. File S1 corresponds to cathodoluminescence and BSE images of standard minerals. File S2 contains geochemical data of mineral standards ans samples obtained by SIMS and EPMA. File S3 contains the parameters used to obtain response surface models of IMF in mineral standards. File S4 is a response surface methodology tutorial.Instrumental mass fractionation (IMF) of isotopic SIMS analyses (Cameca 1280HR, CRPG Nancy) was predicted by response surface methodology (RSM) for 18O/16O determinations of plagioclase, K-feldspar and quartz. The three predictive response surface models combined instrumental and compositional inputs. The instrumental parameters were: (i) X and Y position, (ii) LT1DefX and LT1DefY electrostatic deflectors, (iii) chamber pressure and, (iv) primary-ion beam intensity. The compositional inputs included: (i) anorthite content (An%) for the plagioclase model and, (ii) orthoclase (Or%) and barium (BaO%) contents for the K-feldspar model. The three models reached high predictive powers. The coefficients R2 and prediction-R2 were, respectively, 90.47% and 86.74% for plagioclase, 87.56% and 83.17% for K-feldspar and 94.29% and 91.59% for quartz. The results show that RSM can be confidently applied to IMF prediction in stable isotope SIMS analyses by the use of instrumental and compositional variables.

School Desegregation and Community Social Change

Through a review of current research, this article analyzes the dynamic process in which the community and the schools interact during school desegregation

Bilingual Education and English Proficiency

In 2001, California instituted a statewide test measuring English proficiency for English learners, students who are not proficient in English. In 2003 and 2004, nearly 500,000 English learners in grades 1–5 took this test each year. The relationship between bilingual education receipt and English proficiency is estimated using value-added regression models for each section of the test—listening and speaking, reading, and writing. In these regression models, students in bilingual education have substantially lower English proficiency of 0.3 standard deviations or more compared with other English learners in first and second grades. In contrast, the difference between bilingual education and other programs is usually less than 0.1 standard deviations for students in grades 3–5. These results hold for ordinary least squares, school fixed effects, and propensity score models.AMS. No keywords