The Origins of Bilingual Education.

Congress first passed the Bilingual Education Act in 1968, as Title VII of the revised ESEA, and it was renewed in 1974. In that same year the Supreme Court, in Lau v. Nichols, ruled in favor of a class-action suit brought by Chinese students, asserting that school districts serving substantial numbers of children with language deficiencies were violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 if they did not do something special for these pupils. Similar court decisions were reached in cases featuring both Puerto Rican and Chicano plaintiffs, and in 1974 the revised Title VII provided further funding for the training of bilingual teachers. During the 1970s twenty states enacted local bilingual- education acts, a major shift in educational policy, especially since prior to 1968 many states had approved legislation requiring all public-school instruction to be conducted in English. In...