Study Of Contemporary American Bilingual Education Policy Development

The Bilingual Education Act, which was enacted in 1968, first recognized that limited English speaking immigrant students have equal educational opportunity. From then on, the act had experienced five reauthorizations in 1974, 1978, 1984, 1988 and 1994. Bilingual education flourished during this period. The passing of NCLB abolished the Bilingual Education Act which had been implemented for more than thirty years and declared the end of bilingual education. The term bilingual education vanished from American education history. It is incredible that the American bilingual education policy become extremely conservative, when the whole world welcome the open and plural language education policy. Through the analysis of the factors affecting the development of American bilingual education policy, a lot of experience could be drawn. It has important academic and practical meaning to enrich bilingual education theory and to push the further development of bilingual education practice in our country.The thesis mainly adopts such research approaches as analytic approach of documents, historical approach, factor analytic approach and comparative approach to carry on the research of the American bilingual education policy. The thesis firstly studies the four stages of the development of American bilingual education policy from the angle of history. The four stages are implicit language policy and the free development of bilingual education; restricted language policy and the decline of bilingual education; the appearance of Bilingual Education Act and the flourish development of bilingual education and English-Only movement and the abolishment of bilingual education policy. Then it comes to the general current situation of American bilingual education policy. The chapter describes the bilingual education programs financed by Bilingual Education Act and adopted by schools respectively. And it also analyzed the change of federal funding in detail after the passing of the NCLB. The third chapter explains the main problems appearing in the process of the implementation of Bilingual Education Act from the angle of policy itself; the inevitable resources of policy implementation and social movement and mass media affecting the implementation. It tries to find the main factors affecting the failure of the policy. On the above basis, regarding the types of bilingual education programs, the accountability, the benefits of America and the politics of bilingual education, the fourth chapter summarizes the five main characteristics of the development of American bilingual education policy. Finally, through studying the development of American bilingual education policy, the thesis draws several enlightenments and proposes some suggestions on the Chinese bilingual education.