Like California, steam seems to be gathering for district flexibility in determining best approaches for educating English learning children across Massachusetts, a state that, through ballot initiative, adopted an English-only approach to educating English learners. This op-ed, published in the Boston Globe, is the most recent push by education, policy, and legal advocates in Massachusetts to move the state away from rigid English-only policies that have decimated bilingual programs statewide. The argument is not that bilingual education is better than monolingual education, but rather that it should not be ILLEGAL to teach children to read and write in a language other than English, and that districts should have a say in how they address the unique challenges and strengths that English learners bring to their schools.
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