Reflection on a Study

I chose to read a study that was done by Wayne P. Thomas and Virginia P. Collier of George Mason University on dual immersion education. Their study was conducted from 1985-2001 at five rural and five urban sites in the northeast, northwest, south-central and south-east United States with a sample of 210,054 students. The research focused on Spanish language learners, but 80 primary languages were analyzed as well. They studied: program design (dual-immersion, transitional bilingual education, etc.), socioeconomic status, primary language, proficiency upon entry and prior schooling. Quantitative results were done through standardized testing (primarily in reading but testing in other subjects was also done) and numbers are represented by medians. Qualitative tests were done by interviews, school visits, surveys, and source documents.
The study found that for English Language Learners, 50-50 one way dual immersion was most effective with the students reaching the 72nd percentile after 4 years of schooling in the program. Afterward, they continued to succeed in Middle School scoring in the 61st percentile. The most ineffective program was just immersing English language learners in mainstream English classrooms. This group had the largest number of drop-outs with the remaining students testing in the 12th percentile in high school.
The study took the research one step further and tested the native Spanish speaking students in Spanish proficiency. In all of the programs they found that native Spanish speakers outperformed native English speakers when tested in their native language and remained above grade level in later years.
This study was a descriptive study which we know because they have qualitative and quantitative results. The study took many factors into consideration, the geographic location, progress though out their educational career, socioeconomic status, educational background, etc. The report of this study was actually 335 pages which means that is was very detailed and lots of data was taken through out the 16 years of research; however, the teaching styles were not considered in this study. No correlational data was given which means that this study was purely descriptive.
I like this research because it does look at many different programs and the results are significant enough to show trends. Basically what we can conclude from this study is that any kind of bilingual program is better for English Language Learners than just simply throwing them into English mainstream and thinking that because they are kids, they will pick up the language quickly and be fine. From this study we can see that they now only do worse in school but they are actually more prone to drop out.