Bilingual Education: Evaluation Politics and Practices

In: Evaluation review: a journal of applied social research, Band 12, Heft 5, S. 483-509

Abstract

Bilingual education has had a complex and controversial history in the United States. Bilingual education evaluators have been hampered by a lack of administrative support, a controversial political environment, and numerous technical difficulties. Since bilingual education programs are quite complex from an evaluation standpoint, it is not at all obvious how evaluators should best proceed in order to design and conduct useful evaluations. This article reviews part of the history of bilingual education and its implications for evaluation practice. Technical problems in conducting a bilingual evaluation are identified and strategies for coping with these problems are discussed. These strategies are based on the evaluation design that has been developed and implemented statewide in Connecticut. Finally, strategies for improving evaluation capabilities and for using evaluation results at the federal, state, and local levels are presented.