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History of bilingual education in the USA

There are 4 overlapping periods of bilingual education in the United States:

1) The Permissive Period

Long before European immigrants came to the United States, the land contained a variety of native languages. Later on, the European immigrants brought with them a wide variety of languages. During the 18th and 19th centuries up to WW I, linguistic diversity was generally accepted and the presence of different languages was encouraged.

Examples of this permissive period in bilingual education are found in German-English schools which had been set up by German communities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Minnesota, Dakota and Wisconsin. Bilingual and monolingual German education was accepted. In some school in Cincinatti for example, half the day was spent learning through German and the other half through English. In most large cities English monolingual education was dominant. This openess to in-migrant languages depended on several factors: it was partly motivated by competition for students between public and private school. Other factors were uninterested school administrators, the isolation of schools in rural areas and ethnic homogeneity within an area.

At the turn of the 20th century, Italian and Jewish immigrants were placed in mainstream schools. However, examples of bilingual education existed.

2) The Restrictive Period

In the first two decades there was a change in attitude towards bilingualism and bilingual education.
This was due to several factors and led to the restriction of bilingual education.

The number of immigrants increased significantly and therefore there was a growing fear of foreigners and a call for integration, harmonization and assimilation of in-migrants. Competence in English was associated with loyalty to the US and therefore the 1906 Nationality Act required in-migrants to speak English. California and New Mexico even had "English only" instruction laws.
By 1923 thirty-four states ordered that English must be the only language of instruction.
Another factor was an anti-German feeling because of WW I. The German language in the US was considered to be a threat. From that point on schools became the tools of assimilation of many languages and cultures.
This restrictive movement lasted until the 1960's

3) The Period of opportunity

During this period several factors allowed a few opportunities to bring back bilingual education:

When in 1957 the Russians launched their satellite "Sputnik" into space, the quality of US education was put into question. Therefore, in 1958, the National Defense and Education Act was passed, promoting foreign language learning in schools and universities. This helped to create more tolerance concerning foreign language.
Another factor that influenced the re-establishment of bilingual schools was the Civil Rights Movement, the concern for the rights of African-Americans and the need to establish equality of opportunity and equality of educational opportunity for all people, irrespective of race, color or beliefs. The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination on the basis of color, race or national origin and was also a marker of a change to a less negative attitude to ethnic groups and to tolerance of ethnic languages.
The real start of the restoration of bilingual educaton is considered to be in 1963 in Florida: Cuban exiles established a dual language (Spanish-English) school, which became successful and functioned as an example for the re-establishment of bilingual schools in the US.
In 1967 the Bilingual Education Act was introduced which indicated that bilingual education programs were to be seen as part of federal educational policy. This legislation was designed to help mother tongue Spanish speakers who were seen as failing in the school system. However, the underlying aim was finally the transition from minority language to English, rather than the support of the mother tongue.
Another milestone in United States' bilingual education was a lawsuit, a court-case brought on behalf of Chinese students against the San Fransisco School District, which failed to provide bilingual education and therefor equal educational opportunity for those who didn't understand instruction in English. Finally, the Supreme Court outlawed submersion programs for language minority children and this led to the establishment of English as a Second Language classes, English tutoring and some form of bilingual education.
During this period, there was a growth in developmental maintenance bilingual education and ethnic community mother tongue schools.

4) The dismissive Period

Since the 1980's there have been central moves against an emergence of a strong version of bilingual education and a preference for submersion and transitional bilingual education, and the rise of pressure groups such as English First and US English that seek to establish English monolingualism and cultural assimialtion.