Journal 2007[1]. Coverpage


 

33 

Case Studies of Minority Students  
in a  

Transitional Bilingual Education Program 
 
 

Mona Romandia, MS 
 

 
The educational system in many 

of our schools fails to meet the academic 
needs of minority students. The dramatic 
shifts in student demographics are 
demanding changes in the ways we are 
teaching them. It is essential to 
understand the long term effects of our 
past educational practices and bilingual 
programs. Research indicates that there 
are many academic, historical, 
socioeconomic and language factors that 
can contribute to minority students’ 
success in schools. This research looked 
into the factors that have influenced the 
academic success or failure of native 
Spanish speaking students who were 
placed in monolingual English 
instruction programs in their early 
schooling. The project presents five case 

studies of these students over thirteen 
years in one district. The students’ case 
histories reflect many of the same 
academic and social problems 
encountered by minority students in our 
school system. The parents’ lack of 
formal educational experiences provided 
limited home support for the students. 
The families’ and students’ language and 
cultural backgrounds were in conflict 
with the school district’s focused method 
of delivering academic instruction. The 
students’ academic history showed the 
limited academic skills learned through 
their English instruction. Test scores did 
not show a steady upward growth of 
skills and students never reached parity 
with their English speaking peers. 

 
Chapter 1 

Bilingual Education in the Classroom 
 

My First Class 
 

On August 24,1988, I began a 
career in education assigned to a 
transitional bilingual first grade 
classroom at Vandalia Elementary 
School The enrollment was seven 
hundred and twenty-five students and 
the school year was on a traditional 
schedule, (Sept.-June), with a teaching 
staff of twenty-seven teachers, as well as 
fifteen support staff personnel. The 
growing number of both main stream 

and language minority students required 
the district to make changes in the 
housing and educational program for the 
students. The school, located directly 
across the street from the local 
community college and along side a 
middle-school campus, had an ethnic 
population consisting of Hispanic, 
Hmong, Lao, Native America Indians 
and White students. In 1988 California 
was experiencing an increase of limited 



 

34 

English proficient students. The reported 
number of LEP students in 1987 was at 
613,224 students in California public 
schools. In kindergarten through third 
grades there were 291,719 students 
(Loide, 1991). 
 
 With a background in bilingual 
education I understood the difference 
among programs such as, immersion, 
early-exit, late-exit transitional bilingual 
and the academic success of bilingual 
students in such programs. During this 
first year, I had to draw from my 
previous preschool work experiences as 
well as from my academic training in 
bilingual education at California State 
University, Chico. 
 
 My class that year began with 
twenty-nine students, but by the end of 
the school year, a total of forty-two 
students had been enrolled in the class 
during the year. There were two months 
when the class enrollment had increased 
to thirty students. Twenty-five students 
were in the classroom the entire school 
year. Fourteen students had stayed from 
a few days to a month; then they were 
either moved to other schools or their 
families moved out of the district. The 
initial make-up of the class consisted of 
eleven English learners, nine bilingual 
speakers and nine monolingual English 
speakers. Ten of the students had been 
together in a bilingual kindergarten and 
then moved into the bilingual first grade. 
Six additional students had been at 
Vandalia’s other kindergarten classes but 
although they were English speakers, 
they were moved into the bilingual 
setting in first grade by parent request. 
The parents’ expectations were that their 
children would read in English but 
would learn to speak Spanish in this 
bilingual setting. The thirteen remaining 

students were a combination of new 
students or transfer students from 
neighboring schools which lacked space 
in their school campus during the 
enrollment period. These transfer 
students were placed on a waiting list 
and the parents could move students 
back to their neighborhood schools when 
there was an opening in first grade at 
that site. 
 

In my classroom, I had a 
bilingual assistant for one hour and an 
English speaking assistant for three and 
a half hours in the mornings. In the area 
of curriculum, the district had bilingual 
text books for the math and reading 
programs but lacked Spanish primary 
language text books in the areas of 
science and social studies. There were 
virtually no primary language library 
books in either the library or the 
classrooms. Staff development for the 
year consisted of a grade level 
expectancies booklet and six hours of 
training in writing lesson plans 
following the district’s policy. The 
district had just adopted its Spanish 
reading program so the certificated 
bilingual teachers received two hours of 
training on the use of the program. All 
other support related to curriculum needs 
came from teachers helping each other 
on the campus. 
 
 I had started the school year 
expecting to apply my background 
experience to this bilingual transitional 
program setting. The school was 
following the district’s policy to move 
students into main-stream English 
classrooms by the third school year. The 
district’s plan on paper sounded easy but 
in application it had many problems. 
This policy was in direct conflict with 
the needs of the minority students who 



 

35 

needed academic instruction in their 
primary language beyond the second 
grade in school. 
 
 By December of that first school 
year, our school staff was informed that 
we were going to a year-round calendar 
in July of 1989. The changes, using the 
existing classrooms and adding six 
teachers to the staff, would allow 
Vandalia School to house a total of one 
thousand students. This information 
required changes in my approach to 
teaching the academic areas and using 
the minority students’ primary language 
for instruction. The problem was 
complicated by the year-round calendar 
and its tracking of students by the 
academic calendar chosen by their 
parents at the time of enrollment at the 
school. District-wide English speaking 
students would be allowed to change 
into any of four calendar tracks. 
 
 At Vandalia School English 
learners were directed to the Red Track 
where the only two bilingual teachers 
had been assigned. Therefore, I began to 
look at the students’ future academic 
needs. It was clear that the English 
speaking students were not going to stay 
in the bilingual track where they were 
allowed more time to develop their 
English reading while they acquired the 
Spanish language. Many would be 
moving into the monolingual English 
tracks starting in second grade. It was 
important to assure that fluent English 
speakers be at the same exiting level in 
English reading as their counterparts in 
other first grade classes. Lacking the 
program training on the district’s 
adopted English reading series, I found it 
necessary to talk to and observe school 
site teachers in the first and second 

grades to learn the reading program for 
both grade levels. 
 
 The academic needs of the 
English learners in second grade were of 
great concern to me because there were 
no other bilingual teachers beyond first 
grade assigned to the bilingual track. 
Teachers were told that students needing 
further primary instruction could be 
transferred to the other school sites in 
the district; Olive Street and Doyle 
School. It seemed necessary to visit the 
bilingual schools that would be receiving 
my students as second graders. 
 
 Although the two schools 
approached the publishers’ goals 
differently, at the same time, they had 
many of the same concerns regarding the 
needs of students. The bilingual teachers 
found that the material presented was 
beyond their students’ comprehension 
levels. They were also in great need of 
primary language literacy materials that 
would support first and second language 
literacy development (Freeman and 
Freeman, 1997). In addition, there was a 
lack of qualified bilingual staff to fill 
each grade level. Placement of teaching 
staff had been according to the calendar 
track that the teachers’ chose to teach 
during the year-round adoption phase at 
each site. The needs of the students were 
a second consideration and students 
were placed on a track where most of the 
bilingual staff was assigned to Red or 
Blue Tracks. Because of all these 
complications, some of the students 
could be placed with a bilingual Spanish 
speaking teacher in first grade, then have 
a monolingual English speaking teacher 
in the second grade, then find 
themselves in a bilingual setting again in 
the third grade. 
 



 

36 

 In July of 1989, the school year 
was opened with the Red Track 
designated as the bilingual track. There 
were bilingual teachers in kindergarten 
and first grade with monolingual English 
teachers in second through sixth grades. 
My twenty-seven first graders moved 
into second grade in the following 
tracks. Thirteen of the English learners 

were placed with Miss Morgan, a French 
and English speaking teacher on Red 
track. Five of the monolingual English 
speakers were moved into the other three 
tracks. Six of the advanced bilingual 
speaking students also moved out of 
bilingual Red track. Three students were 
moved to other schools in the district. 

 

Going Beyond the First Grade 
 

In the second year of our 
program a second grade teacher with 
four years of bilingual teaching 
experience was hired. The two of us 
developed a personal and professional 
team effort in order to help both sets of 
first graders and second graders in our 
bilingual classrooms. We spent time 
discussing the first graders progress in 
my class and the strengths and 
weaknesses bilingual students 
demonstrated entering the second grade. 
Her professional opinion was important 
in order to make changes to my 
approach to working with the minority 
students. I found that this helped to 
improve my teaching strategies, and it 
reaffirmed my belief in giving students 
academic instruction using their primary 
language. 
 
 I wanted this year to be a positive 
experience for all my students. English 
speakers were learning basic 
communication skills and academic 
terms in Spanish. English learners were 
hearing academic English and practicing 
oral English communication skills with 
their classmates. All the students were 
expected to meet District’s grade level 
expectancies. Academic content was 
presented in both languages in order to 
meet the learning needs of the students. 
Students were comfortable working and 

learning from each other in the 
classroom and on the play ground. 
 
 As the school year progressed, I 
wondered if the academic growth in both 
classes would continue when students 
entered the third grade. There was no 
bilingual teacher assigned to the third 
grade. The problem was that the 
bilingual students in the Red track were 
going into classrooms with English 
speaking teachers and classrooms lacked 
curriculum materials in their primary 
language. After second grade, these 
students were not receiving 
comprehensible instruction. Meeting the 
recent arriving English learners 
academic needs was not seen as a 
problem beyond the second grade. 
Krashen’s theory “draws a distinction 
between language acquisition and 
language learning”. “We acquire 
language when we understand it” (p. 
101). “The key factor is comprehensible 
input: messages in the second language 
that makes sense” (Crawford, 1991, p. 
101-102). The older English learners in 
Vandalia’s school were not acquiring 
English because they could not 
understand the instruction. 
 
 
 



 

37 

Statement of the Problem 
 

In each of the following years, 
the makeup of my class was changing to 
include more Spanish speakers to the 
point that it created a monolingual 
Spanish classroom with students at 
different levels of English learning. 
Changes in the educational system came 
very slowly and without the school wide 
support; it was hard to implement 
teaching methods that best support the 
academic progress of language minority 
students. 
 
 The educational system in many 
of our schools failed to meet the 
academic needs of language minority 
students. The past practice that the 
educational system had in place was a 
transitional bilingual model with the 
primary goal of having the students learn 
English in three years. Many educators, 
those outside of bilingual education, fail 
to understand “the relationship between 
language proficiency and bilingual 
students’ academic progress” (Cummins, 
1996, p. 55). Cummins’ work and that of 
other investigators clarify the 
“distinction between contextualized and 
decontextualized language as 
fundamental to understanding the nature 
of children’s language and literacy 
development” (Skutnabb-Kangas and 
Toukomaa, 1976; Bruner, 1975; Olson, 
1977; Donaldson, 1978, as cited in 
Cummins 1996, p. 56). Bilingual 
students require more than three years to 
develop first language proficiency and 
the academic language of English. 
Studies by Collier (1987, 1989) have 
shown that immigrant students require 
five to seven years to reach national 
norms in reading, social studies and 
science. By reviewing the different 
bilingual models, I intend to use the 

information to explain the failure or 
success of students that have spent the 
twelve years in our educational system. 
This information is important to help 
adopt appropriate curriculum approaches 
to use in the classroom. 
 
 There are many factors that 
influence the degree of academic success 
of bilingual students. These factors are 
not limited to the school system; but also 
reflect social attitudes in the community 
and family structure as influences on 
minority student success in the schools. 
Cortes’s (1986) contextual interaction 
model suggests that failure of students is 
the result of an interaction of social, 
educational, and psychological factors 
that influence individuals as they live in 
the community, the school, and their 
homes. Cultures are dynamic, always 
changing, so they interact with each 
other rather than match or mismatch. 
Ogbu and Matute-Bianchi (1986) note 
that some minority groups do better than 
others in the school setting. They 
attempt to account for these differences 
by differentiating minorities groups as 
“immigrant, caste-like, and autonomous 
minorities”. It is with these constructs in 
mind that I have chosen to research the 
twelve years of academic progress of 
students in my first bilingual class. 
 
 It is essential to understand the 
long term effect of our past transitional 
bilingual program at my school site. The 
purpose of this research is to take an in 
depth look at the factors that have 
influenced the academic success of 
minority students who are placed in 
transitional bilingual programs. In this 
thesis I will answer the question: To 
what degree did the academic instruction 



 

38 

in primary language support the academic growth of students? 
 

Historical Factors 
 

In the United States, as well as in 
California, the educational institutions 
have not been structured to 
accommodate minority students. They 
are organized to meet the industrial and 
economic needs of the country and the 
state. This economic focus has caused 
the continuing separation and inequality 
of education programs. It has instilled in 
all phases of our American culture the 
existence of social classes based on 
racial and religious differences. The 
dominant social attitude has been that 
minority students did not have the 
intelligence, attitude or economic need 
to be educated (Spring, 1994, 1997). 
Social attitudes and educational focus 
are in the power and control of the 
policy-makers who finance schools at 
the state and national levels of 
government. Decisions made in the 
political arena are not meant to meet the 
needs of all students, thus creating our 
educational class system. 
 
 Bond (1981) presents his general 
explanations of the poor academic 
achievement by non-mainstream 
children dividing explanations into three 
categories “(1) the genetic argument, (2) 
the cultural argument, and (3) the class 
analysis argument” (p. 16). As the 
educational system has failed to meet the 
needs of minority students, the public as 
well as the educational institution have 
shifted the blame to the family’s lack of 

support and the students’ lack of the 
English language when they entered 
school. In order to understand the 
complex reasons why minority students 
are academically failing, one needs to 
understand the history of education 
including the history of equality. (Bond 
as cited in Valdéz, 1996). 
 
 The struggle for equality has 
focused on the civil rights of women and 
minority groups. Educational and 
employment opportunities continue to be 
closed for many in these two groups. 
Educational rights have had to be won in 
both the political and social arenas; 
“Both groups struggle for equal political 
power, equal access to economic 
opportunities, equal treatment and access 
to social institutions, and equality of 
educational opportunity” (Spring, 1994, 
p.110). It is easy to see how the ruling 
majority has had the opportunity to gain 
control over the lives of women and 
minorities through the educational 
setting. Changes required improving the 
educational programs for women and 
minority students have been enforced 
only after court ruling. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 



 

39 

Present Setting of Bilingual Students 
 

The dramatic shifts in student 
demographics are demanding changes in 
the ways we are teaching language 
minority students. These changes have 
resulted in a stronger political effort to 
take away the educational gains made in 
the education of minority students in the 
California’s educational system. The 
education of minority students is seen as 
a political and economic threat to those 
who are dependent on the cheap labor 
force that has existed in the past. The 
economic slavery of minority groups had 
been fixed by the education system. 
Society has managed to blame minority 
students and their families for their 
failure in our present educational system. 
Second language learners learning 
English but struggling academically are 
blamed for their lack of success. 
Cummins explains that the school 
system follows this line of reasoning. 
Because bilingual students are fluent in 
English, their poor academic 
performance and/or test scores cannot be 
attributed to the lack of proficiency in 
English. Therefore, these students must 
either have deficient cognitive abilities 
or be poorly motivated (Cummins, 1996, 
p. 55). 
 
 At my school site, there are now 
bilingual teachers on Red Track and 
support staff throughout our 
kindergarten through sixth grade 

classrooms. However, it is necessary to 
review our past teaching strategies to 
evaluate what we should do next. We 
cannot teach effectively utilizing the past 
teaching methods that have failed to 
meet the learning styles of minority 
students. Further staff development and 
training is necessary to insure that the 
most effective teaching methods 
implemented are based on current and 
sound research data. 
 
 Today’s classroom teacher 
should be a researcher and scholar. This 
concept refers to the “action research” 
by teachers into their own classroom 
practices (Freeman and Freeman, 1994). 
The teacher as researcher model assumes 
that part of the satisfaction of teaching is 
the active participation in the 
development of new methods of 
instruction and the creation of new 
classroom materials. “Teachers assume 
the responsibility of judging their 
teaching methods, experimenting with 
and evaluating new methods, and 
actively exploring new methods of 
instruction by working with other 
teachers and seeking advice from 
university researchers and scholarly 
publications” (p. 57). Classroom 
teachers are the best source of 
information about teaching and that their 
share experiences provide a method of 
improving instruction (Spring, 1994). 

__________ 
Mona Romandia’s Masters Thesis presents extensive research on the progress of five students over a 
period of thirteen years.  We will continue publishing Mona’s research in future Journal editions.  
Mona is a veteran teacher in the Porterville School District in Tulare County.   
Email:  eldragon@charter.net