Effects of a Bilingual Education Program for Native American Children

Abstract

This study examines the effects of a bilingual education program on Native American children. The subjects were 63 Choctaw second graders from reservational communities near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Seven classrooms were assigned to either the experimental or control conditions. Control classrooms received instruction in English only with no regard for the English proficiency of the students. The experimental classrooms were instructed in Choctaw by native speaking paraprofessionals. These latter efforts were supplemented by ESL instruction by the regular classroom teacher. All students took the Metropolitan Achievement Test in October and in April. Results were subjected to analyses of covariance which indicated significantly higher posttest performance by the experimental group in the Science and Social Studies sub tests, and no significant differences between the groups on the other subtests.