Singled Out: Is Bilingual Education Helpful or Harmful to the Classroom?

Growing up in South Texas gave me a great perspective on bilingual teaching. I had three classes where there would be a small group of students that couldn't fully speak English and would spend most of class talking in their native Spanish tongues. While it wasn't much of a problem in the beginning, the time that piled up from the teacher having to teach things a second time to other students in Spanish greatly affected the time that we (the rest of the students) got to learn, in turn hindering our progress.…