One of the major goals of the American school system is to provide all children with equal educational opportunity. However, with regard to minority students, meeting this particular objective has presented a real challenge to educators as they have been confronted with the task of reshaping education in the multilingual, multicultural society that characterizes the United States. Many significant events contributed to the need of school reform. The Civil Rights movement launched by African Americans in the 1960’s, which resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, triggered major social changes in the direction of equality and justice for all. Consequently, the US Department of Education was charged “…to conduct a survey on availability of equal educational opportunity and to provide technical and financial assistance to school boards in carrying out plans for the desegregation of public schools” (Zephir,1999:136). Changing immigration patterns also occurring since the 1960’s brought educational issues to the forefront of discussion. In 1968, the first Bilingual Education act was passed in an attempt “…to provide short-term help to school districts with high concentrations of students from low income homes who had limited English-speaking ability” (Millward,1999:47). Moreover, in 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in Lau vs. Nichols (a class action suit brought on behalf of Chinese-speaking children in San Francisco) that English-limited children who were being taught in English “…were certain to find their classroom experiences totally incomprehensible and in no way meaningful” (Stevens,1999:108). In consequence, schools were instructed to give special help to non-English-speaking students in order to guarantee their equality under the law with students who spoke English as their first language. In short, the social movement of the 1960’s gave rise to ma...
