What Two-way Bilingual Programmes Reveal About the Controversy Surrounding Race and Intelligence

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What Two-way BilingualProgrammes RevealAbout the ControversySurrounding Race andIntelligenceElena Nicoladis , Donald M. Taylor ,Wallace E. Lambert & Mary CazabonPublished online: 26 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Elena Nicoladis , Donald M. Taylor , Wallace E. Lambert& Mary Cazabon (1998) What Two-way Bilingual Programmes RevealAbout the Controversy Surrounding Race and Intelligence, InternationalJournal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1:2, 134-148, DOI:10.1080/13670059808667679

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What Two-way Bilingual ProgrammesReveal About the ControversySurrounding Race and Intelligence

Elena NicoladisLesley College, 119 Yorktown Street, Somerville MA 02144, USA

Donald M. Taylor and Wallace E. LambertMcGill University, Psychology Department, 1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal(QC) H3A 1B1, Canada

Mary CazabonCambridge Public Schools Bilingual Programme, 159 Thorndike, Cambridge MA02141, USA

One of the most promising ways of developing bilingual skills of students in theUnited States is through ‘two-way immersion’ programmes, where 50% of the studentsare native English speakers and 50% speakers of a minority language and where halfthe teaching is done by professional teachers who use either English only or theminority language only. In ‘two-way immersion’ programmes, little attention has beenpaid to the experiences of African-American students, who, in conventional pro-grammes, persistently perform poorly relative to English native white children, espe-cially on tests of English achievement or on intelligence tests. If the poor performanceof African-American youngsters is due to genetically determined deficits, as somespecialists argue, we would expect them to perform poorly on achievement tests in bothlanguages. The present study focuses on African-American students’ maths and read-ing achievement in a Spanish-English two-way immersion programme, from Grade 1to Grade 4. The results show that the African-American children perform significantlylower than majority white students on English achievement tests at all grades. How-ever, there is no significant difference between the two ethnic groups in Spanishachievement in the early grades. The results of this study point to the primary role ofsocial/environmental factors in the comparatively lower scores of African-Americanchildren on standardised English achievement tests.

Success for minority students enrolled in bilingual programmes in the UnitedStates has traditionally been seen in terms of the students’ acquisition of themajority language and culture (see for example, Cummins, 1989). In redefiningsuccess in bilingual education as proficient bilingualism and biculturality, therehas been a growing interest in ‘two-way immersion’ classes in which nativeEnglish-speaking and native ‘some other language’ students are equally repre-sented and are instructed half-time in English and half-time in the ‘other’language by native speakers of the two languages. The interest in suchprogrammes derives partly from an accumulation of research evidence of theirefficacy. For instance, research has shown that minority language (e.g., Spanish)students in an immersion programme generally perform better on standardisedtests of English reading and maths than do minority-language students inconventional English as a Second Language programmes, or in other forms of

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1367-0050/98/02 0134-15 $10.00/0 ©1998 E. Nicoladis et al.International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Vol. 1, No. 2, 1998

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bilingual education. In addition, minority-language students also perform aswell or better on standardised tests of reading and maths in their home language(Cazabon et al., 1993; Thomas & Collier, 1997/8). The interest in two-waybilingual programmes also stems from the fact that native English-speakingstudents in the programme score as high or higher on standardised English teststhan do English-speaking students in conventional, all-English school streams.At the same time, they also achieve competency in a second language (Cazabon,et al., 1993).

In the context of this emerging interest in two-way immersion programmes,little, if any, attention has been paid to the experiences of one particular groupthat has been ignored across the entire spectrum of the bilingual educationmovement — African-American students (Lambert & Taylor, 1990; cf. Holobowet al., 1987). The role of African-American students has traditionally beenoverlooked in bilingual education largely because bilingual programmes aredesigned to meet the needs of minority language students, that is, those withsome language other than English as a heritage language. African-Americanstudents are usually viewed as native speakers of English, and as such are notgiven any special consideration. As a consequence, the African-Americancommunity views bilingual education negatively, and indeed, it could be arguedthat the recent resurgence in the debate over ‘Ebonics’ is in part a response to theperceived neglect of African-American students.

What makes the academic experience of African-American students so criticalis their persistent academic underachievement and the well documenteddifficulties they have with standardised measures of intelligence (CambridgeRainbow Task Force, 1996; Helms, 1992; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Neisser etal., Urbina, 1996; Williams & Ceci, 1997). The essential question, then, is whetherbilingual programmes serve African-American students as well as they appearto serve minority and majority (white) language children. The unique structureof the two-way immersion programme makes it possible to explore thisextremely delicate and controversial question of racial differences, specifically,the relative contribution of sociocultural/environmental factors and ge-netic/biological factors in determining the intellectual potential and academicachievement of African-American students.

African-American students have been repeatedly shown to score lower onachievement tests of mathematics and reading than do majority (white) students(Williams & Ceci, 1997) and a variety of explanations have been proposed for thispersistent academic underachievement. For the present investigation, two majorcategories of explanation can be distinguished: sociocultural/environmentalones, drawing on various forms of cultural deficit and cultural differencetheories, and genetic/biological ones (see Helms, 1992; Ogbu, 1986; Taylor, 1997;Williams & Ceci, 1997; Wright et al., 1996).

A genetically based explanation of the academic underachievement ofAfrican-American students is opposed by the vast majority of scholars whoconsider such a position as racist and empirically still unfounded. However, thepersistence of academic underachievement among African-American students,and the lack of a single compelling sociocultural/environmental explanationensures that genetically based theories cannot be easily disregarded.

Two-way Bilingual Programmes and Race/IQ 135

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The debate is also stimulated by the unfortunate reality that the empiricalevidence is far from conclusive. Genetically oriented theorists have been tirelessin their efforts and have been vigilant in their attempts to counteract the criticismsof their detractors. Consequently, environmental arguments for the culturalbiases in the development of achievement and intelligence tests have beenvigorously countered, as have arguments about differences in motivationbetween white and African-American students (see Herrnstein & Murray, 1994).More disturbing is that sociocultural/environmental theorists, with a fewnotable exceptions (e.g. Delpit, 1995), have been on the defensive, focusing oncriticisms of genetically based research, but offering little in the way of supportiveempirical evidence for a sociocultural/environmental explanation.

The present study makes use of a long-standing Spanish-English two-wayimmersion programme that offers a unique opportunity to explore the role thatsociocultural/environmental factors may play in explaining the widespreadunderachievement of African-American students. The particular two-way im-mersion programme in question was initiated by the Cambridge School Boardand has been operating for 10 years. Half the students in each class have Spanishas their first language, while the other half are native speakers of English. Classesremain intact and receive instruction via Spanish for a one-week period,whereupon the students rotate to a teacher who does not repeat but rathercontinues on with the curriculum in English. Of special importance for thepresent study was the School Board’s insistence that the racial balance of studentsbe maintained. Thus, among the Anglophone students in each class, approxi-mately half are white and half are African-American. This makes it possible toaddress not only the relative impact of the immersion experience on Hispanicand Anglo children, but also to contrast the experiences of the white andAfrican-American children.

This unique double language and racially mixed structure permits at least apartial test of the role that sociocultural factors may play in the academicachievement of African-American students. If African-American children aregenetically lower in intelligence compared to majority (white) children, then themajority (white) children should outperform the African-American children inall school subjects, including reading and mathematics achievement tests in bothEnglish and Spanish. Conversely, if formal academic tests are to some extentmeasures of familiarity with the dominant white culture, then it would beexpected that the majority (white) children would outperform African-Americanchildren on the English verbal achievement tests and to a lesser extent on Englishmaths achievement tests. However, there should be no differences between theAfrican-American and white students in terms of performance on the Spanishreading and mathematics (administered in Spanish) achievement tests. That is,Spanish is a culture-free language for both African-American and white studentsin the sense that it is an equally novel language for both groups, and one that isno more associated with one group than the other. Moreover, Spanish is alanguage that both the African-American and majority white children confrontfor the very first time at school. Thus, while the home environment of the twogroups may be different with respect to fostering academic success in general,

136 Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

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and English in particular, the two groups probably do not differ specifically withrespect to contact with Spanish.

This argument would only be tenable for the early school years (see Holobowet al., 1987). It is difficult to anticipate whether white majority students in the laterschool grades would benefit more from the culture of school, and more from thetransfer of English skills to Spanish and vice versa than African-Americanstudents. Equally plausible, it is possible that African-American children, buoyedor discouraged by their early success or incapacity in Spanish, might continue tobe affected in Spanish beyond the early grades.

Method

ParticipantsAll students included in this study were enrolled in the ‘Amigos’ programme,

a voluntary two-way immersion programme in a working-class area of Cam-bridge, Massachusetts. The programme attempts to have an equal representationof English-speaking and Spanish-speaking students at every grade level whospend approximately half of their school term in English and half in Spanish.Unlike other bilingual programmes, from its inception the Amigos programmealso tries to have an equal representation of African-American students in theEnglish-speaking half of the student body. In the 1996–7 school year, African-American students numbered about 30% of the population of the schools withthe Amigos programme (Cambridge Public Schools Office of Development andAssessment, 1997).

The Amigos programme draws on elementary schools that are situated in aneighbourhood of families with low socio-economic status (SES). About 75% ofthe students in the programme qualify for a government-sponsored free lunchprogramme (Cazabon, et al., 1993; Nicoladis & Lambert, 1996, 1997). On this factalone, it is likely that the students who participated in this study are from lowSES backgrounds. Because of the small number of students in each ethno-racialsubgroup enrolled in the Amigos programme in any one year, we have in thisstudy accumulated data from across seven years. Thus, students were adminis-tered the standardised tests in the school years 1989–90 to 1996–97, and duringthis seven-year span, there have been no changes in the programme, making itunlikely that there are any differences due to the particular year of enrolment.

The size of the sample is given in Table 1, detailing the number of girls andboys in each ethnic group at each grade level. Note that even after accumulatingdata from across seven years, the total sample size of the African-American groupis still fairly small. Within groups, there is a relatively equal gender distributionfor the majority white students but a tendency for there to be more girls than boysat each year for the African-American students.

Standardised testsStudents were administered three standardised tests: the California Achieve-

ment Test (CAT, 1985), the Spanish Achievement in Bilingual Education (SABE,1991), and the Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1986). The CAT wasdesigned to provide a nation-wide measure of grade/age level standing in the


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students’ English achievement, the CAT reading and maths subtests wereadministered to all the Amigos students. The SABE was designed as a measureof Spanish language achievement for children enrolled in bilingual programmesin the US, including native Spanish speakers, to determine where they stand inSpanish. The SABE reading and maths subtests (all in Spanish) were alsoadministered to all the Amigos students. The Raven Progressive Matrices testwas used as an index of non-verbal intelligence with the aim of assessing thelikelihood that any observed differences in English or Spanish languageachievement could be attributed a priori to differences in non-verbal intelligenceamong the groups. The Raven test is widely cited as a measure of analyticintelligence (Carpenter et al., 1990), and its non-verbal format has made itespecially appropriate for use in cross-cultural contexts, and with the aged. Alltesting was performed in the spring of the school year.

The CAT reading, SABE reading, and SABE maths were administeredbeginning in Grade 1. The school administrators tried not to overwhelm firstgraders with formal tests, so the CAT maths test was not administered in Grade1. Thus, scores are only available from Grade 2 on. We present the results fromthe CAT reading and the two SABE tests in first grade as well as the CAT mathstest in second grade as evidence of African-American and majority whitechildren’s English and Spanish achievement in the early grades. We then presentthe children’s performance on these tests through Grade 4.

Results

Students’ performance on the Raven Coloured MatricesComparisons of majority white and African-American students on the Raven

Coloured Matrices for each grade level were performed. Table 2 summarises theaverage raw scores, standard deviations, and results of the t-tests at each gradelevel. It is clear that the majority white students scored significantly higher thanthe African-Americans on the Raven test in Grades 1 to 4 inclusive. This findingis consistent with national norms in terms of the relative performance of majoritywhite and African-American students (Raven, 1990).

Because the African-American students scored consistently lower on theRaven compared to the majority white students, in comparing their scores on the

African-American MajorityGrade 1 Girls 16 16

Boys 9 26Grade 2 Girls 18 21



Boys 7 26

Table 1 Number of girls and boys in each ethnic group in each grade


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achievement tests, we present the results both as a straightforward comparison,and the same comparison using the Raven as a covariate, i.e. controlling fordifferences in non-verbal intelligence.

The early grades: Reading and mathsTable 3 presents the results for the CAT reading and maths tests in the early

grades. Table 3 indicates that the majority white students score significantlyhigher on the CAT reading test than the African-American students in Grade 1,even when the Raven scores are covaried. Similarly, the majority white studentsscore significantly higher than the African-American students on the CAT mathstest in Grade 2, again with the Raven scores covaried.

African-American Majority t-value, pGrade 1 Mean (SD) 18.25 (4.63) 24.56 (5.43) 4.97, p = 0.00**

N 24 42Grade 2 Mean (SD) 19.52 (6.45) 24.52 (6.05) 3.19, p = 0.003**

N 25 46Grade 3 Mean (SD) 22.48 (5.77) 26.53 (5.22) 2.91, p = 0.01**

N 25 45Grade 4 Mean (SD) 24.43 (4.27) 29.45 (4.23) 4.52, p = 0.00**

N 21 49

Note: ** p £ 0.01.

Table 2 Summary of performance on the Raven by ethnic group

African-American

Majority Statistic, p

CAT (reading Grade 1)Direct comparison Mean (SD) 1.32 (0.90) 1.99 (0.96) t = 3.53

p = 0.001**N 25 42

Raven covaried Mean 1.40 1.86 F = 6.45p = 0.002**

N 25 42CAT (maths Grade 2)Direct comparison Mean (SD) 3.35 (1.21) 4.92 (1.55) t = 4.32

p = 0.00**N 21 38

Raven covaried Mean 3.59 4.88 F = 9.76p = 0.03*

N 21 36

Note:* p £ 0.05; ** p £ 0.01.

Table 3 Summary of performance in the early grades on the CAT reading and mathstests by ethnic group


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The children’s performance on the Spanish reading and maths SABE tests arepresented in Table 4. Reading scores are shown only for grade 1 while mathsscores are shown for Grades 1 and 2, to allow for a comparison with the CATmaths test. For the reading test, there was no significant difference between thescores for the majority white students and the African-American students.Similarly there was no difference on maths scores in first grade. In Grade 2,however, there was a significant advantage for majority white students on theSABE maths test, but only when the raw scores are compared. This differencedisappears when the Raven scores are covaried, suggesting that the differencemay be attributed to non-verbal intelligence, not necessarily cultural differences.

Later gradesAs already mentioned, how the African-American students might perform

after the early grades is an empirical question. On the one hand, their relativesuccess in Spanish in the early grades might encourage them to continue to dowell in Spanish at the higher grade levels. On the other hand, they might beginto fall behind the majority white students in the later grades because whitechildren enjoy greater support from family and peers and focus more oneducation in general. Accordingly, in this section we first compare the African-American and majority white students’ scores in English and Spanish reading in

African-American


SABE (reading Grade 1)Direct comparison Mean (SD) 0.90 (0.40) 1.17 (0.21) t = 1.68

p = 0.12N 9 17

Raven covaried Mean 1.01 1.16 F = 1.80 p = 0.19

SABE (maths Grade 1)Direct comparison Mean (SD) 1.42 (0.88) 2.01 (0.72) t = 1.98

p = 0.06N 11 16


N 10 16SABE (maths Grade 2)Direct comparison Mean (SD) 2.23 (0.67) 3.07 (0.87) t = 3.30

p = 0.002**N 15 21

Raven covaried Mean 2.50 2.80 F = 1.91p = 0.18

N 15 21

Note: ** p £ 0.01.

Table 4 Summary of performance in the early grades on the SABE reading and mathstests by ethnic group


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Grades 2 to 4, and then compare the maths achievement of these two ethnicgroups in the later grades.

Figure 1 graphs the averages for the CAT reading test, adjusted for thecovariance on the Raven test for students from Grade 1 to Grade 4 by ethnicgroup. Table 5 shows the scores with and without the Raven as a covariate, along

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Figure 1 Adjusted average scores for the CAT reading test (Raven scores as covariate)

African-American


Grade 2Direct comparison Mean (SD) 3.69 (2.07) 5.56 (3.09) t = 3.05

p = 0.003**N 25 46

Raven covaried Mean 4.00 5.50 F = 3.97 p = 0.05*

N 25 44Grade 3Direct comparison Mean (SD) 3.33 (1.51) 6.52 (3.13) t = 5.70

p = 0.00**N 24 44

Raven covaried Mean 3.71 6.21 F = 7.25 p = 0.01**


p = 0.00**N 21 48


N 21 48

Note: * p £ 0.05; ** p £ 0.01.

Table 5 Summary of performance on CAT reading test in the later grades by ethnic group


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with the results of the statistical comparisons. The pattern that emerges in Figure1 is that the scores for African-American and majority white students aresignificantly different in Grade one (see Table 3) and the gap between the racialgroups seems to increase as school age progresses. The African-Americanstudents consistently score below the majority white students on the CATreading test even in the later grades (Table 5). These differences are maintainedeven when the Raven is covaried.

When attention is shifted to the children’s Spanish reading achievement,Figure 2 graphs the adjusted averages for the SABE reading test, with the Ravenas the covariate, for students from Grade 1 to Grade 4 by ethnic group. Figure 2shows a different pattern of progress of the students’ Spanish reading achieve-ment over time as compared to their English reading. While the two ethnic groupsscore similarly at Grade 1, their scores show a modest separation in Grades 2 and 3.

Table 6 shows the scores with and without the Raven as a covariate and theresults of the statistical comparisons. There are significant differences betweenthe two racial groups in Grades 2, 3, and 4. With the exception of Grade 2,however, these differences disappear when the children’s scores are corrected fornon-verbal intelligence. While in the first grade, the African-American studentsperformed as well as the majority students on the SABE test even without theRaven covaried, it appears that non-verbal intelligence affects their performanceon Spanish reading achievement in the later grades: with Raven scores controlled,there are no significant differences between African-American and whitestudents at Grades 3 and 4.

Figure 3 graphs the adjusted averages for the CAT maths test with the Ravenas the covariate for students from Grade 2 to Grade 4 by ethnic group. Table 7shows the scores and the results of the statistical comparisons with and withoutthe Raven as a covariate. From this figure and table, it would appear that theenhanced performance of the majority students found in Grade 1 is maintainedin Grades 3 and 4. However, as with the results for the English reading

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Figure 2 Adjusted average scores for the SABE reading Test (Raven scores ascovariate)


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African-American



p = 0.00**N 15 20



p = 0.01**N 15 20



p = 0.02*N 21 33

Raven covaried Mean 2.10 2.57 t = 2.43 p = 0.13

N 20 33

Note: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.

Table 6 Summary of performance on SABE reading test in the later grades by ethnicgroup

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Figure 3 Adjusted average scores for the CAT maths test (Raven scores as covariate)


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achievement test, there is no indication that the performance gap is widening inthe later grades.

Turning to the students’ Spanish maths performance in the later grades, Figure4 shows the adjusted average scores for the two groups on the SABE maths test.The progress by the two groups in this figure departs strikingly from what wehave seen before in the group comparisons. Not only are the two groups’ scoresextremely close at all ages, but the African-American students’ adjusted averageis actually higher than that of the majority students in Grade 3. One has to keepin mind that the maths tests given in Spanish require that the student understand

African-American



p = 0.00**N 23 45



p = 0.00**N 21 47

Raven covaried Mean 4.48 5.37 F = 4.09 p = 0.02*

N 21 47

Note: * p £ 0.05; ** p £ 0.01.

Table 7 Summary of performance on CAT maths test in the later grades by ethnicgroup

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Figure 4 Adjusted average scores for the SABE maths test (Raven scores as covariate)


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the language well enough to use it in solving novel and complicated wordproblems in maths.

Table 8 shows the results of the statistical analyses of the two groups’performance. Considering these results and those presented in Table 4, themajority white students score significantly higher in Grades 2 and 4 in astraightforward analysis of their Spanish maths scores, whereas there is nodifference in Grades 1 and 3. In all grades, there are no significant differencesbetween the groups when the Raven is covaried. These results suggest that, asfor reading, non-verbal intelligence may play a role in Spanish maths achieve-ment for African-American students, although its role seems to be more limitedin maths. In other words, when comparing African-American and white studentsof equal intelligence, there are no significant differences in their performance inSpanish reading or in Spanish maths achievement.

DiscussionThe results of this study point to the primary role of social/environmental

factors in the comparatively lower scores of African-American children onEnglish achievement tests. In the present study, majority white studentsoutperformed African-American students as early as Grade 1 on tests of Englishreading and maths. A similar tendency for white and black students has beenobserved in a French immersion course in the Cincinnati public schools forkindergarten children (Holobow et al., 1987). While the superior performance ofwhite students in tests of English reading confirms a well-established pattern, theresults in terms of achievement in Spanish were particularly instructive, as theywere in the tests of French achievement in the Cincinnati setting (see Holobow etal., 1987). The relatively poorer performances of African-American children in

African-American



p = 0.10N 14 19



p = 0.003**N 20 32


N 19 32

Note: ** p < 0.01.

Table 8 Summary of performance on SABE maths test in the later grades by ethnicgroup


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English achievement and in non-verbal intelligence does not necessarily meanthat they are fundamentally weaker in language in general or in maths. Ratherthey apparently have difficulty with English tests, even intelligence testsstandardised on English-speaking children. In terms of Spanish achievement,African-American children in the early grades performed as well as majoritywhite students.

These findings lend support to a sociocultural rather than genetic interpreta-tion of academic underachievement on the part of African-American students.To be consistent with a genetic interpretation, African-American students shouldhave performed as poorly in Spanish as they did in English, when compared withthe majority white students. That African-American students were equal to theirmajority white counterparts in the second language points to the role of culturalfactors as an explanation for their low scores on English achievement tests.

The results for the later grades are inconclusive. On the one hand, the majoritywhite students further outperform the African-American students on the Englishtest of reading. Moreover, for reading in Spanish, the majority students tendedto perform better than the African-American students in the later grades. On theother hand, in the later grades there is no widening of the performance gap interms of maths scores in English, and the African-American students perform aswell as their majority counterparts on the maths test in Spanish. That in somerespects African-American students continue to perform well in the later grades,but not in all subjects, points to the need for further research with larger samplesand at even higher grade levels.

Having singled out a social/environmental factor as possibly being importantfor performance on achievement tests, the present data do not point to whichsocial/environmental factor or factors may play a role. It could be that theHispanic teachers’ discourse and interactional style is closer to the discourse andinteractional style African-American students are exposed to at home (seeCrawford, 1993, for a description of the cariño style used by some Hispanicteachers, and Hale, 1981, for a description of the emotional, affectionate styleAfrican-American children might best respond to). If this were the case, thenAfrican-American students might initially perform poorly in English and well inSpanish because their discourse style and dialect closely match that of theSpanish-speaking teacher while they do not match with the white, English style(see Cazden, 1988, and Heath, 1983, for discussion of mismatches in discoursestyles between majority and African-American teachers, parents and children;see also Wright et al., 1996, for a more general discussion of how social/environ-mental variables might play a role in intelligence testing).

Naturally, this interpretation of the results study is speculative; to verify thispossibility, more research on the discourse style actually used by the teachers andstudents in the Amigos programme would be necessary to verify this interpreta-tion. Certainly, more research is needed to pinpoint the actualsocial/environmental factor or factors that may be involved in African-Americanstudents’ performance in two-way bilingual programmes. Nevertheless, theframework of bilingual education, in particular the two-way immersion pro-gramme emerges as an interesting one of the study of such issues. Of particularnote, this framework permits researchers to explore the effects of bilingual


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education not only on minority-language students, but also on the often-ignoredAfrican-American students.

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Documents

What Two-way Bilingual Programmes Reveal About the Controversy Surrounding Race and Intelligence