Bilingual Education In Lyndon B. Johnson's Head Start

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Head Start programs were ambitious and therefore, unclear in their priorities. Parents and teachers alike flocked to the popular new programs in hopes of advancing the educational opportunities available to their children. The sudden popularity of these projects hastened their start up and so “Head Start began with an insufficiency of trained teachers and without agreement on methods and goals” (Ravitch, 1983, pg. 159). Schools gave teachers without proper qualification jobs in a new system where they had no instruction on how to successfully execute their job. Even successful teachers, those able to close the social gap, could not change that practices used later grades would change and make their work meaningless. Critics noted that “initial gains made by poor

272). However, there was a disparity in the goals of bilingual education since “bilingual educators had come to see the program as a way to preserve non-English languages and cultures, … congressmen still thought of it as a bridge to help learn English” (Ravitch, 1983, pg. 275). Legislators felt that learning English would be the means by which minority students could catch up with middle-class students. Bilingual teachers, however, saw that once minority students began to feel pride in their culture at school, the divide between students would close. Additionally, eligibility for bilingual programs in the US made it possible for a student “entirely fluent in English” (Ravitch, 1983, pg. 274). Legislators failed to recognize the advantages of a bilingual education aside from exposing minority children to English, and this caused poor regulation in the system. Without clear intentions, the program was unable to realize its goals and students did not receive the proper language training they needed to help bridge the achievement