Bilingual Education at Lesley University

Lesley University has been training educators for nearly 100 years and we've been preparing bilingual and ESL specialists for two decades. As far back as the late 1970s, one of two National Bilingual Education Dissemination Centers was housed on Lesley's Cambridge campus.

In 1999, with help from a US Department of Education grant, Lesley launched the Boston Collaborative Bilingual Project. Under that initiative, in partnership with the Boston Public Schools, the university is preparing a cadre of 40 Masters-level teachers to serve children with limited English proficiency in schools and early child care programs in Boston, where more than one in four of the state's limited English proficient students attend school. (more information)

Through Lesley's Center for Early Literacy, the university is helping thousands of first graders who are at risk of not learning how to read, in districts throughout the Northeast. We do that through the Reading Recovery program, in English and in Spanish. (more information)

Through our Center for Special Education, Lesley is working with the Lowell (Massachusetts) Public Schools to develop new models for assessing limited English proficient students with special needs. Non-native speakers are consistently over-represented in SPED programs. Our work will design and test assessment tools that remove the linguistic and cultural biases found in traditional assessment models, and to train professional educators in Lowell to use these tools. (more information)

There are two major proposals to change Massachusetts' 30-year-old bilingual education law. One seeks to modify the law through legislation, as proposed by State Rep. Antonio Cabral (D-New Bedford). The other would replace the Commonwealth's current system of bilingual education with sheltered English immersion via a voter referendum, sponsored by Mr. Ron Unz and the "English for the Children" organization. A side-by-side comparison showing the difference between current law, the proposed Cabral legislation and the proposed Unz ballot initiative can be found by clicking here.