State Administration

o The level of financial management and technical support provided by States for bilingual education varies widely.

o Collectively, State education agencies currently play a minor but growing role in bilingual education.

o Only 13 SEAS had full-time personnel involved in bilingual education and only 8 had three or more staff members so involved.

o Twenty-nine SEAS provided some degree of technical assistance to LEAS on bilingual education matters.

o Fourteen States impose special requirements for the qualification of bilingual education instructional personnel. The most common requirement was fluency in the second language of the program.

Summary

On the whole, States are playing a limited but growing role in bilingual education. The number of States which mandate or permit bilingual education has grown to 40. State financial support is still quite limited, however; in most States, Federal funds for bilingual education exceeded State funds. With a few exceptions, the number of State education agency personnel involved in bilingual education is small and, consequently, provision for State-wide leadership and technical assistance to local school districts is limited.

Sources of Evaluation Data:

1. American Institute for Research. Evaluation of the impact of ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Program. Volume I: design and interim findings. February 1977.

2.

3.

American Institues for Research. Evaluation of the impact of ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Program. Volume II: Project descriptions. February 1977.

American Institutes for Research. Evaluation of the impact of ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Program. Volume III: Year Two Impact Data, Educational Process, and In-Depth Analyses.

4. American Institutes for Research. Evaluation of the impact of ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Program: Overview of Study and Findings. March 1978

5. Summer, G. and G. Zellman. Federal programs supporting educational change. Volume VI: Implementing and sustaining Title VII bilingual projects. The RAND Corporation, January 1977.

6. Comptroller General of the United States. Bilingual education: an unmet need. Washington, D.C.: United States General Accounting Office, 1976.

7. Development Associates, Inc. Final Report: A study of state programs bilingual education. March 1977

For further information about program operations,

Contact: Rudy Cordova

(202) 447-9227

For further information about studies of program effectiveness,

Contact: David Shoemaker

(202) 245-2372

According to the authorizing legislation, Follow Through Program provides "financial assistance to local educational agencies, combinations of such agencies and any other public or appropriate nonprofit private agencies, organization, and institutions for the purpose of carrying out Follow Through programs focused primarily on children from low-income families in kindergarten and primary grades, including such children enrolled in private nonprofit elementary schools, who were previously enrolled in Headstart or similar programs." Further, the legislation provides that projects must provide comprehensive services which, in the judgment of the Secretary, will aid the continued development of the children.

Follow Through is defined in its regulations as "an experimental community services program designed to assist, in a research setting, the overall development of children enrolled in kindergarten through third grade from low-income families, and to amplify the educational gains made by such children in Headstart and other similar quality preschool programs by (a) implementing innovative educational approaches, (b) providing comprehensive services and special activities in the areas of physical and mental health, social services, nutrition, and such other areas

1/ An authorization level was not specified prior to FY 71.
2/ Specified by a continuing resolution for FY 79 rather than by
appropriation; re-authorizing legislation for FT had not been
passed at the time of the HEW appropriations for FY 79.

which supplement basic services already available within the school system, (c) conducting the program in a context of effective community service and parental involvement, and (d) providing documentation on those models which are found to be effective."

Comprehensive services and parental involvement are required in all projects. The experimental feature of the program is the implementation of a variety of educational models. These models are sponsored by university or research institutions that have designed approaches to early childhood education. These sponsors are responsible for delivering and installing their models at local sites; providing for continuous technical assistance; teacher training; guidance; and quality control. The focus of the experiment is upon the relative effectiveness of the alternative educational models. Whatever the specific results, the overall goal is to add to our knowledge about what works and what does not work for children from low-income families.

Program Operations:

The Follow Through program operates out of two offices. The responsibility for monitoring the projects, the model sponsors, and related activities lies with the Division of Follow Through while the respons ibility for monitoring evaluation activities lies with the Office of Evaluation and Dissemination.

The major portion approximately (79 percent) of the Follow Through
FY 1978 appropriation is used to fund 159 local projects which maintain
educational models and provide a variety of non-instructional services
to children.

The next largest portion approximately (10 percent) of the Follow Through appropriation goes to model sponsors.

Approximately 5 percent of the Follow Through appropriation is being. spent to fund expanded demonstration activities in twenty-one sites judged exemplary by the OE/NIE Joint Dissemination Review Panel.

About 3 per cent of the Follow Through appropriation is spent on evaluation. The remaining 3 percent of the Follow Through monies is used for program related activities such as supplementary training of para-professionals, grants to states to provide techncial assistance to local school districts operating Follow Through projects, and for hiring subject specialists to provide technical assistance to Follow Through projects.

The 159 projects and the 19 sponsors receiving Follow Through

funds were selected between 1967 and 1972. Each year the LEAS and the sponsors submit proposals for continuation of grants to USOE.

Program Scope:

In FY 1978, more than 70,500 Follow Through children kindergarten through third grade received instructional and other services at more than 600 elementary schools in 159 projects across the country. The program emphasizes community and parental involvement and encourages the focusing of available local, State, private, and Federal resources on the needs of Follow Through children. The Follow Through program is comprehensive in scope and encompasses instructional and non-instructional services. On the average, including state, local and federal sources, almost $800 more per pupil was spent to educate Follow Through children than local non-Follow Through children in 1976. The largest portion (63%) went for salaries of LEA staff such as teacher aides, project directors, and teachers. Of the remainder, 19% was spent on providing comprehensive services, 13% on model sponsors, and 5% on facilities and materials.

Program Effectiveness and Progress:

As an experimental research program, the goal of the Follow Through program is to identify effective approaches for the education of lowincome children in kindergarten through third grade. Follow Through children, grouped at the site level, were compared to similar children in order to estimate incremental effects of the various models. The comparison children often received supplementary services such as provided by ESEA Title I. Of the 22 early elementary school approaches tried, the Direct Instruction Model, sponsored by the University of Oregon, was more successful on most measures than the other approaches; however, even that model was not uniformly successful in all sites. Several other models showed some success on some measures in some sites. In many cases and for most models the results were inconclusive either because the evidence was not conclusive enough to permit judgments to be made or because the evidence was mixed (i.e., the results were positive in some sites, negative in some and neutral elsewhere).

The foregoing summary of the results of the Follow Through evaluation is based upon national, local and sponsor evaluations. The effects of the models on children were assessed on a variety of measures including reading, mathematics, spelling, language arts, abstract reasoning, and self-esteem. In most of the evaluations, the performance of children in Follow Through was compared to children of similar socio-ecnomic status who did not participate in Follow Through. In the national evaluation, which concentrated on 16 models, the performance of children who participated in the full Follow Through Program was compared with matched samples who did not receive Follow Through.

Most of the results focus upon the benefits or deficiencies of individual models and are not easily summarized. However, some generalizations are offered below:

The effectiveness of most models varied substantially from site to site. Most models have instances of both success and failure at the school district level. This may indicate that instructional approaches can