As expected, more parents who chose bilingual education supported bilingual education, but a surprising 24.5% of the immersion parents also supported it. Also, more immersion parents felt that "easing into English" was a good idea, an idea associated with bilingual education. Even more surprising is the fact that 21% of the parents opting for bilingual education felt that "submersion" was the best way to acquire English.

Table 2: What is the best way to acquire English?

* = difference statistically significant
immersion = did not request waiver
bilingual education = requested waiver

It is quite possible that those bilingual education parents who preferred immersion and those immersion parents who preferred bilingual education made their choice of program on the basis of factors other than pedagogy, such as a favorite teacher or convenience.

Conclusions

Parents who opted for bilingual education had a clearer idea of what different program options were, indicating that they made a more informed choice than parents who did not request waivers. Although there is evidence suggesting that some parents did not make their choices based on pedagogy, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that those who know more are more supportive of bilingual education.

This data provides hope for the future of bilingual education: Public opinion about bilingual education could improve when people know more about it, and when they know more about alternative programs (see Crawford, Krashen, and Kim, 1998, for similar conclusions).

In addition to continuing to establish quality programs and demonstrating their effectiveness, bilingual educators need to do a better job educating the public.

Garcia, A. 2000. Informed parent consent and Proposition 227. Bilingual Research Journal 24, (1,2): 57-74

Krashen, S., Crawford, J. and Kim, H. 1998. Bias in polls on bilingual education: A demonstration.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JWCRAWFORD/USCpoll.htm

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