In the early 2000s, I followed the development of one suburban school district’s new two-way immersion (TWI), bilingual education policy. As they decided to shift from a typical/transitional bilingual education program to two-way immersion for all of their Spanish-dominant students, there was much public discontent and debate. I explored:
- how immigrant parents navigated the public debate and made choices about “TWI” (Dorner, 2012; Dorner, 2011)
- the public discourse and “zone of intolerance” about TWI, as seen in school board meetings, newspaper reports, and parent-run listservs (Dorner, 2011)
- how children take part in families’ sense-making about policy (Dorner, 2015; Dorner, 2010)
More recently, colleagues and I (Cervantes-Soon, Dorner, et al., 2017; Dorner & Cervantes-Soon, 2020; Palmer, et al., 2019) have reviewed research on two-way immersion education, critically pointing out that TWI programs do not always live up to their promise of equality, equal opportunity, and superior outcomes for all students and families. A summary of this research is included in this “e-brief” about two-way immersion bilingual education (2016).