Glossary

Sink or Swim

Programs where the course material is taught only in the dominant language of the country, e.g., English in the United States, without special concern for student comprehension. This approach violates the civil rights of limited English proficient children which are protected under the 1974 Supreme Court decision in Lau v. Nichols. Sometimes called language submersion (Baker, 2000).

Stakeholder

Stakeholders of a district are those groups and/or
individuals who have a vested interest in the capacity of the district to meet
and even exceed customer requirements. Examples of stakeholders include:
students, parents, schools, the district at large, and the community.^[1]

State

As defined by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001:

The term State' means each of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and each of the outlying areas.

State Educational Agency

As defined by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001:^[3]

The term State educational agency' means the agency primarily responsible for the State supervision of public elementary schools and secondary schools.

Statistical significance

A research term used to indicate whether results from a study are very probably not due to chance. For example' a study reports that it found that student test scores improved after a reading intervention program was initiated at a school, and that these findings are "statistically significant." That means that researcher is reasonably certain that student test scores did actually improve over time. If research findings are not statically significant, any increases reported may be due to chance rather than a result of the intervention.

Structured Immersion

In this program, language minority students receive all of their subject matter instruction in their second language. The teacher uses a simplified form of the second language. Students may use their native language in class; however, the teacher uses only the second language (Snow, 1986). The goal is to help minority language students acquire proficiency in English while at the same time achieving in content areas. Also SDAIE and SEI.

Submersion

The teaching of minority language students through the medium of a majority language without special language assistance. Also referred to as "sink or swim"; violates civil rights guarantees under the Supreme Court's Lau v. Nichols (1974) decision (Crawford, 1997).

Subtractive Bilingualism

Occurs in an environment in which the second language and culture is intended to replace the first language/culture. This is linked to lower self-esteem and loss of cultural or ethnic identity. Instructional programs such as immersion and TBE have subtractive bilingualism as their goal (Lambert, 1982). The opposite of additive bilingualism.

Systematic methods

Data collection methods that are consistent and scientific-i.e. that follow the scientific method-used for collecting observations.