Top Organizations for Bilingual Education

Learning English is a serious business. With the United States population being 311 million, composed of people originally from China, India, Mexico, England, Russia, Japan, Philippines, Pakistan, etc., education in consideration of bilingual people has been a part of the mainstream business.

National Association for Bilingual Education or NABI is probably one of the top bilingual education professional organizations in the United States. It is a non-profit organization devoted to represent people learning to be bilingual persons, bilingual professionals and bilingual paraprofessionals. It is in 20 states in the U.S., making representation for over 5000 members who are bilingual learners and ELL or English Language Learners who are teachers, professionals, administrators, parents, advocates, teachers, professors, researchers, statesmen, etc.

What NABE advocates on is probably the opposite of what the advocates of English-Only movement is trying to push for. NABE pushes for a nation that supports diversity and for the government to accept that the country is composed of different nationalities thus having millions of bilingual and ELL people. It pushes for the government's support to diversity by creating policies, programs, projects, research, and the like that will increase the value of the home language of these people. Through this advocacy, Americans are encouraged to learn the English language and at the same time preserve their roots.

Bilingual education or English-only policy

The government has been prodded through generations of whether to listen to Americans who are not born and raised in the United States, have a different first language, grew up in a different culture and not being able to speak English as comfortably and as fluently like the others, but just the same, are protected by the U.S. constitution and enjoy all the rights and privileges of those born and raised Americans� Or to those advocating that there be unity in a highly-diverse country of the U.S. and that this can be done by capturing the one thing that's common to almost everybody and that's the means to communicate with each other. This unity can be achieved if there is one language that is spoken by everybody.

Up until now, the U.S. government takes no stance at this issue. But this is not keeping organizations like NABE from teaching non-speakers of English to learn the language without needing to drop the language that their tongue first spoke.

The Hispanic Professional Associations is also an organization that supports bilingual education. This is composed of a group of professional association aimed at helping and supporting people in the career they want to pursue. It supports bilingual learners and ELL professionals or hoping to be professionals. It includes The Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting, the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility, the Hispanic National Bar Association, the Latinos on Information, Science and Technology Association, the Latino Social Workers Organization, the National Association for Bilingual Education, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Nurses, National Association of Hispanic Publications. The National Hispanic Medical Association, the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, the National Society of Hispanic Professionals, the Society of Hispanic Human Resource Executives and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.

In almost every field there is a bilingual learner or an ELL professional who wants to learn the English language or be fluent at it. This could be given. There are thousands of sites or places where the service for this is provided. But for the Hispanic Professional Association, this should be done without putting in mind and heart that English is but a second language to this people and that as much as possible, as long as practicable, then the first language shall always be preserved. There are more ways to achieve unity despite diversity. There's no need to make English the official Language in the Unites.

  1. American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
  2. California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE)
  3. California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (CATESOL)
  4. Illinois Association for Multilingual Multicultural Education (IAMME)
  5. International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL)
  6. National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE)