Who really benefits from bilingual education in the United States? According to the authors of the eleven chapters of this book, it is mostly white middle-class students, whose first language is English (and this is even in states that have a long history of multilingualism). They argue that when a white person becomes bilingual, it is perceived as being very valuable, helping them in society and in the job market; whereas when racialized individuals become bilingual, they are perceived as lacking proficiency in both languages they speak. These unequal frames of evaluation are reproduced, most of the time, because teachers have been taught how to evaluate their students using their proficiency of English as the norm from which to evaluate them exclusive of any other consideration. The book uses critical race theory (CRT) to evaluate a variety of American dual language education programs, using the five components of a raciolinguistic perspective laid out by Rosa & Flores (2017).

The programs discussed are considered by the students’ parents as stepping stones, allowing their children who are acquiring a second language to have better job prospects or opportunities in the future. However, those programs had differential outcomes for Whites and for students from racialized minority groups. This difference has consequences for access to dual language programs. In chapter 3, María Cioè-Peña explores how difficult it is for students considered ‘emergent bilinguals labelled as disabled’ (EBLADs) to have access to a dual language program. This is because students with disabilities are often regarded as deficient and therefore unable to learn a second language. In chapter 4, Lisa M. Dorner, Jeong-Mi Moon, Edwin Nii Bonney, & Alexandria Otis discuss how the test scores of Black students in the Midwest were used to try to exclude those students from dual language programs. The rational was that those students needed to perfect their English literacy skills before being offered a chance to learn a second language. Such concerns were never expressed with regards to White students. Most chapters demonstrate the continued force of this raciolinguistic ideology even when students from racialized minority groups enter dual language programs. Not only are teachers involved, but parents as well. For example, in chapter 8, Jin Sook Lee, Wona Lee, & Hala Sun discuss how Korean parents viewed their children's English teachers, who were of Korean descent but raised in the US, as not possessing the proper English they wanted their children to learn.

So, how does one try to solve these problems? The book offers some solutions. For example, Crissa Stephens suggests that the Latinx population in Iowa should be considered as stakeholders in their children's education. For their part, Dorner and colleagues would like schools to hire leaders from racial communities who are aware of the students’ struggles to help shape programs that will respond to those students’ needs. Overall, this collection points to the hidden injustices of racial inequality in bilingual education in the United States. It is an important read for anyone (teachers, parents, administrators) interested in making dual language education accessible to everyone.