Successful bilingual programs depend on some understanding of the language situation involved, the possible strategies of bilingual education, the effects of these strategies, the assessment of community desires, the best ways to find and train teachers, the method of evaluating curriculum, the effect of learning styles, and the possibilities of bilingual curriculum development. The evidence on each of these issues is limited for bilingual education in general but is even more limited in the case of American Indian education. The development of viable bilingual education programs for Indians requires a number of studies: (1) a language census; (2) a major study or series of studies of the effect of various patterns of bilingual education; (3) a study of the effect of community involvement in bilingual education programs; (4) a study of the effectiveness of various patterns of teacher and assistant preparation and cooperation; (5) research projects concerned with belief systems, language use and function, and language acquisition and direct studies of learning styles; and (6) studies of the problems of developing curriculum in Indian languages. (JH)