The first year of implementation of the California Bilingual Education Act of 1976 is documented and evaluated. The legislation is designed to provide bilingual education for limited-English-speaking and non-English-speaking students. It is concluded that the restrictive nature of the bill caused major delays in the first year of implementation and will make compliance with the law difficult in succeeding years. The validity of the San Diego Observation Assessment Instrument is in question because of its subjective scoring and lack of discrimination. An asset of the test is its availability in at least 22 languages. School districts found it difficult to recruit credentialed bilingual teachers holding the appropriate certificate of competency in the diverse languages needed. Among the recommendations are the following: (1) more time should be allowed between the collection of data about the Home Language Survey, student testing, local school implementation, and the reporting of this information to the State Department of Education; (2) there should be continuing efforts to improve the validity of the language assessment instruments and to improve the training of the personnel responsible for administering these tests; and (3) funds to assist experienced monolingual teachers to gain certificates of competency or bilingual crosscultural credentials should be made available. (SW)