What are programs for ELL? The United States is made up of immigrants and each group has had to face the challenges of learning the culture and/or the English language. There has been a huge backlash in this country against bilingual education. A common sentiment about it has been that if a person lives in America they should speak English and bilingual education does not teach them to do that. According to a vast amount of research in this area, education in the primary language helps secondary language development because it provides students knowledge in the various content areas and helps them develop literacy in the primary language, which is a short cut to literacy in the secondary language. It takes about two years for a student to be able to speak English but four to five years to have the language for academic literacy. The primary goal of bilingual education has been and continues to be to provide the skills for students to become proficient in English and have the appropriate grade/content skills and literacy. There is no one program that will meet the needs of all of the ELL's. When a program is decided upon and implemented, it should be able to meet the needs of the given student population. Prior to program implementation, the following should be examined and explored: (1) What are the school's goals?; (2) What are the school's language acquisition goals?; (3) How do the current programs meet the school's goals?; (4) What are available resources?; (5) What are the needs and special characteristics of the school's ELL population?; and (6) What are some program models and how will they help meet the students' needs? (Contains 17 online resources.)