Bilingual education has taken center stage in Illinois with a new education mandate; many public preschools will be required to offer bilingual education to all three- and four-year-olds who do not speak English. Dual-language (DL) classrooms represent one very promising model in bilingual education that is being used to develop these new preschool programs. The interest in bilingual education arises from two, disparate sources. On one hand, more than 1 in 5 schoolchildren in Illinois is Latino, and many are English-language learners. Recent research indicates that a DL approach to bilingual education may be the most effective way to teach these non-native speakers English, as well as nurture their academic skills generally (Collier & Thomas, 2004). Dual-language programs offer children the chance to maintain--and gain literacy in--their home language while they become fluent in English and prepared to succeed in traditional classrooms. [Funding for this paper was provided by McCormick Foundation.]