Bilingual stays in Colorado, out in Massachusetts. (Notebook: education information from schools, business, research and professional organizations).

Massachusetts voters rejected bilingual education. Colorado voters want to keep it.

On Election Day, Massachusetts voters chose to have their students enter all English classes starting in the fall. Colorado voters instead want to stick with bilingual classes. But a week after the vote, Colorado started a plan to recruit and train teachers to better help immigrant children master English. The state is using a $9 million federal grant, the first-of-its-kind awarded by the U.S. Department of Education, to overhaul how English-acquisition programs in elementary and secondary schools are taught.

Massachusetts Department of Education officials have yet to nail down specific steps needed to transform the program, the first step being from bilingual education to transitional bilingual education. A public comment period will follow before final approval on the plan.

"The language is clear about what is not permitted," says Kathryn Riley, Title 3 director of the Massachusetts Department of Education. "There is a lot of regulation-making that will take place."

Riley says all students in bilingual education now would be put in a structured immersion classroom with all books, materials and instruction in English for the first 30 days. The students' first language, or Spanish in most instances, could be used only to clarify instructions. Riley says this will cost the state more money, in part because "you have to train people" to deliver the instruction effectively.

If alter that time a parent wants their child, who is 10 or older, out of such classrooms, there is a waiver process that could offer that choice. But districts don't have to set up another program for that student.

After a year in such classrooms, Riley says, students are then to be mainstreamed into regular classrooms.

But the older the student, the more difficult it will be for the non-English-speaking student to grasp the curriculum, Riley says. Riley wonders about a non-English-speaking ninth-grader who faces high stakes state assessment tests. "Is there a prayer for him to graduate high school?" she asks.

Massachusetts Gov.-elect Mitt Romney wants to modify a part of the vote question that notes that parents have a right to sue administrators and school committees if a child does not succeed in school. "He thinks it's too harsh," Riley says.

And two state legislators, including state Sen. Robert Antonioni, co-chairman of the education committee, are proposing a bill that will in part make it "more practical" for parents who don't want their children, 10 or older, in English immersion classes.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, the state's universities and colleges are being enlisted to train new and veteran teachers in new strategies to prepare non-English-speaking students to succeed in schools, officials have said.