AbstractOver twenty years ago, the Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare notified school districts that language minority students were protected by Title VI provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by virtue of their status as National Origin Minority group members. Since then, the standards for compliance with this and subsequent requirements have changed many times. These guarantees alone have not proved sufficient to bring about equally widespread and far reaching changes in classroom practices. The purpose of this paper is to summarise currently enforced federal mandates in this area, to describe the range of variability which exists in education agency responses to those mandates, and to suggest an approach to reducing the gap between pronouncement and practice.