In this article, two language Acts issued by the U.S. federal government, namely the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 and the English Acquisition Act of 2002 are compared from the aspects of educational equality and efficiency. The Bilingual Education Act attaches importance to assuring equality of opportunity and participation in education for minority language students, but lacks adequate criteria for assessing language acquisition and academic achievement; the English Acquisition Act, on the other hand, focuses on fast increases in English proficiency and academic content knowledge and imposes accountability in line with state standards, but the English-only tendency in actual implementation reveals a strong bias towards efficiency. Therefore, the balancing of equality and efficiency is important if U.S. language education policy is to be able to achieve its ultimate goals.