Why Current Reforms Again Fail Emergent Bilinguals: From No Child Left Behind to the Common Core Purpose, Perspective, and Methods

• In Event: From No Child Left Behind to Common Core: How Do New Standards Affect Practices and Policies for English Learners?

Abstract

This presentation shares a macro-level analysis (Spolsky, 2008) of US federal language education policies from the 1990s to the present day. In specific, I present findings from a discourse analysis of federal education policy since the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (entitled Improving America’s Schools Act) to the recently adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS), focusing on the provisions within these policies for emergent bilinguals (also known as English language learners or ELLs). There is strong precedent for employing discourse analysis in language policy research, particularly critical discourse analysis, as a means to think through how policy texts at the macro level impact the education of emergent bilinguals at the micro level (Johnson, 2011; Palmer, 2008; Wright, 2005).
Results
Findings reveal how the CCSS are in implementation thus far repeating three of the gravest mistakes made in 2002 federal education policy, entitled No Child Left Behind (NCLB), for emergent bilinguals. First, like NCLB, CCSS propagate an English-only orientation, threatening pedagogy and programming that use students’ home languages in instruction (García & Flores, 2013; Menken & Solorza, 2013; Wiley & Wright, 2004). Second, emergent bilinguals are again at the periphery of CCSS, with a mere 2.5 page afterthought discussion of these students in the original Common Core State Standards document, leaving states and various organizations scrambling to incorporate emergent bilinguals into implementation efforts. And third, the CCSS assessment approaches currently being developed by individual states and by two state consortia (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium), continue to operate from the same accommodations paradigm that has already proven ineffective and detrimental for emergent bilinguals under NCLB, leaving these students disproportionately likely to fail high-stakes tests and face their consequences (Menken, 2008; Sólorzano, 2008).
Significance of the Study
This presentation begins with findings from the research conducted, offering a chronology of the mandates embedded within federal education policy over the past 20 years for emergent bilinguals. Locating CCSS efforts within an historical context in this way, through discourse analysis, highlights how history is repeating itself. Although we are still at the early stages in the development, adoption, and implementation of CCSS and corresponding assessments, I describe the ways that current policies are built upon past stipulations which have literally and metaphorically failed emergent bilinguals. This analysis thus uncovers how national policy is on track to fail these students once again. I conclude the presentation by offering a set of recommendations to avoid the pitfalls of NCLB and other past policies, particularly in the area of test-based accountability, as the US moves forward in its implementation of CCSS.

Author

• Kate Menken, Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York