When Language Ideologies Meet Political Ideologies: An English-Only Immersion Program’s Issues With Standardized Test Accountability

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Language and Discourse

Abstract

Drawing from a six-month ethnography of tenth grade immigrant students from Mexico and their teachers in a Central Texas English immersion program, this paper documents multiple contradictory teacher practices regarding student use of English and Spanish in the classroom. Teachers in this study expressed ambivalence regarding student use of Spanish in the classroom, as it violated school policy but was seen to improve student written work and test performance. This paper argues that these varying practices represented a tension between the program’s official English-only policy and a contradictory political ideology prioritizing performance on standardized tests that led to tolerance of Spanish language use.

Author

• Rolf Straubhaar, University of Georgia