Toward a Race-Radical Vision in Bilingual Education Policy and Advocacy in Texas

• In Event: 70.065 - Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 70.065-9 - Revitalizing Race-Radicalism in Bilingual Education

Abstract

In 2010, Latina/o students became the majority in Texas public schools. Across the state, nearly one in six of all students are emergent bilingual; 90 percent of which are Latina/o. Unlike the trends occurring in many other majority-minority peer states, Texas is not home to explicit English-only or anti-bilingual policies. However, while bilingual education is not outright unlawful, historical and contemporary policy analyses reveal the explicit ways in which racialized discourses and hegemonic practices diminish, and in many cases outright deny, language rights to certain students in Texas. In response to this political reality, we highlight how a return to a race-radical vision for bilingual education can be Latina/o communities’ strongest weapon for transforming education and combating policies that maintain social hierarchies.

The goals of this paper are two-fold: first, we discuss the larger ecology that defines the political climate in Texas that subsequently inform bilingual education policy and advocacy; second, we share the research and advocacy work being done to advance a race-radical vision for bilingual educational policy in Texas that acknowledges cultural and structural tensions. The latter includes a discussion on the varying forms of community-based knowledge and discourses among Latina/o civil rights organizations, educators, and policy brokers engaged in race-radical policy agenda setting and mobilization efforts.

In order to understand the process for advancing a race-radical vision for bilingual education, this paper will draw from the theoretical construct of Engaged Policy (see López, 2012). Specifically, engaged policy is concerned with understanding policy as people, a process, and a larger ecology of policy as values, racialized ideologies, and historically situated struggles with hegemony (López, 2012). This engaged approach to public policy lends itself to disentangling the ways in which social issues—such as bilingual education—are expressions of complex and racialized interactions between interests and competing ways of knowing while simultaneously using the research process to incite political action and forms of resistance among political actors.

We draw from data collected from 70 local and statewide Latina/o organizations that includes a more focused analysis on the collective insights of 128 bilingual education teachers who represent 13 local chapters within a larger, statewide bilingual education organization. Our qualitative data includes primary and secondary sources, as well as the following: open-ended questionnaire; semi-structured interviews; formal and informal pláticas; and group dialogues. In the case of our open-ended questionnaire, data were coded openly in order to create generative themes. As themes emerged, focused coding took place. Data were cross-checked by two researchers then triangulated using focused, one-on-one conversations. Member-checking was also used to serve as a safe and critical space for reflection and dialogue between the researchers and participants. These participatory interactions also served as spaces for political action dialogues.

López, P.D. (2012). The Process of Becoming: The Political Construction of Texas’ Lone STAAR System of Accountability and College Readiness. University of Texas at Austin: Dissertation.

Pérez, B. (2004). Becoming biliterate: A study of two-way bilingual immersion education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Authors

• Patricia D. López, San José State University

• Brenda Oriana Fuentes, Northern Illinois University