Reimagining a Least Restrictive Environment in California for Emergent Bilinguals

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Transforming Schooling for Emergent Bilinguals: Policies, Pedagogies, and Practices

Abstract

Purposes
This paper examines the process that multiple interest groups in California engaged to influence the passage of Proposition 58 (The Non English Languages Allowed in Public Education Act), which overturned most of Proposition 227 (English for the Children Initiative), which banned bilingual education in most cases. Both local and statewide actors acted and organized to change a policy which did not align with the research about how to best instruct emergent bilinguals.

Perspective
We draw on Ruiz’s (1984) orientations-in-language policy framework to discuss Proposition 227 as a policy promoting the idea of language-as-problem, while a growing resistance amongst educators employed a language-as-right/resource approach with emergent bilinguals. This shift emerged from frustration over how difficult Proposition 227 made it for educators to enact bilingual instruction despite a body of research illustrating the benefits of bilingual education (Gándara & Contreras, 2009; Gutierrez, et al., 2002).

Methods & Data Sources
We examine the text of the propositions, newspaper articles about both Proposition 227 and Proposition 58, and publicly available information to analyze how policymakers, researchers, and interest groups contributed to the pro-bilingual movement that eventually led to the passage of Proposition 58. We share from own research, highlighting how bilingual teachers resisted the English-only policy of Proposition 227 by providing primary language support to emergent bilinguals in secondary schools.

Results
An examination of the push for a change in statewide English-only policy shows that many statewide actors, such as the organization, Californians Together, as well as key individual politicians, such as California State Senator Ricardo Lara, made important moves to promote Proposition as new legislation that more closely aligned to research pointing to the cognitive, social, and academic benefits of being bilingual (Author, 2010) and was making an impact on parents’ views of bilingual education (Linton & Franklin, 2010). Additionally, teachers working with emergent bilinguals continued to share stories of successful bilingual education programs in the face of English-only rhetoric (Gandara & Hopkins, 2010).

Significance
The passage of Proposition 58 in California suggests an ideological and cultural shift that promotes bilingualism and multilingualism in schools. The policy on its own does little to expand bilingual or dual immersion programs, but it does give schools permission to use languages other than English for instruction. At its best, Proposition 58 could anchor a major shift in the history of schooling for emergent bilinguals in California.

Authors

• Ursula S. Aldana, University of San Francisco

• Danny C. Martinez, University of California - Davis