"El Matrimonio Perfecto Entre Programa y Escuela": Possibility and Resistance in Implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Engaging and Reimagining Racialized Spatialities Within and Across Bilingual Educational Settings

Abstract

Objective: Although the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed in 2015, states like Pennsylvania, were allowed to delay implementation until the 2018-2019 school year. Therefore, cities like Philadelphia are in a transitory state of policy interpretation and implementation, and it is within this fluid space that bilingual education school leaders are collaborating. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the discursive contexts within which school leaders in a bilingual charter school in Philadelphia engage with as they make implementational decisions regarding dual language literacy instruction.

Theoretical Framework: To design the study and analyze the data, I draw from the field of language planning and policy (LPP; Menken & García, 2010; Ricento & Hornberger, 1996). I applied a policy as discourse theoretical framework (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007) to show the circulating ideologies and connections across multiple contexts of LPP activity that are ‘interpreted,’ ‘appropriated,’ and ‘enacted’ by the school leadership team as they create implementational and ideological space (Johnson, 2010) within the curriculum that draws from the socio-spatial repertoires of the school space (Córtez & Gutiérrez, 2019).

Methods/Data Sources: This paper utilizes intertextual research methods and an ethnographic approach to LPP. The textual data sources were federal, state, and local policy briefs related to ESSA, while ethnographic data draws from a broader project at Dual Language Charter School (DLCS) a racially-segregated school in Philadelphia. The latter included informal conversations, semi-structured interviews, and leadership team meetings. For data analysis, I read across the data sources mapping emerging themes (Johnson, 2015) related to literacy instruction implementation of English Learners (ELs) in bilingual programs.

Substantiated Conclusions: The intertextual analysis highlights two parallel discourses embedded in the discourses surrounding ESSA and ELs across multiple discursive contexts: 1) the notion that language and culture are assets; and 2) the notion that ELs should have access to effective educational programs. I contend that these two discourses are an attempt to negate the argument that bilingual education has become a “commodified boutique” and erase the argument that the institutionalization of bilingual education was ever a “racialized basement” (Flores & Garcia, 2017). The discourse that ELs under ESSA must have access to effective educational programs predominantly focus on the expansion of two-way immersion programs which cater to white middle-class families (Valdés, 1997; Valdez, Freire & Delavan, 2016). The discourse that language and culture are assets glosses over the long history of bilingual education that systematically made students “look[...] like a language, sound[...] like a race” (Rosa, 2018), in turn erasing the history of racialization of linguistically minoritized students in the United States.

Scholarly Significance: This paper is significant for two reasons. First, the findings intertextually illustrate the parallel discourses embedded in ESSA within which school leaders of linguistically minoritized students must engage as they make implementational decisions. Second, it presents the possibility that leadership teams have in creating implementational spaces that resist dominant hegemonic ideologies about language by strategically utilizing the multiple discourses to meet the needs of historically marginalized students - an attempt to build “the perfect marriage” as the principal stated.

Author

• Karla M. Venegas, The University of Pennsylvania