Strategic Framing and Legislative Change: Teachers, Agenda-Setting, and the Bilingual Education Act of 1968

• In Event: Transdisciplinary Perspectives for Critically Analyzing Bilingual Education Systems

Abstract

Objectives

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) of 1968, the landmark federal legislation supporting bilingual education, is that it was passed in large part due to a small group of teachers. Based in Tucson, Arizona, far from the corridors of power in Washington, and with little financial support, this group gained the attention and support of senators, congressional representatives, and the president to expand opportunities for multilingual students nationwide. While historians of education have documented that this group of teachers was critical to the enactment of the BEA (e.g., De La Trinidad, 2015; Muñoz, 2023; San Miguel, 2022), they have generally not explained how they were able to exert such influence. This paper analyzes how these teachers were able to frame the state of education for Spanish-speaking students as an urgent problem, convince legislators that federal support for bilingual education could help solve it, and marshal the political will necessary to pass legislation.

Theoretical Framework

Kingdon’s (1984) work on agenda-setting in federal policymaking provides a framework for understanding how ideas become legislative reality. Kingdon’s theory was developed through interviews with a range of people involved in federal policy-making and analyzed how, why, and when particular ideas get on the “agenda” (the list of problems policymakers are paying close attention to) as well as why certain ideas win out over other alternative solutions. For policies to pass, the problem, policy and politics streams need to align. This theory has demonstrated explanatory power in understanding how ideas become law in domains as diverse as civil service reform, anti-lynching legislation, and flood control.

Methods

This historical inquiry draws on extensive archival research in the University of Arizona Special Collections holdings, records of the Arizona and Oregon historical societies, archives of the National Education Association (NEA), congressional records, unpublished dissertations, interviews, and secondary sources related to educational history and the Civil Rights Era.

Results

In the early 1960s, a small group of policy entrepreneurs (Kingdon, 1984), most notably Maria Urquides, Adalberto Guerrero, and Hank Oyama, became convinced of the value of home language support while piloting a “Spanish for Spanish speakers” course in a Tucson high school. With funding from the NEA and support from their district, they surveyed promising bilingual programs for Spanish-speaking students across the Southwest. They published a report summarizing their findings and articulating both the problem (the predominant English-only approach to schooling was causing academic failure) and a policy solution: bilingual education. With the help of former politician and legislative consultant Monroe Sweetland, their report received extensive media coverage nationwide. Capitalizing on this attention, Urquides, Guerrero, Oyama and Sweetland convened politicians, scholars and educators in a symposium in Tucson, which proved a turning point in gathering sufficient political support from legislators to initiate and pass the BEA (Sanchez, 1973).

Significance

A better understanding of how this systems-level legislative victory was achieved is particularly relevant now, as federal support for bilingual education has eroded substantially in the decades since the passing of the BEA.

Author

• Leah Durán, University of Arizona