Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Role Of The Press In Framing The Bilingual Education Debate: Ten Years After Sheltered Immersion In Massachusetts, Fern L. Johnson, Marlene G. Fine

New England Journal of Public Policy

In 2002 Massachusetts voters passed a voter initiative that changed the way children who are not fluent in English are taught. The initiative overturned the state’s requirement for “transitional bilingual education,” through which children are gradually transitioned, usually over a three-year period, from instruction in their native language to instruction entirely in English. Transitional bilingual education was replaced with “sheltered English immersion,” which places children with little or no English-language fluency in classes where almost all instruction is in English, with the expectation that they will move to regular English-only classrooms after one year.

We used frame analysis to examine …

Policy Shifts In The Massachusetts Response To Family Homelessness, Margaret A. Leonard, Stacy Randell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Massachusetts's response to the tragedy of family homelessness during a period of economic prosperity (1983-1987) is contrasted to a period of economic decline (1988-1992). The article describes the movement toward a structural response in the boom years and its dismantling with the emergence of a "blame the victim" response in the decline years. The roles of state government, advocacy groups, human service providers, private funding sources, academic institutions, and the media, as they influence these responses, are outlined. Interviews with key actors in these groups, group interviews with formerly homeless women, a review of the literature, and the authors' direct …

Homelessness In Boston: The Media Wake Up, Ian Menzies

New England Journal of Public Policy

Why did it take the media so long to "discover" and report on the dramatically rising rates of hunger and homelessness throughout the nation? Did that failure make it easier for presidential counselor Edwin Meese to declare in December 1983 that allegations of hunger in America were "purely political" and that people who go to soup kitchens do so because the food is free, statements matched a short time later by President Ronald Reagan's claim that people who sleep on grates do so "by choice." In this article, Menzies tells the unfolding story of how hunger and homelessness finally became …