Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

The Hard Work Is Worth It: Overcoming Unfavorable Determinants To Pass Pro-Immigrant Education Policy In A Conservative State Legislature, Megan Cardwell Godfrey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Immigrants, English learners (ELs), and culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD)students often lag behind their White, monolingual peers in academic achievement and English language proficiency. While there are policy solutions to improve academic and linguistic opportunities and outcomes for immigrant/EL/CLD students, such as implementing bilingual instructional models and increasing teacher diversity, these pro-immigrant policies can be hard to come by in some legislative contexts due to unfavorable economic, social, or political determinants. This qualitative case study analyzed the multifaceted political work that contributed to the passage of two pro-immigrant education policies in the Arkansas 93rd General Assembly: a bill for bilingual …

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 …

The Vote On Bilingual Education And Latino Identity In Massachusetts, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

In November 2002, the Massachusetts electorate voted overwhelmingly to pass Referendum Ballot Question 2 (Q. 2), sponsored by California millionaire Ron Unz. The passage of this initiative by close to 70% of the voters effectively ended bilingual education in the state as it had been known for thirty years. Exit polling done at selected cities in Massachusetts by the Mauricio Gaston Institute and UMass Poll revealed, however, that out of a total 1,491 Latinos polled, a vast majority of them, around 93%, had voted in favor of rejecting Q. 2 and keeping bilingual education in place. Indeed, Q. 2 became …

How To Tame A Wild Tongue: Language Rights In The United States, Panayota Gounari

Panayota Gounari

The call for a "common language" and a "shared identity that makes us Americans" not only hides a more pernicious social and cultural agenda but it is also part of the present attempt toward the 'reorganization of a 'cultural hegemony' as evidenced in the conservatives on the multiplicity of languages spoken in the United States. This ultimately guarantees that these groups will remain repressed, marginalized and cut off from the wealth of resources that the dominant group has full access. As a result, the current debate over bilingual education has very little to do with language per se; the real …

The Vote On Bilingual Education And Latino Identity In Massachusetts, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

Gastón Institute Publications

In November 2002, the Massachusetts electorate voted overwhelmingly to pass Referendum Ballot Question 2 (Q. 2), sponsored by California millionaire Ron Unz. The passage of this initiative by close to 70% of the voters effectively ended bilingual education in the state as it had been known for thirty years. Exit polling done at selected cities in Massachusetts by the Mauricio Gaston Institute and UMass Poll revealed, however, that out of a total 1,491 Latinos polled, a vast majority of them, around 93%, had voted in favor of rejecting Q. 2 and keeping bilingual education in place.

Indeed, Q. 2 became …