Bilingual education is on its way back in California. After decisively rejecting bilingual education in 1998, state voters enthusiastically endorsed its return in 2016. Educators are eager to offer more bilingual classes--and not only to recently arrived immigrants. Increasingly, English-speaking parents are also sold on the cognitive benefits of…

In 2016, California voters overturned a 1998 law that curtailed bilingual instruction throughout the state. After nearly 20 years of "English only" programs, what will it take to restore the schools' capacity to provide a broader range of services to English Learners, including dual language immersion and other forms of bilingual…

Emerging from nearly two decades of language suppression wrought by Proposition 227, a "Bilingual Education Renaissance" is underway in California as new programs proliferate at a much faster clip than the state can produce certified bilingual teachers. California's policy shift is built upon an officially stated view of bilingualism as…

Despite the well-documented benefits of bilingualism, current educational practices in the United States reflect the deeply held belief that because the United States is an English speaking country, English should be the language of instruction. This belief was codified into law in California via the 1998 passage of Proposition 227, which banned…

Under critical examination, the English language and its use in daily interactions carry with them symbolic values in our social world, including social mobility, educational achievement, and employment. Its representations in government bodies, mass media, education, and legal documents have further increased those values and subtly created a…

This article draws from historical, political, theoretical, and practice perspectives that provide a comprehensive analysis of how bilingual teacher education programs have strategically navigated around and through anti-immigrant sociopolitical ideologies to survive the incessant attacks on Latinx student populations, notably in the two decades…

Based on a qualitative study of an urban middle school, this article examines student perceptions of shifting tracking structures following the dismantling of a school's bilingual education program. The article demonstrates that students understood the school changes based on supposed language needs through an explicitly racialized lens, thereby…

California's Proposition 227, or the Unz Initiative, had as its main focus the requirement that English learners be taught only in English, based on the belief that these children could learn English in one year. This led to the dismantling of many bilingual programs in K-12 schools across California. A team of faculty from California State…

This article uses Foucault's (1977/1995) concept of normalization to analyze contemporary opposition to bilingual education in the United States. These contemporary movements have "normalized" English language learner (ELL) students by appropriating the technology of language in order to become "Americanized." This has become…

English Learners, students who are not proficient in English and speak a non-English language at home, make up more than 10 percent of the nation's K-12 student body. Achieving proficiency in English for these students is a major goal of both state and federal education policy, motivating the provision of bilingual education policies. Using data…

Latino immigrant parents were interviewed in an urban California school district post Proposition 227. Approximately half had placed their English-learner children into bilingual classes. The others had children in English-only classes. Guided by sociohistorical psychology, the study explores the parents' motivations for the goal of preserving the…

CThe article is a study of Latino immigrant parents' agency toward primary language (L1) instruction in the face of restrictionist language policy. Certain attitudes and characteristics were associated with advocacy for Spanish L1 instruction. Interviews conducted in an urban California school district among parents with different background…

Using the frameworks of critical discourse analysis, representation theory, and legitimization theory, this study examines the political discourse of the campaign for Proposition 227 in California--particularly, the key social representations of languages, their speakers, and the main political actors in the campaign. The analysis examines the…

Background Context: Throughout United States history, immigrant education has been shaped and defined by political struggles over immigration, language rights, national security, and educational equity and access. Bilingual education has become the contemporary battleground for these struggles. In 1996, in California, a struggle ensued between…

This study examined opinions about some theoretical and practical tenets of bilingualism and bilingual education, as well as about the instructional use of English language learners' (ELLs) native languages in the classroom, of 77 teachers from Spain working in California as part of the California/Spain Visiting Teachers Program. In their…