Is language a right or an enrichment?
This blog offers a brief history of Dual Language programming in the US from the 1990s to present day. I cite demographic trends, research on bilingual ed advocacy, and explore tensions that arise between parent groups.
What do you believe?
It is everyone’s right to speak their home language - the language they were born with, that their family has been speaking for generations. All students should have access to their heritage language in educational spaces.
Do you agree?
If you’re here, I’m going to assume yes. You believe that every person should speak and celebrate their heritage language. You believe that bilingualism is an asset. It brings a multitude of cognitive, social, and even aging-related benefits, and all children should have access to a bilingual education. After all, bilingual education directly and effectively disrupts the Monolingual Bias. This is precisely why dual language programs have flourished and grown exponentially in both scope and popularity over the last 25 years (Thomas & Collier, 2019).
The evolution of Dual Language programing
Let’s travel back in time to the year 2000. California has just passed Proposition 227, which essentially eradicates bilingual education completely. The new law has placed English Language Learners in “special” English-only classes for a year-long, rapid-fire new language education before pushing them back into the mainstream, where they face the unrealistic expectation of exhibiting fluency, and excelling in all subject areas - and fast!
Congress is on the cusp of signing the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind into action, an act of legislation that has placed standardized testing at the forefront of elementary and high school education.
But something else is happening. The Spanish-speaking population in the US is increasing rapidly. The US Immigrants Rights’ Movement is growing in size and cohesion, and by 2004, is garnering much national media attention. While US schools are eradicating bilingual programs and hustling ELLs into sink-or-swim classrooms, studies are beginning to emerge highlighting the cognitive benefits of speaking multiple languages. So when the US Department of Education demands that the nation’s estimated 260 dual language programs increase to 1,000 by 2005, we witness a near tenfold increase (US Department of Education, 2007). While there is no definitive number recorded, multiple studies point to over 2,000 dual language programs operating in the US in 2005.
This is Tony Báez, a longtime advocate and community organizer for language rights in bilingual programming. You can learn more about his story here.
Affluent families: enter stage right
In a 2016 interview, lifelong bilingual education advocate Tony Baez noted, “Many advocates of bilingual education go the route of dual-language programs because then we are not fighting white parents; we are uniting with them to get what we need. We are bringing white parents and people of privilege into the process to recognize and fight for bilingualism for everybody.”
Yet, as more studies emerged, more English-dominant, well-resourced families became interested in bilingual education and dual language programs. Especially those families who were moving into urban areas and sending their children to public schools.
In 2012, the New York Times pushed out an Op-Ed with the evocative, and slightly provocative title, “Why Bilinguals Are Smarter.” Yudhijit Bhattacharjee boldly states that our new understanding of bilingualism, one rooted in science, is radically different from how we conceptualized bilingualism throughout the 20th Century. Scientists have found that bilingualism “can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.”
This is great, news, right?
Bilingualism is a right for all, we all agree. And dual language programs set out a clear goal: to offer 50% of classroom instruction in English and 50% in another language. The classes are ideally comprised of 50% English-dominant students and 50% ELLs. While developing academic proficiency in two languages, students also begin to use both languages socially and develop conversational fluency. (A personal note: I had been teaching in DL classrooms since 2006 and I fervently believed this was the silver bullet solution for my Latine students and I wouldn’t shut up about it.)
Wouldn’t you want your student to get a seat in a celebrated Dual Language program? What could possibly go wrong?
Guadalupe Valdés- an OG Monolingual Bias Disruptor- knew something was afoot way back in 1998. You can access that article here.
A warning, a truth
In 1998, fellow disruptor Guadalupe Valdés responded to the vast expansion of dual language programs with a warning: “In implementing dual language immersion programs, there must be sensitivity to the realities of intergroup relations in the communities surrounding schools to the fact that teachers are products of the society with all of its shortcomings, and to the fact that mainstream and minority children live in very different worlds.”
Valdés was predicting a power imbalance. She was predicting a world in which well-resourced, English-dominant students would inevitably gain more access to DL programs and their sweeping benefits than their generally less-affluent, Spanish-dominant peers. This is how power differentials work which is why it comes as little surprise 25 years later, Valdés was not wrong.
Where is the equity?
A complex push-and-pull for coveted seats in DL programs has emerged. For the Latine community seeking access to their heritage languages and protections against generational language loss, 50-50 DL programs offers a “language-as-a-right” solution (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996). Yet as affluent families move into urban centers, they are pricing low-income and immigrant groups out of their neighborhoods. English-dominant parents are pushing in, negotiating their children a seat, signalging a “language-as-enrichment” stance towards DL. Citing a principal friend of mine in a hyper-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood:
“We’re loosing crucial Title 1 funding that allows us to provide our ELLs with a rich and equitable education.”
So when I hear moms complain that they are pulling their child out of DL because “half the kids don’t speak English,” or I watch English-dominant parents strong-arming their child a coveted DL seat- at the expense of a bilingual student, because it’s almost always at the expense of this student - I ask: Where is the equity?
Are our dual language programs truly supporting language as a right? When families insist upon securing a seat for their English-dominant child in a DL program, is that move really disrupting the Monolingual Bias? Or is this one more instance of opportunity hoarding, thereby exercising quiet entitlement? (You can learn so much more about this paradox by reading Flores, Tsang and Subtirelu’s edited volume: Bilingualism for All?)
Where are we today?
A 2023 report by The Century Foundation presents some startling and disturbing evidence that our Dual Language programs are at risk of succumbing to English colonization. Despite the astronomical growth of DL education in the US, just under 8% of ELLs are enrolled. On the contrary, many Spanish-speaking families opt for ESL classrooms where their children can get an accelerated English education. Indeed, I experienced this same phenomena during my tenure as a bilingual teacher in the South Bronx. This is a specific case of the Monolingual Bias motivating minority families to worship at the alter of English proficiency, which makes sense to me now that I have a fuller picture of the tensions around language-access and the testing industrial complex.
In my next blog, I’ll look at precisely how this happened. And I’ll talk about what we, as Monolingual Bias Disruptors, can do to bring equity back into dual language education. Stay tuned for some real talk about the dual language landscape today, a deep dive into The Century Foundation’s findings, and some practical next steps we can take to incite the change we need. Because if you’re here, reading my blog, then you stand on the side of equity for ELLs.
