The Proposition 227 requires that all public school instruction be conducted in English. However, in “The Political Paradox of Bilingual Education”, Crawford argues against Proposition 227 and provides an overview of the political and educational discourse on immigrant children’s language rights. He starts with questions such as “Was the proposition intended primarily to assimilate limited-English-proficient (LEP) children more efficiently? To teach them English as rapidly as possible? To encourage bilingualism and biliteracy? The bill’s legislative history provides no definitive answer (Crawford). According to Crawford, proposition 227 enforce bilingual regulations and the research findings are less encouraging. He explains that the regulations on bilingual provide inequalities to limited-English-proficient student. Hence they are failing to be successful in academic performance and achievement. Crawford supports his argument with examples that in San Francisco, LEP students were only instructed in English and since some students failed to understand the language, they resulted in poor academic performance (Crawford). Thus, Crawford points out how politics…
The issue of English language learners (ELL) and their rights to an education has been a major topic of debate for many years. Should ELL students be taught in their first language? Will they learn English, or should they be put into English speaking classes? That has been the topic of discussion amongst educators. Which method is better for the student? The arguments continue and many states and school districts have made a decision on what to do. One state in particular had a serious ELL problem, so California took action. In 1998, California implemented a program called Proposition 227.…
Johnson had a strong belief that education was the key to a thriving American society and therefore enacted many bills for the improvement of the education system. He passed the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 which included providing new college classrooms, new community colleges, more college loans, and better college libraries. In 1965 he passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which established that low-income households required more educational service than that out children from middle and upper-class families. The bill provided over $1 billion to the states to help provide school supplies and textbooks. Lyndon Johnson used education as an economic stimulus and through his work, uplifted the standard of educating American youth to a new level of success.…
Bilingualism has become very popular within the last couple of years. It is growing into society everyday, making it second nature to some people. In fact there are actually more bilingual individuals around the world compared to monolingual, suggesting that many countries are bilingual (Bialystok et al., 2012). A bilingual individual is defined by society as being able to fluently speak two languages (Woolfolk et al., 2012). Contrastingly, a monolingual individual is defined as only being able to speak one language, which is often called the mother tongue (Woolfolk et al., 2012).…
I come from a small island in the Caribbean known as Puerto Rico. On this island Spanish is the central language, leading me to be fluent in Spanish. Later in my life as I grew, went to school and watched American TV I learned English, turning me bilingual. Bilingualism is defined as the ability to converse in two different languages. Were I come from most of my family and friends are bilingual, but when I came to Miami I didn’t expect to meet many people that could speak Spanish. As I began to observe the people from Miami I knew that this wasn’t the case. If you go to any place in Miami, you will probably find someone who is fluent in both English and Spanish. I found this extremely weird; I didn’t expect to encounter so much bilingualism in Miami.…
The National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) has been established since 1975 as a non-profit membership organization that works to ensure that language-minority students have equal opportunities to learn English and succeed academically. NABE’s organization priorities are improving instructional practices for linguistically and culturally diverse children; providing bilingual educators with more high-quality professional development opportunities; securing adequate funding for the programs serving limited-English-proficient students; and keeping the rights of language-minority Americans clearly in focus as states and…
President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law on August 6, 1965. Section 2 of the Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis. Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not…
“Title II provided federal grants to the states for school-library, resources, textbooks, and instruction materials” (Bornet, P. 222). President Johnson added Title III which induce innovation and helped in areas such as art, music, languages, counseling, and educational media (Bornet, P. 223). Then he included Title VI which focused on disable children. During his presidency, Title VI helped 225,000 disable children (Bornet, P. 223). Later, Title VIII was created to lower the dropout rate and to help rural schools (Bornet, P. 223). However, the government did not have the funds for Title VIII. Ultimately, the language in the Education Act was designed to prevent federal domination over the curriculum, personnel, books, and to prohibit the use of these funds in transporting students for the purpose of integrating schools (Bornet, P.…
The Bilingual Education Act, Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1968, was proclaimed as landmark legislation in defense of curriculum s for English language learner students. This federal law presented legal procedures and funding for transitional bilingual education programs. A sequence of federal court verdicts helped expand the opportunities and execution of Title VII (“The Aftermath,” 2011). The Supreme Court judgment in Lau v. Nichols in 1974 expected school districts to take steps to defend the civil rights of English language learners. From 1998 to 2008 initiatives really began to take shape for English language learners. In five different states voters were requested to come to a decision about educating policies that effect English language learners (Mora, 2009). Anti bilingual education vote proposal was passed in California in 1998, Arizona in 2000, and Massachusetts in 2002. However, the anti bilingual education was rejected in Colorado in 2002 and most recently in Oregon in 2008 (“The Importance of Our English Language,”…
Do Spanish-speaking immigrants have rights to bilingual education? With the increase of the Latino population in New York City during the 1960s caused the school system to be faced with a new issue of language rights. My topic of bilingual education is important because with the increasing presence of Latinos it brings an increasing number of Limited English Proficient Students to the country. Being a first or second generation Latino having a bilingual education makes a difference in one life by causing them to preserve part of their culture. My paper will focus on what exactly is bilingual education, it’s origins, the ways in which it is taught, the successes and failures and what the future holds.…
According to Garcia, Jensen, and Scribner (2009) the term “English language learners (ELLs)” is used to refer to students who are not yet proficient enough in English in order to properly benefit from the instruction provided exclusively in this language. Garcia (2012) notes that research has categorized ELLs into three cohorts. Garcia (2012) exemplifies these three groups by indicating that in California, the long-term ELLs are the largest cohort that makes up about two-thirds of the ELL population in that state. The rest of the ELLs include recent immigrants who possess either low or high previous academic background (Freeman, Freeman & Mercuri, 2002). The report developed by the Grantmakers for Education (2010) states that even though many immigrant children are ELLs, most of the ELLs were born in the United States. Grantmakers for Education (2010) report that over 75% of ELLs enrolled in elementary grades are second generation or probably third generation Americans. This report also indicates that about 95% of immigrant children were born in the country. According to Garcia (2012) each of the three cohorts of ELLs identifies possess a unique set of academic and linguistic requirements. Distinguishing between U.S.-born ELLs and their immigrant counterparts is essential to meet the specific needs of each group through the use of different…
Being different when it comes to language is hard for others to accept. Some bilingual students in a study reported that they felt isolated and discriminated against by fellow classmates who were perhaps native to the area they were in. Most immigrants find it very hard to fit in because they either speak a different language or speak in a different way. What happens to some of these students is similar to what happens to illiterate students. Not in every case, but in many they are teased, ignored, or put into different kinds of classed due to their inability to keep up with the students in the regular class. The issue is that the students eventually may give up or fall into a depression due to their social situation. There are ways to fix…
Revolutionary leaders knew that encouraging the growth of the multilingual population in the United States was vital to maintaining distance from Great Britain. The Founding Fathers sought to respect the minority groups that helped free the nation from the British crown, therefore avoiding instituting an official national language from the Constitution. In fact, around this time many documents were printed in German and French to stimulate political participation among multilingual citizens. But when the political arena of the 1980s fostered bilingual legislation (for example, introducing bilingual schooling and bilingual voting forms), this respect for foreign languages nearly vanished as many citizens took up arms against American-English being challenged.…
Spanish is spoken by a diverse range of cultures—however, these cultures come together, united by their shared values, to create what we know as the Latino community. Though learning the language is principal in a Spanish class, learning about the culture of that language is almost equally as important. If you do not understand a culture, you can never fully understand its language. Therefore, knowing the significance and effectiveness of bilingual education and the fundamental characteristics of the Latino community is a perfect way to begin a journey into the depths of the Spanish language and the culture surrounding it.…
The other impact is that the Bilingual Education Act might be influential to English Language Learners (ELL) that social constructionists can be use to equal limited…