Proposition 227 Summary

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
Hence if I was travel back in time to 1988, I would vote for Proposition 227. The bilingual education under examine the issue of race. By having bilingual education in our society, it separate students by class and race. The bilingual education researchers fail to take culture, race, class and other factors into considerations. bilingual education was designed to help students with language improvements, it creates an inherently inequitable two-tiered system leaving them with difficult and demoralizing classes full of “behavior problems” (Palmer). Therefore, bilingual programs will make no real progress at helping us and our children to address the deeper issues of racism and classism in this society