EPSL-0203-102-LPRU

It is difficult to let go of 2001, a year of exceptional memories. Most years leave memories, of course, but 2001 left unusually painful ones: anguish and suffering, new ways of making war, and substituting new national enemies for old. Education history also began to change in 2001. Educators in the United States said goodbye to an old colleague, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 (as amended many times). This legislation was the vehicle for involving the federal government in public education, an idea that was anathema to many people back then. It was also the parent legislation of Title VII, the legislation that has provided federal funds for bilingual education for thirty years.

In 2002, ESEA was reauthorized under a new if inelegant title: The No Child Left Behind Act. Since my own career parallels the life of ESEA, I take advantage of these pages to comment briefly on its passing and the arrival of its successor. It may seem odd to put the major education act of the federal government on the same list as the other transcendental events of 2001. But, given the enormous historical role of the federal government in helping to promote bilingual education, I felt it was appropriate to reflect on the direction in which government leaders have decided to move with respect to the education of ELLs in the future. Some of you no doubt remember that ELLs (English Language Learners) were once called LESAs, and subsequently, LEPs. With the ELL designation we hope to move away from the taint of deficit, limitedness, and deficiency. But, we may have gained little else.

Where does bilingual education stand as No Child Left Behind goes into effect? Will our children truly not be left behind? What are we to make of the fact that the term "bilingual" has been purged from the Washington lexicon? The new version of Title VII ¾ now renumbered Title III ¾ will no longer be known as the Bilingual Education Act. Similarly, its operational unit in the federal bureaucracy, OBEMLA, has been transmogrified into the Office of English Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for LEP Students (OEALE/AALEPs). Really! Following this pattern, the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education will now be known as the Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction (CELALI) or "sea fly" as it will probably be known en famille.

The federales have developed a sudden aversion to bilingual education, or perhaps the term has outlived its usefulness in Congress. In its place, they are promoting English Language Acquisition, a term popularized by the national campaign of Ronald Unz to monolingualize public schools, and cleanse them of all languages except English. It appears that Unz has won this battle, although it remains to be seen whether he has won the war.

An interesting aspect of the new legislation is its use of the language of accountability with respect to teaching English. According to the new law, school districts will be held accountable for teaching English although it is not clear what form such accountability will take or how a lack of accountability will be treated. This lack of specificity is not new. Twenty-five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Lau v. Nichols (414 U.S. 563, 1974) that teaching English was the responsibility of school districts. Enforcement of Lau has been repeatedly sidestepped by the executive branch from the beginning. The new legislative language of accountability may face the same fate. Important questions remain unanswered: how will school districts demonstrate accountability, and what will the federal government do in cases where school districts fail to teach English effectively?

It is not unlikely that the accountability for English acquisition will somehow be put on the students themselves and on their families. It will be much simpler for the government to assert that students are refusing to learn English than it will be to punish school districts and state boards of education for the failure to teach that language well. Practitioners and advocates should continue to work on this aspect of the legislation. There is some predictability in the situation. We have been told time and again that school districts must have maximum flexibility for how they will use Title I and Title VII (III) funding to devise and implement programs for teaching English. In cases where the schools make poor programmatic choices, or when states eliminate programs of bilingual instruction, where will the finger of accountability be pointed? And what censures will be triggered if children fail to learn English? This lack of clarity is likely to be the undoing of the new Title III. A combination of issues seems ominous:

• The elimination of bilingual education by ballot initiatives;
• a lack of clarity on what accountability really means in Title III;
• a lack of clarity on whether OBEMLA programs acting alone are expected to teach English acting alone, or whether the rest of the school's curriculum shares the responsibility; and
• how schools can have flexibility in selecting programs and still be held accountable for results when such programs have been mandated by voter initiatives.

With such issues unresolved, it is difficult to predict the outcome of this new thrust for accountability. This will no doubt complicate the work of the newly named OBEMLA (read OEALE/AALEPs ). Since most Title VII projects are part time efforts, it will be difficult for those specially funded projects to succeed in the mission of teaching English without taking into account what the rest of the school is doing with the same children. Five years from now, when the "No Child ..." legislation is up for renewal, there may be calls for eliminating OEALE/AALEPs on the grounds that its programs have proved to be ineffective in reducing the number of ELL children in the nation's schools. Scapegoats are always needed and this new unit may well be the next in line.

Changing the name of OBEMLA and funding fewer programs of bilingual education will do nothing to resolve the nation's stalemate in offering an effective education to immigrant children and youth. Among the voters, the ideology of language restrictionism is clearly discernible in the large volume of votes cast in favor of Ronald Unz' ballot proposals. The U.S. Congress supports Unz' ideas, and there is little question that the nation is in the throes of an anti-immigrant, anti-languages spasm that may last for some time. This may be one of the unexpected consequences of September 11. That point will only be resolved with time, after the national grieving period is over.

This is a good time, however, to think strategically about our collective advocacy for bilingualism, bilingual education, and the education of immigrants and other English Language Learners. I am not convinced that the setbacks suffered by transitional bilingual education will have a dampening effect on bilingualism or dual-language instruction. I refuse to join the Chicken Little chorus of those who believe the sky is falling. Bilingual education owes much to Title VII funding, but it owes much of the political acrimony that surrounds it to those debates too. Advocates must be more careful about relying solely on the federal government for the continued development of bilingual education. Title III is a hollow version of the hopeful legislative step taken in 1968 with the enactment of Title VII. We should be careful to distinguish between the best practices that are supported by research, and those that are fundable through this highly compromised version of the law. Title III is a highly negotiated piece of legislation. It no longer has a core of principles on which to build substantive programs with a real chance for success. Above all, we should resist the idea of having the federal government define what constitutes high quality programs of bilingual education. That can only come from practitioners and researchers in the field; it cannot be negotiated in the back offices of Congressmen and Senators.

The U.S. Congress is showing signs of ethnocentric and xenophobic behavior concerning immigration and cultural diversity. At a time when its leadership is most needed, it has chosen to join in Unz' demagoguery regarding language and cultural diversity in the schools. The White House, in turn, has decided to focus on international affairs in its quest for re-election. All of this leaves them with little time or energy to take action on behalf of the special needs of minority children. Nonetheless, we will soon witness once again, the charade of presidential candidates vying with each other to see who speaks the worst Spanish. This will provide comic relief, but the irony is not lost on bilingual advocates that presidential candidates do not hesitate to use other languages on the campaign trail when it serves their needs. But they will not support bilingual education for minority children after they are elected. It is an appalling duplicity played out for the entire world to see. For

the sake of the historical record, it is good to remember that the efforts to seek federal support for better education ¾ rather than from state governments where the constitutional responsibility for education lies ¾ arose from the reluctance by the states to deal with minorities and their special education needs. As demographics change and voting patterns begin to reflect minority interests more effectively, the emphasis on state-level action must re-emerge. The Lau v. Nichols decision was resolved in favor of the plaintiffs, but Chinese children in San Francisco did not receive noticeably better education until the composition of the school board and the leadership of the district changed and became more multicultural. Today, as language minorities are better represented on local and state boards of education, their education has begun to improve. In the future, progressive changes are more likely to come from those levels than from the federal government, at least until Congress becomes more representative. It is time to discuss strategies about this topic. Local and state communities must become more vocal about their support for school programs that promote bilingualism and biliteracy. We need those programs not only for ELL children but for fluent speakers of English as well.

The problem of sensitizing school programs goes beyond language compatibility. In mid-September, bleary eyed from watching television coverage of the horrific events unfolding, I walked into our university bookstore and asked the clerk for a copy of the Koran, a book I had long overlooked. He smiled wanly and said, "You and everyone else, sir; we don't carry it." I was not alone among those Americans who realized in a single traumatic Tuesday that our ignorance of certain parts of the world was severe. I was hoping that my students would not ask me serious questions about Islam, and about whatever real or imagined things distinguish "us" from "them." As a society, we wandered, quite unexpectedly, into a terrible blind spot in our education paradigm. Many of us had spoken about this in theory but had never actually experienced it in such harsh terms. On September 11, 2001, the theoretical became actual as Americans looked at each other in anguish and disbelief, facing the reality that we were someone's enemy, but not knowing why.

In the historical context of "9-11" and the scenes that will forever haunt us, the renaming of offices and programs in Washington, D.C., is much less significant than it might have otherwise been. While the OBEMLA moniker was the result of a typing mistake, the name of its successor agency may be a more important symbol, an acknowledgment of xenophobia that pervades our society. It is clearly not the result of enlightenment—of policy shot from the hip—rather than based on accumulated knowledge and research on the value of bilingualism and bilingual education. It will continue to be the function of journals such as ours to highlight the lessons that were learned from the first wave of programs funded by ESEA and the experiments that were made possible by Title VII, the Bilingual Education Act.

The Bilingual Education Act served its purpose well, to build capacity. Now fades into educational history where it will no doubt become an important chapter. It enabled schools to glimpse the strengths of our language and cultural diversity, to show that excellent education can be done well in more than one language. It did not solve the problem of intransigent schools, or xenophobic thinking outside the schools, but it helped us to contemplate possibilities. Transitional bilingual education, we now know, was insufficient. It could not overcome all the other problems arising from poor schools, low expectations, inadequate funding, and much more. But bilingual educators are working harder today than ever before to develop stronger and better forms of bilingual schooling. As I travel around the country, speaking to groups of parents and bilingual educators, I see few tears over the demise of transitional bilingual education programs. In its wake, and based largely on lessons we learned during the healthier years of Title VII, we are building new and more exciting programs for all children. Better and more potent forms of bilingual teaching have begun to emerge. Most of these are no longer transitional, remedial, or compensatory. The bilingual education programs of the 21st century will have new dreams and new keywords that reflect the new and more powerful dreams of a diverse nation: biliteracy, enrichment, two-way, language for global understanding, and heritage language preservation.

Note: Dr. Josué M. González is the co-editor of the Bilingual Research Journal (BRJ). This article will appear as the Editor's Introduction to the Vol. 26 No. 2 (Summer 2002) issue of the BRJ. It has been edited and adapted here with permission.

Language Policy Research Unit (LPRU), March 2002.