EPSL-0302-102-LPRU

Bilingual education has been controversial in the United States since the 1970s. Nevertheless, over the next two decades, it continued to enjoy support from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and from ethnic politicians, such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. When Congress reauthorized the sixth – and final – version of the Bilingual Education Act in 1994, it endorsed a cherished goal of the program’s advocates. The stated purpose of the law was no longer simply to foster English language acquisition and academic achievement for limited-English-proficient (LEP) children. For the first time, it would also seek to develop, “to the extent possible, [their] native language skills” (IASA, Title VII, 1994). Sidestepping a contentious issue that had dominated the 1988 reauthorization of Title VII, legislators eliminated the practice of “earmarking” funds on the basis of language of instruction. In competing for federal grants, school districts would have the flexibility to choose between various pedagogical models, both bilingual and English-only. Soon the Clinton Administration became active in promoting approaches designed to cultivate bilingualism, including “two-way” bilingual instruction for English-speaking and language-minority students. The U.S. Secretary of Education declared: “It is high time we begin to treat language skills as the asset they are, particularly in this global economy” (Riley, 2000).

Many advocates for bilingual education in the 1990s believed the program was entering a new era of public acceptance, as well as marketability to Anglo-American parents. Support from policymakers seemed assured. Then the bottom dropped out. In 1998, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 227, an initiative to dismantle most bilingual instruction in the public schools. Similar measures soon passed by larger margins in Arizona and Massachusetts but failed in Colorado (see Table I). Although only three states have taken this drastic step so far, together they enroll 43 percent of the nation’s English language learners (ELLs).

Sources: California Secretary of State; Arizona Secretary of State; Massachusetts Elections Division; Colorado Elections Division; National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration proposed and Congress adopted the No Child Left Behind Act (2002), repealing the Bilingual Education Act and expunging all references to bilingualism as a pedagogical goal. In the name of “flexibility,” the new law turns most federal funding for English-learner programs into block grants administered by the states. Yet, in the name of “accountability,” it features provisions such as mandatory, high-stakes testing in English that are likely to discourage states and districts from supporting native-language instruction.

Because of these policy reversals, the continued availability – perhaps even the survival – of bilingual education for language-minority students in the United States is suddenly in doubt. How did this come to pass?

The short answer is that, in recent years, public opinion has become increasingly hostile. Substantial numbers of Americans who were once supportive of bilingual education, at least in its transitional forms, have moved into the English-only camp. Among politicians and journalists, who both reflect and influence public attitudes, similar trends are evident. Understanding the basis of this shift is key to understanding the present and future prospects of bilingual education.

Obviously, it is important to consider the opinion polls in this area. But such surveys have been generally crude in approach and inconsistent in results. For a more nuanced analysis, it is helpful to study the public debates over bilingual education, especially in the context of electoral campaigns. While attention has been paid to the rhetoric of English-only proponents, arguments supporting bilingual education have rarely been subjected to analysis.

This paper will seek to remedy that omission, exploring the ways in which the issue has been framed by the program’s advocates as well as its critics, and the relative success or failure of these approaches. It will begin with a brief overview of voter attitudes toward bilingual education before campaign arguments have been heard. It will consider opposing hypotheses about sources of opposition to the program. It will analyze the various paradigms that have been used to explain bilingual education and evaluate the strategies that have been used to resist English-only campaigns. It will conclude with some recommendations on improving advocacy for language-minority students.

First Impressions

In the fall of 1997, bilingual educators in California awoke to an unpleasant surprise. An initial opinion survey, conducted eight months before election day, indicated overwhelming support for Proposition 227. Asked whether they would support a measure to “require all public school instruction to be conducted in English and for students not fluent in English to be placed in a short-term English immersion program,” 80 percent of registered voters said yes. That figure included 84 percent of Latinos, 80 percent of moderates, 73 percent of Democrats, and 66 percent of liberals (Los Angeles Times Poll, 1997).

The survey did not mention that if the ballot initiative were adopted, schools would have to dismantle successful bilingual programs; children would “normally” receive just 180 school days of English instruction before being reassigned to regular classrooms; parents’ right to choose native-language instruction would be severely limited; teachers could be sued personally for alleged violations of the English-only rule; and no repeal or amendment of the law would be possible through the normal legislative process (English Language in Public Schools, 1998). (Note 1) As debate proceeded and voters began to learn about such provisions, support for Proposition 227 declined. Nevertheless, it is clear that the initial poll struck a responsive chord with the term “English immersion,” which connotes an intensive English program tailored to the needs of children learning English.

These results are consistent with other surveys that present the educational options as a zero-sum game. For example, a recent poll commissioned by Public Agenda asked: “Should public schools teach new immigrants English as quickly as possible even if this means they fall behind, or teach them other subjects in their native language even if this means it takes them longer to learn English?” Among public school parents overall, 67 percent favored teaching English as quickly as possible; among immigrant parents, 73 percent expressed this view. (Farkas and Johnson,1998). Using a similar question, the Gallup Poll (1998) found 63 percent support for English immersion versus 33 percent support for bilingual education; the responses were roughly equivalent across ethnic groups. In these and other surveys, language-minority parents have been, if anything, more likely than other respondents to favor an emphasis on English instruction over native-language instruction.

Yet such surveys elicit questionable information about what Americans firmly and truly believe, because they spread false assumptions; many are likely to bias responses against bilingual education. In fact, there is no need to hold children back in English while they learn school subjects in their native language, or to hold them back academically while they acquire English. Quite the contrary. A generation of research and practice has shown that developing academic skills and knowledge in students’ vernacular supports their acquisition of English (see, e.g., Ramírez, Yuen, and Ramey, 1991). At first impression, laypersons tend to find such conclusions counterintuitive, a bit like the advice to “go West to get East.” But when opinion surveys explain the principles involved – for example, how time spent learning to read in the first language is not wasted learning time because literacy skills transfer to a second language – respondents are generally supportive of bilingual approaches (for a review of this research, see Krashen, 1999).

For most Americans, however, explanations of how bilingual education works are seldom available. Few voters have any direct contact with programs for English learners; they rely on information that is second-hand, superficial, and often erroneous. Media accounts tend to perpetuate stereotypes and misconceptions (McQuillan and Tse, 1996; Crawford, 1998). So do policymakers like Rod Paige, the Bush Administration’s secretary of education, who told a journalist: “The idea of bilingual education is not necessarily a good thing. The goal must be toward English fluency” (Hargrove, 2001).

Advocacy groups have also helped to shape attitudes – at least of the negative variety. While opponents have spent millions on campaigns to discredit bilingual education, supporters of the program have rarely engaged in public relations work. Professional groups like the National Association for Bilingual Education have never made it a priority, even following the crushing defeats for their field in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts. For the most part, they have allowed biased media accounts and unfair criticism by opponents to go unanswered.

Over time, this imbalance has taken a toll. Before the advent of the English-only movement twenty years ago, Americans were generally supportive of native languages in the classroom. In the Houston Metropolitan Area Survey (1983), for example, 68 percent of respondents agreed that schools should be required to offer bilingual education. A national poll conducted that same year found a 67 percent favorability rating for bilingual education among non-Hispanic Americans who had an opinion about it, and 82 percent believed that “too little” was being spent on such programs (Huddy and Sears, 1990). But as ideological attacks mounted, attitudes changed significantly. Comparing polls from the late 1990s with those from the previous decade, Krashen (2002) found “a shift of about one-third of the public from mild support (those who would allow one or two years of bilingual education …) to the all-English position, with only about 33 percent of the public remaining solid supporters of bilingual education.”

Racism or Ignorance?

This trend mirrors the level of support for English-only initiatives in the three states where they have passed. But favoring immersion is one thing; banning native-language instruction is quite another. What was it that motivated voters to approve these extreme measures? Two contending explanations have emerged: (1) prejudice against Latinos and other linguistic minorities, and (2) misunderstanding of bilingual education.

Representing the first view, a leader of the organized No on 227 campaign attributes the outcome to “a reservoir of anger, distrust, and even hate focused on bilingual education, bilingual educators, and immigrants – particularly Spanish-speaking immigrants” (Olsen (1998, p. 4). California’s disproportionately white, English-speaking electorate was expressing “the sense of Spanish ruining this country, the sense of our nation in threat. The sense that upholding English as the language of this nation is a stance of protecting a way of life – this outweighed every argument we could wage to try to defeat 227. This is what we were up against and still are” (p. 8). Olsen concludes that most voters’ minds were closed to considering the case for bilingual education: “It's not just that they don't understand it – they don't like it” (p. 9).

An opposing hypothesis (advanced by myself and others) is that, while ethnocentrism undoubtedly inspires some opposition to bilingual education, ignorance about the subject is a more important factor. According to Krashen (1999), opinion surveys “suggest … that support for Proposition 227 was to a large extent because people felt they were voting ‘for English’” (p. 95). Indeed, when likely “yes” voters were asked to explain their motives, 73 percent endorsed the statement: “If you live in America, you need to speak English (Los Angeles Times Poll, 1998a). Respondents seemed to view bilingual education as a diversion from, rather than a means toward, that end. If one accepts this as a factual premise, replacing the program with a more effective way to teach English seems not merely reasonable, but beneficial to language-minority students – precisely the argument advanced by sponsors of the initiative.

Of course, some might argue that the English-only supporters in the survey did not sincerely care about the needs of these children, that they were merely unwilling to acknowledge the racism that motivated their votes. In rejecting the Ignorance Hypothesis for the unpopularity of bilingual education, Macedo (2000) asserts:

“This is tantamount to saying that racists do not hate people of color; they are just ignorant. … [O]ne has to realize that ignorance is never innocent and is always shaped by a particular ideological predisposition. On another level, the explanation that racist acts or the attack on bilingual education are due to ignorance does not make the victims of these acts feel any better about their victimization.” (emphasis added)

Obviously, without entering the minds of the voters, such allegations are difficult to prove. Individuals’ motivations are rarely pure or simple, whatever their politics. Feelings about racial and ethnic identity influence the way we perceive the world. There is no question that anti-immigrant biases can and do make some Americans “uneducable” about the evidence favoring bilingual education. It does not logically follow, however, that all – or even most – skeptics are in this category.

The most thorough study of this issue (Huddy and Sears, 1990) concluded that “symbolic racism” was a significant predictor of opposition. Nevertheless, such attitudes – including “resistance to special favors for minorities, anti-Hispanic sentiment, nationalism [directed against immigrants], a general desire for lower levels of government spending, and a resistance to foreign-language instruction” – together accounted for only “25.9 percent of the variance in opposition to bilingual education” (p. 130).

What proponents of the Racism Hypothesis are really saying is that support for bilingual education is sacrosanct – an issue on which good and honest people can never disagree. They suggest that anyone who questions the program’s value must have a sinister agenda. Yet those who implicitly advance this claim have offered no evidence on its behalf, other than their own moral outrage. Nor have they accounted for contradictory data, such as the substantial number of Americans who simultaneously support civil rights and oppose native-language instruction, in the erroneous belief that it segregates immigrant children, fails to teach them English, and limits their opportunities. Latinos (37 percent), Asian Americans (57 percent), Democrats (47 percent), moderates (59 percent), and liberals (36 percent) were well represented among the Californians who voted in favor of Proposition 227. In the same exit poll, only 13 percent of “no” voters cited “Bilingual education works” as their reason for opposing the initiative (Los Angeles Times Poll, 1998b). By refusing to discuss the issue of pedagogical effectiveness – or to defend bilingual education in any way – the No on 227 campaign failed to educate many voters who might have been convinced to support the program on its merits (Crawford, 2000). Given those circumstances, it would seem difficult to distinguish the racists from the well meaning but misinformed.

This question has rarely been debated among advocates for bilingual education. Perhaps it should be. Assumptions about negative public attitudes – whether they are based primarily on racism or primarily on ignorance – have played a major role in shaping political strategies for opposing English-only initiatives. Except in one case, those strategies have been unsuccessful. Advocates need to understand why in order to learn from their mistakes.

That said, it should be noted that neither hypothesis is a very sharp instrument for analyzing the ideological obstacles to be overcome. For example, neither can explain the historic slippage of support for bilingual education. There is no reason to believe that Americans are any more hostile toward immigrants and Spanish speakers in 2003 than they were in 1983, the year the English-only movement was launched. If anything, nativism is on the decline. Both Republicans and Democrats are beginning to recognize Latinos as an important voting bloc, and are courting them as never before. Numerous politicians, including the president of the United States, have made a point of learning some Spanish and speaking it public. It is undeniable that many Anglo-Americans still object to governmental uses of languages other than English. But their visceral reactions are becoming less common now that linguistic diversity is becoming more so.

There is also no evidence that voters know any less today about methods of teaching English learners than they did in the past. Ignorance about these matters has been constant and pervasive. Huddy and Sears (1990), analyzing data gathered twenty years ago, found that 68 percent of Anglo respondents were unable to provide a “substantially accurate” description of bilingual education and that 55 percent reported giving little or no thought to the issue.

It is unlikely, of course, that many Americans who have no direct stake in programs for English learners will spontaneously see a need to become knowledgeable in this area. But that does not mean advocates should stop combating misconceptions, especially among journalists, politicians, and other opinion leaders. Ways of thinking about bilingual education can be changed – as, indeed, they have been changed through the relentless propagandizing of opponents in recent years. Educating the voters is not merely a question of curing their ignorance of the facts. Macedo (2000) is correct to stress the importance of the ideological context in which the facts are arranged. The framing of an issue normally determines its political fortunes. For advocates seeking to intervene effectively, the challenge is to determine what the ideological context is and how it functions, rather than relying on moral assumptions to formulate strategy.

Framing Bilingual Education

Ruíz’s (1984) “orientations in language planning” can be usefully applied to describe rationales for bilingual education:

• Language as problem treats limited English proficiency as a handicap for children, as well as a liability for the country, that cries out for remedial attention. Educators need to address the language mismatch between home and school so these students can join mainstream classrooms, earn their diplomas, and become self-supporting. This largely describes the orientation of legislators who drafted the original Bilingual Education Act (1968) and similar state legislation, which emphasized the transition to English as rapidly as possible.
• Language as right focuses on equal educational opportunity for minority children whose needs have often been neglected. Viewed through this lens, bilingual education becomes a way to overcome language barriers that obstruct students’ access to the curriculum and keep them from succeeding academically. This was the orientation of language minority parents who sued school districts in cases like Lau v. Nichols (1974) demanding an end to the practice of “sink or swim” instruction.
• Language as resource stresses the value of conserving cultural capital – bilingualism in particular – both for individuals and for society. Bilingual education offers a way to develop skills in the heritage language as well as in English and, conversely, to introduce children to the dominant culture without destroying their home culture. This orientation has been associated with the English Plus response to the English-only campaign that emerged in the mid-1980s, but it was largely shared by educators who launched the “bilingual movement” in the mid-1960s (see Crawford, 2000b).

These distinct approaches might also be described, respectively, as the Remedial Paradigm, the Equal Opportunity Paradigm, and the Multiculturalist Paradigm. Each is more or less consistent as a logical framework and each builds on political values, such as promoting social welfare and productivity, ensuring fair play, and fostering ethnic tolerance. Despite the differences in emphasis, the contradictions among these paradigms are not always obvious. In explaining bilingual education, some advocates (myself included) have incorporated elements of all three. Where the differences become salient is in the public discourse, as policy alternatives are thrashed out. To illustrate this phenomenon, a bit of history is helpful.

Paradigm Drift

Although the Equal Opportunity Paradigm played a limited role in deliberations that led to the Bilingual Education Act (1968), it became prominent by the mid-1970s. This was due partly to the prevailing political winds, which favored attention to minority rights, and partly to policy developments at the federal level such as Lau v. Nichols (1974). One of the few language cases ever to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, this decision had a huge impact on the way Americans thought about bilingual education. Simply put, the court’s ruling made schools – not parents or children – responsible for coping with limited English proficiency. Neglecting the issue, as schools had typically done, would henceforth be considered a violation of LEP students’ right to an equal education. The court declined to require bilingual instruction, but the Ford and Carter administrations soon did so where school districts had failed to meet their obligations. Using a set of informal guidelines known as the Lau Remedies, officials aggressively enforced the new mandate. Meanwhile, in the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (1974), Congress made the Lau decision an explicit part of federal law. Additional lawsuits by Latino parents followed, resulting in further mandates for bilingual education.

Members of the public knew little about the legal technicalities or the pedagogical research in this area. But in principle, the Equal Opportunity Paradigm was not difficult to grasp. It meant opening up the curriculum as a matter of social justice to children who had long been excluded. Bilingual education appeared to be the most promising way to accomplish this goal, according to the federal government and states such as Massachusetts, which also made the program mandatory. Few Americans at the time were inclined to second-guess this conclusion.

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to overestimate the strength of such convictions. When asked what to do about the problem of “families who come from other countries [with] children who cannot speak English,” 82 percent of a national sample said these students should “be required to learn English in special classes before they are enrolled in the public schools” (Gallup Poll, 1980). Clearly, the Remedial Paradigm remained alive and well. Anglo-Americans who understood bilingual education as a transition to English were likely to support it – unlike those who understood it as a program designed to maintain other languages (Huddy and Sears, 1990). While the Multiculturalist Paradigm was popular with educators and ethnic activists, among the public it was more likely to inspire opposition than acceptance.

By the late 1970s some grumbling was audible. Members of Congress were concerned by a national study that found English learners were not doing especially well in federally funded bilingual programs (Danoff et al., 1978). Some were alarmed that 86 percent of these programs cited the development of students’ Spanish skills as one of their goals. Noel Epstein (1977), a Washington Post editor, complained in an influential monograph that bilingual educators’ goal was to promote “affirmative ethnicity” – using public funds to preserve minority cultures – rather than a quick transition to the mainstream. The allusion to affirmative action, which was also coming under attack (e.g., in Bakke v. Regents of University of California, 1978), was hardly accidental. Reflecting the new impatience with “special favors” for minorities, Congress banned federal funding for language maintenance programs in 1978. Substantial support for developmental bilingual education would not be restored until the 1990s.

Nevertheless, there was no direct assault on the Equal Opportunity Paradigm – only on the Multiculturalist Paradigm. Support for using bilingual programs to teach English and equip minority students to succeed remained strong. It was the idea of maintaining other languages that drew political fire, first, because it contradicted the idea of a quick transition to English, and second, because it implied a takeover of the program by ethnic militants with a different agenda. Determined opponents of bilingual education, such as Senator S. I. Hayakawa of California, began to argue that the program had nothing to do with civil rights. The real impact, he charged, was to maintain Spanish language enclaves, discourage immigrants from assimilating, and encourage Quebec-style separatism (Hayakawa, 1982). Language as problem, indeed. After leaving Congress in 1983, Hayakawa cofounded an organization called U.S. English to popularize this line of argument and to lobby for English as the nation’s official language.

Meanwhile, the Lau Remedies had become a target of criticism. School districts resented the bilingual mandate, and nearly every education interest group opposed a Carter Administration plan to make it a permanent regulation. Soon after, Ronald Reagan was elected on a promise to limit “big government.” Civil rights regulations in this area were withdrawn and enforcement virtually ceased. Throughout the 1980s federal courts grew increasingly conservative and unsympathetic to petitions for bilingual education. Reagan Administration officials stressed “local flexibility” rather than local obligations to provide effective programs. They leaked an internal review of the research literature claiming there was no conclusive evidence for the effectiveness of bilingual instruction as compared with all-English approaches (Baker and de Kanter, 1981). Few educational researchers – and none with expertise in language acquisition – endorsed this conclusion. Nevertheless, Reagan’s secretary of education William Bennett (1985) cited the report in declaring the Bilingual Education Act “a failed path.” He argued that “a sense of cultural pride cannot come at the price of proficiency in English, our common language.” In a sadistic touch, Bennett accused bilingual educators of practicing language maintenance, knowing full well that – while many of them favored developmental approaches – his department was funding transitional programs only. Actually, this was part of a calculated strategy. Bennett sought to pin the Multiculturalist label on bilingual education, hoping to overshadow its Equal Opportunity rationale.

The program’s defenders counterattacked by accusing the Education Department of lowering expectations for language-minority students – in effect, for espousing the Remedial Paradigm. James J. Lyons (1985), lobbyist for the National Association for Bilingual Education, charged that Bennett’s single-minded focus on the language problem had “redefined the meaning of equal educational opportunity. … [N]o one with an ounce of sense would say that a child who has mastered English but who has not learned mathematics, history, geography, civics, and the other subjects taught in school was educated or prepared for life in this society” (p. 14).

‘English Plus’

The Spanish-American League Against Discrimination (SALAD), a Miami-based group of Cuban American educators, issued a manifesto that echoed this theme. But it went further, explicitly embracing the Multiculturalist Paradigm:

“Secretary Bennett fears that ‘we have lost sight of the goal of learning English as key to equal educational opportunity.’ We fear that Secretary Bennett has lost sight of the fact that English is a key to equal educational opportunity, necessary but not sufficient. English by itself is not enough. NOT ENGLISH ONLY, ENGLISH PLUS! … English Plus math. Plus science. Plus social studies. Plus equal educational opportunities. English plus competence in the home language. …

“‘Our common forefathers speak to us through the ages in English.’ My forefathers did not speak English, nor did my foremothers. Neither did the ancestors of Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Hispanics in the Southwest and California territories, the French in the Louisiana Territory, the Germans in the Midwest, or the Asians, Italians, Poles, Greeks, Arabs, or Afro-Americans throughout this nation. Linguistic chauvinism has no place in today’s interdependent world. … To say that we make our country stronger because we make it ‘U.S. English’ is like saying that we make it stronger by making it ‘U.S. White.’ It is as insidious to base the strength or unity of the United States in one language as it is to base that strength or unity in one race.” (Quoted in Feinberg, 2002, pp. 238-239; emphases in original)

For most opponents of the English-only movement, English Plus soon became the chief rallying cry and policy alternative (Combs, 1992). While championing the civil rights of language minorities, it put greater stress on the benefits of multilingual skills (EPIC, 1987). This tendency is summed up in popular slogans like “Two languages are better than one” and “Bilingualism is beautiful.” Allies in Congress sponsored an English Plus Resolution (1995) citing the national interest in developing language resources that would enhance U.S. trade, diplomacy, culture, social welfare, and human relations. Such high-minded arguments – which are hard to fault in principle – appealed especially to language educators, ethnic advocacy groups, and persons who were already bilingual. The problem was that English Plus generated limited enthusiasm in other quarters. Perhaps that was because improving foreign language teaching hardly seemed an urgent matter for most Americans, who placed it on a par with, say, improving music or art instruction. Meanwhile, the broader multiculturalist campaign to celebrate “difference” was beginning to provoke a backlash. To many, the meaning of English Plus was not immediately obvious (English plus what?), which created further suspicions (Combs, 1992).

Most problematic was the fact that English Plus tended to reinforce the ideological frame that Hayakawa and Bennett were trying to erect: that the priority of bilingual education was not to teach English but to maintain other languages. This described neither the aspirations of most language-minority parents nor the reality of most bilingual classrooms. It sounded credible, however, as educators talked less about civil rights and more about the wonders of speaking two languages. By the 1990s the Multiculturalist Paradigm had come to dominate their advocacy. The Stanford Working Group (Hakuta et al., 1993), for example, successfully pressured Congress and the Clinton Administration to add heritage language development as a priority in awarding Title VII funds. (The expert panel’s other recommendations for improving the education of English learners were couched primarily in terms of school reform and accountability.) Further encouragement came from a major federal study (Ramírez, Yuen, and Ramey, 1991), which confirmed that developmental bilingual education was a superior way to foster academic achievement in English and bilingualism, too. Truly “the best of both worlds,” as enthusiasts had sloganized in the 1970s. But now it was the world of language diversity that most excited the field. For many educators, the goal of bilingualism seemed to occupy a higher moral plane than the goal of success in the English mainstream. This viewpoint remains common. A recent bilingual education conference featured the following keynote addresses: “Language Education Policy in a Multilingual Globalized World,” “Just About Everyone Can Become Bilingual,” and “Let’s Cure Monolingualism and Save the World” (NYSABE, 2003).

Meanwhile, many researchers had tired of the polarized and simplistic debate over bilingual versus English-only instruction (e.g., August and Hakuta, 1997). Transitional programs, often fraught with weaknesses unrelated to language, had few enthusiasts. Yet there was increasing excitement about two-way bilingual education, or – to use the more sanitized term – “dual immersion.” (Note 2) Here was a perfect example of English Plus. Rather than a special program to help disadvantaged students overcome academic deficits, this would be an enrichment program designed to serve all students. The theory was that language-majority and language-minority children would both contribute valuable resources, learn each others’ languages at no cost to academic achievement, and everyone would benefit. If enough English-speaking parents could be won over, the future of bilingual education would be secure. As it happened, two-way programs did grow significantly – more than tenfold – between 1987 and 2001 (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2002). Despite limited evidence from controlled studies (see Krashen, forthcoming), their pedagogical promise has been widely hailed. Politically, however, things did not work out quite as planned.

English-Only, Phase II

For U.S. English, bilingual education served as a convenient symbol for the menace of bilingualism: a source of “language ghettos,” divided loyalties, and illiteracy in English. In one magazine advertisement assailing the program, it used the headline: “Last Year Our Government Spent Nearly $8 Billion Abusing Children.” Such scare tactics were effective in fundraising and advocacy for English-as-official-language legislation. But the rhetoric was so extreme and the nativism so transparent that U.S. English seldom played any serious role in policy debates. The group engaged in some minor skirmishes, but it never mounted a frontal assault on bilingual education. It concentrated instead on promoting English-only restrictions in government, from which native-language instruction was routinely exempted. If there was ever a paper tiger, U.S. English was it. More sophisticated predators, however, were lurking nearby.

The new opponents presented themselves as mainstream conservatives, not single-issue zealots. By posing as advocates for immigrant parents, they saw a way to reconstruct the Equal Opportunity Paradigm as a frame for attacking bilingual education. In a widely circulated Reader’s Digest article, Linda Chávez (1995) told the stories of children allegedly victimized by a “multibillion-dollar bureaucracy” – misassigned to bilingual classrooms, held there against their parents’ will, and prevented from learning English. While Russian, Korean, and Chinese children were given “intensive ESL classes,” she charged, Hispanic students were forced to study mostly in their native language and held back academically. Her so-called Center for Equal Opportunity financed a lawsuit on behalf of Latino parents in New Mexico, claiming their children were being discriminated against by state policies mandating Spanish instruction. A federal judge later threw out the case (Carbajal et al. v. Albuquerque Public Schools, 1999), but it more than paid for itself in media exposure. The tables were turned: bilingual education was now portrayed as a civil rights violation.

This claim received wider circulation in 1996, when a group of Spanish-speaking parents pulled their children out of school for two weeks, claiming that the Los Angeles school district was refusing to teach their children English. At least, that was how the news media portrayed these events: as an epic tale of downtrodden immigrants rebelling against autocratic officials. The reality was more complicated. To remove their children from bilingual classrooms, all the parents would have needed to do was go to the school principal’s office and sign a form. But the local activist who organized the boycott – and also provided child care on which the parents depended – urged them not to do so. This prolonged the conflict and generated negative headlines for bilingual education around the country (Crawford, 1998).

Enter Ron Unz, a software millionaire, aspiring politician, and “movement conservative.” Immediately he recognized a target of opportunity. Here was a liberal do-gooder program, a relic of the 1960s welfare state, that was being rejected by its intended beneficiaries. No one appeared to support or understand bilingual education except those employed to run it and their academic supporters – in other words, people whose opinions could be dismissed as self-serving. Organizing public opposition would be simple in any case, because teaching students in Spanish when they needed to learn English seemed to defy common sense. The purported victims would make wonderful poster children – literally – while parents carrying picket signs would recall images of the Chicano civil rights movement; except that the shoe would be on the Right foot this time. The California legislature had been deadlocked over bilingual education for years by ethnic politics, but a ballot initiative would not face that problem. It would attract enormous media attention, both for the issue and for the sponsor himself. Unz was prepared to finance the campaign single-handedly. So he formed a political action committee, named it “English for the Children,” and laid out his case on the Internet:

“Begun with the best of theoretical intentions some twenty or thirty years ago, bilingual education has proven itself a dismal practical failure, especially in California. Today, 25% of all California children in public schools – almost 1.4 million – are classified as not proficient in English. …We believe that the unity and prosperity of our society is gravely threatened by government efforts to prevent young immigrant children from learning English. Our initiative will end bilingual education by ensuring that all California schoolchildren are taught English, unless there are special circumstances and their parents object. If it passes, today's immigrant children will be given the same opportunity to become educated, productive members of society that our own immigrant ancestors enjoyed.” (English for the Children, 1997)

Bilingual education versus English acquisition, failure versus opportunity, preventing children from learning English versus ensuring their right to do so. The Equal Opportunity Paradigm could sound convincing even when turned inside out. To bolster his case, Unz seized on an obscure statistic. “Under the current system, centered on bilingual education,” he charged, “only about 5 percent of these children each year are found to have gained proficiency in English. Thus, our state's current system of language instruction has an annual failure rate of 95 percent” (English for the Children, 1997; emphasis in original). In fact, less than a third of the state’s English learners were in fully bilingual classrooms. Neither research nor experience supported a one-year standard for English acquisition, and – for the record – that year’s “redesignation rate” was 7 percent. But the news media seemed to fall in love with Unz’s sound-bite and seldom applied any critical scrutiny. The “95 percent failure rate” became a mantra repeated in scores, if not hundreds, of press reports during the campaign (Crawford, 1998).

To burnish his “pro-immigrant” image, Unz took pains to distance himself from U.S. English and other traditional English-only groups, with their anti-Latino baggage. Moreover, in drafting Proposition 227, he inserted a provision guaranteeing that “all California school children have the right to be provided with an English language public education” (English Language in Public Schools, 1998, Sec. 320). Nativist fringe groups, which wanted to terminate public services to “illegal aliens,” predictably attacked the initiative. This boosted Unz’s credibility with the news media and with moderate and liberal voters who were already skeptical of bilingual education. Most conservatives, meanwhile, needed no convincing to oppose the program. It’s no wonder that Proposition 227 started out with 80 percent support in the polls.

Survival Strategies

Faced with this juggernaut, bilingual education advocates sought advice from political professionals on how to respond to Unz’s initiatives in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts (in Arizona they lacked the resources to do so). These consultants commissioned polling and focus groups to sample the views of likely voters, and they returned with the news that bilingual education was rather unpopular. In California, for example, 79 percent of respondents felt that schools “spent too much time teaching students in non-English languages”; 69 percent thought that the state was “spending $400 million a year on a failed program”; and 74 percent believed that English immersion “would move students quickly into regular classrooms.” When counter-arguments to Proposition 227 were tested, the most promising were the threat of personal lawsuits against educators (61 percent said that might persuade them to vote “no”); the arbitrary mainstreaming of English learners after one year (57 percent); and the folly of mixing students by age and grade (55 percent) (Citizens for an Educated America, [1997]).

Based on these surveys, the political consultants reached essentially the same conclusion in all three states: If voters perceive this measure as a referendum on bilingual education, it will pass easily. A winning strategy would have to divert their attention to other issues – for example, to various extreme provisions of the initiative. In other words, none of the familiar paradigms for explaining the program looked promising. The only hope would be to change the subject, rather than try to make the case for bilingual education. As one campaign consultant told an expert in the field who had been invited to debate Ron Unz: (Note 3).

“I CANNOT win on the facts – at least not as you and my other friends in the bilingual community would articulate them. And as you know, Unz does not play fair. Therefore, my job is to create confusion and controversy rather than debate dueling test scores with Ron. Liberals spend too much time beating their chest in righteous defeat. ... Winners make the laws!” (Welchert, 2002; emphasis in original.)

Generally speaking, the official campaign groups opposing Unz followed this advice. In California, they went so far as to post it on their web site: "DO NOT get into a discussion defending bilingual education” (Citizens for an Educated America, 1998; emphasis in original). But the No on 227 campaign never found its voice, jumping from one diversionary tactic to another without arousing much voter interest. Arizona opponents of Proposition 203 focused primarily on the threat to “parents’ rights” – in a state where school choice is revered – but also got nowhere. (This approach never received a serious test, however, because the campaign was so disorganized, divided, and underfunded.) In Massachusetts, the No on Question 2 committee used as its main slogan “Don’t Sue Teachers,” another poll-driven strategy that proved disastrous, allowing Unz to score his biggest landslide in a reputedly liberal state. Opponents of Colorado’s Amendment 31, who called themselves English Plus, adopted a similar ploy of diverting attention from bilingual education to the initiative’s unsavory features. They stressed the potential cost to taxpayers, the punitive provisions for educators, and the denial of parents’ right to choose. But there the results were quite different, as Unz suffered his first defeat in what most considered a conservative state. The same day that he won by 36 percentage points in Massachusetts he was losing by 12 percentage points in Colorado (see Table I).

What accounts for the disparity in outcomes? On the surface, it would seem that if the strategies were similar, the difference must have been in how they were executed or in what the English-only side did wrong. According to its leaders (Escamilla et al., 2002), Colorado’s No on 31 campaign was well organized and broad-based. It also benefited from a $3 million contribution from a local billionaire who had a child in two-way bilingual education. The money enabled opponents to mount an intensive advertising blitz against the initiative in a state where most voters are concentrated in a single media market. Their counterparts in Massachusetts worked hard, but were less successful on all of these counts. With limited resources behind it, the Don’t Sue Teachers message never caught on. The campaign had limited impact beyond the ranks of progressive educators. Meanwhile, the English-only effort in Colorado relied heavily on two political mavericks, Rita Montero and Dick Lamm, who – along with Unz himself – alienated the state’s Republican establishment. In Massachusetts, by contrast, the Republican candidate for governor made support for Question 2 a centerpiece of his winning campaign.

Another plausible explanation is that the libertarian, albeit conservative, culture of Colorado was simply inhospitable to a heavy-handed English-only mandate. That hypothesis is undercut, however, by the fact that Arizona, a neighboring state with similar traditions, overwhelmingly approved an Unz initiative in 2000. While parental choice and local control of schools are popular in both states, voters are generally more pragmatic than ideological. They tend to ask: “Choice for what purpose?” Absent a convincing case for bilingual education, libertarian objections to either Amendment 31 or Proposition 203 would seem to have played a minor role in these elections.

One might also speculate that money proved decisive in Colorado. No doubt the $3 million contribution was extremely helpful – putting the English Plus campaign in the same league as candidates for governor and U.S. Senator. But opponents of Proposition 227 also raised a substantial sum, nearly $5 million, enabling them to run television commercials throughout California. Ultimately, the No campaigns in both states outspent the English-only side on advertising by about 20-1.

How the ‘Good Guys’ Won

There was one other significant difference. In Colorado, Unz’s opponents tried a new type of diversionary approach, which could be summarized as: If you can’t beat racism, then try to exploit it. Their television commercials stressed the initiative’s threat to Anglo children, charging that it would “knowingly force children who can barely speak English into regular classrooms, creating chaos and disrupting learning” (Rocky Mountain News, 2002a). By implication, a vote to preserve bilingual education would be a vote to preserve segregation.

On the day after the election, the political consultants for English Plus, John Britz and Steve Welchert, laid out their strategy for a journalist (Mitchell, 2002). First, they had determined early on that bilingual education was too complicated to explain to skeptical voters. “Nobody understands what it is,” Britz said. “We didn’t.” Second, “our polling show[ed] no sensitivity to the Latino culture in Colorado. … If this is about being Mexican, for Mexicans, about Mexicans, it's gone.” They concluded that, to win over a largely Anglo electorate, they had to appeal directly to Anglo self-interest:

“An ‘a-ha’ moment came in September, Britz said. They were interviewing what they considered a typical suburban voter – female, Republican, a parent. The woman was adamant in her support of 31. Then Britz said her own children would be affected. That her child’s teacher might be distracted by having to work with students who know little English. ‘She turned,’ he said. ‘She said, “They're going to put them in my kid’s class?”’ That moment led to what would become a key slogan for No on 31 – the controversial ‘Chaos in the Classroom’ theme hammered home in their TV ads. …

“[T]he TV spots are dark, showing still pictures of sad-looking children while an announcer ominously lists the faults in Amendment 31. In one, the announcer states children who speak little English, largely Hispanic students, would disrupt the education of ‘your children’ – presumably the majority white families of Colorado. …

“As for the merits of the campaign and the criticism it has drawn, the two say that's politics. Welchert recalls [an] early meeting with Hispanic leaders. ‘Do you want to win?’ he asked them, ‘or do you want to be right?’” (Mitchell, 2002; emphasis added)

This well circulated message was qualitatively different from any that Unz’s opponents had used before. And it appears to have been effective. In an election in which Republicans swept most offices statewide, Amendment 31 was easily defeated, failing in 54 of 64 counties (CNN.com, 2002). While a majority of Latinos appear to have voted against the English-only measure – as they have generally done in other states (Note 4) – they represented just 10 percent of Colorado’s electorate, down from 14 percent in 2000 (Sailer, 2002). It was the white Anglos, including many conservatives who broke from their usual pattern of support for Unz, that made the difference. “Chaos in the Classroom” is the most likely explanation.

Notwithstanding its success, questions remain about the strategy. Is there a price to be paid when English-only opponents exploit racism toward Latino children? Does their credibility suffer when they implicitly endorse the segregation of English language learners? How secure is bilingual education in the long term when its advocates make little attempt to defend it against criticism? Can this struggle be won by tricking the voters, without honestly addressing their concerns and correcting their misconceptions? Do the facts matter at all in this debate?

Escamilla et al. (2002) argue that “the significance of this victory” in Colorado should outweigh any tactical compromises that were made:

“To date, we are the only state that has been able to mount a significant fight against Ron Unz and his one year English Immersion ‘poison pill’ for ELL children. ... What does this mean? It means that for the first time, in years, our teachers, administrators, parents and children have something to celebrate instead of something to fear. It means that for even a short little while we can think that sometimes ‘the good guys win.’”

While declining to defend the message of the TV spots, the English Plus leaders insist that they had overcome Unz’s lead in the polls even before the $3 million in advertisements began to air. Presumably, they could have won without them. Yet they fail to explain how their campaign otherwise differed from those that failed so badly in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts.

Pimentel (2002) offers a more forthright justification for how the “good guys” won:

“Campaigns, unfortunately, are often not about who has the facts, but about who has the most effective message. …In Colorado, a big part of the message was, essentially, that Spanish-speaking children would be mainstreamed too soon. The implicit message: Your own kids will suffer because they will be in classes with kids who don't speak, read or write English well. Unz promptly accused the anti-initiative folks of scare tactics and race-baiting. (Which strikes me a lot like the pot calling the kettle black). But truth is a defense here. Kids in English immersion are more likely to be pushed into the mainstream before they're ready. It's why so many educators oppose efforts to dismantle bilingual ed. Yes, ‘chaos in the classroom,’ as the commercials were tagged, probably wasn’t intended to appeal to Colorado voters' sense of fairness. … A billionaire trumps a millionaire. Not fair? Probably. But neither have been English-for-the-Children campaigns that relied on simplistic, coded and well-funded messages to elicit knee-jerk reactions.”

This kind of reasoning, by Pimentel and others, seems like a rather slippery slope. There is a logical progression between the premises that:

• Strong opposition to bilingual education among the American public is based largely on bigotry.
• Bigots cannot be persuaded by rational arguments about what is best for English language learners.
• If the facts do not matter in this debate, defending bilingual education against erroneous charges is a waste of time.
• The English-only campaign is so unjust that any tactics that work in opposing it are legitimate – including tactics that exploit racism toward LEP children.

Certainly, there was some truth in the English Plus advertisements. Unz’s initiatives require English learners to be mainstreamed after one year, before most of these children are ready. That arbitrary approach is likely to harm students’ academic growth and place undue demands on mainstream teachers, which would mean less attention to the needs of other students. All children could suffer. It is a reasonable argument, which opponents had used before. What was new in the Colorado campaign was the implication that bilingual education should be preserved as a way to segregate minority children so they would not disrupt the education of English-speaking children. That goal, if not the means, would be endorsed by most nativists and denounced by most Latino parents. Such a cynical tactic seems to break faith with the core constituency of bilingual education, a risky proposition for a program with so few active supporters. It could also damage what credibility the field has left with journalists, politicians, and other opinion leaders. Indeed, the “chaos” commercials were vilified in a Colorado newspaper that opposed the initiative (Rocky Mountain News, 2002a).

In appealing to Anglo voters, the English Plus consultants accurately gauged the weakness of the Multiculturalist Paradigm. But by making no argument about the benefits of bilingual education for English learners, they abandoned the Equal Opportunity Paradigm for (at best) the Remedial Paradigm, which conceives language-minority students as a “problem” for the schools and for society (cf. Gallup, 1980). Moreover, by offering no defense of bilingual education on pedagogical grounds, they opened the door to restrictive legislation in the future. Governor Bill Owens, a Republican who opposed Amendment 31 because of its sue-the-educators provision, nevertheless endorsed the “worthy goal” behind it: a mandate for English immersion (Sanko, 2002). A “moderate” bill along those lines failed in the Colorado legislature in 2003, but is likely to be back next year.

What Next?

In responding to English-only campaigns, advocates face some fundamental choices. First, should they continue to rely on diversionary tactics to mislead voters and outmaneuver opponents? Or should they work actively to explain the rationale for bilingual education and win public support on its merits? So far the former approach has worked once, thanks to an unprincipled message and a billionaire’s donation. The latter remains largely untried. In the intellectual battle over bilingual education, the campaigns opposing Ron Unz surrendered without firing a shot. Lacking the resolve to defend their profession or the wherewithal to divert voters’ attention, they suffered disastrous defeats in three states. Surely there is a lesson here.

Second, advocates need to decide how to organize themselves for maximum effect. Are professional organizations now supplying the needed leadership? Is their focus on legislative lobbying, to the exclusion of media work and community outreach, sufficient to improve the standing of bilingual education? Or would an activist approach make more sense, one that attempts to shape public opinion and mobilize grassroots support? At a time when traditional allies, including most Latino politicians, are keeping a low profile on the issue, do bilingual educators need to take more responsibility for their own fate? It should be noted that, as individuals, numerous members of the field are already devoting themselves to advocacy in various ways. Some are making headway, scoring occasional victories at the local level. The campaigns against Unz’s initiatives demonstrated, however, that without sustained and coordinated efforts, the impact of such work is usually limited. Those who hope to prevent further erosion of political support and further English-only restrictions need to regroup behind more effective approaches.

Finally, for advocates who recognize the urgency of the situation, there is the question of strategy. Should they rely primarily on the Multiculturalist Paradigm, seeking to win over the American public with arguments like “bilingualism is beautiful”? Or should they revive the Equal Opportunity paradigm, which once generated passion in Latino communities and sympathy among many Anglos? Writing more than a decade ago, Huddy and Sears (1990) were accurate in predicting political adversity for bilingual education to the extent it “is portrayed as cultural and linguistic maintenance.” Their article appeared just as the Multiculturalist Paradigm began to become dominant within the field and among some federal and state policymakers. During the 1990s, as public resistance increased, advocates became increasingly wedded to this approach – for example, showering attention on two-way programs that still enroll just 1-2 percent of the nation’s LEP students. Simultaneously, they downplayed the role of bilingual education in fostering English acquisition and academic achievement in English. Yet those goals remain paramount not only with the American public, but also with language-minority communities. While many parents place value on bilingualism as well, opinion surveys leave no doubt that equal opportunity is their chief concern. The former should by no means be ignored. But the latter deserves a great deal more emphasis than it has recently received.

Times have changed, of course. There is no guarantee that a rationale for bilingual education that made sense to many Americans in 1973 or 1983 would be equally compelling in 2003. But the Equal Opportunity Paradigm offers some clear advantages. First, it would help to assuage public worries that the program has been diverted from its original purpose: to prepare English learners to succeed in an English-dominant society. Second, it would provide a context to clarify how bilingual education works, debunk pervasive myths, and address honest concerns about whether students are learning. Third, it would inspire renewed activism among language-minority parents and communities. Finally, it would appeal to all Americans’ best instincts – in particular, their sense of fairness – and challenge them to do what is best for language-minority children.

Notes