Language policy, educational equality, and dual language bilingual education in the U.S.

Language policy, educational equality, and dual language bilingual education in the U.S.

Language policy, educational equality, and dual language bilingual education in the U.S. (20120)

Kara M Rash ¹ , David C Johnson ¹

University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States

This paper analyses the growth in Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) programs in the United States. A changing linguistic ecology has encouraged educators and policymakers to innovate language policies and practices that expand DLBE programs. While the growth in multilingual programs is a potentially positive development for educational equity, and normalizing (as ordinary) multilingual education, this paper analyses two major challenges: (1) a lack of resources and professional development necessary to maintain high quality DLBE programs, and (2) the exacerbation of power imbalances omnipresent in U.S. education.

We begin with a historical-structural analysis (Tollefson, 2015) of how “dual language” has eclipsed “bilingual” in federal and state language policy. Intertextual data analyses (Fairclough, 1992) reveal how a history of language policy text and discourse, informed by hegemonic language ideologies, has marginalized the word “bilingual” while concomitantly promoting dual language programs that, not surprisingly, accommodate and sometimes privilege White English speakers. Sometimes referred to as the gentrification of bilingual education (Palmer & García-Mateus, 2022), this analysis reveals how this educational phenomenon is connected to changing language policy.

We then analyse how language policy has been interpreted and appropriated in K-12 schools and focus on data collected during a 5-year project in the U.S. state of Iowa. Data were collected in focus-group interviews with DLBE teachers and analysis focused on the intertextual connections across the interviews and between the interview and document textual data.

We argue that DLBE programs at the local level appropriate federal language policy changes that exoticize and marginalize bilingual programs that have historically emphasized the needs of minoritized Spanish speakers. Still, we end with an argument for how DLBE programs can be enhanced to challenge linguistic and sociolinguistic hierarchies and provide educational opportunity for minoritized students.

Authors contributing to this abstract.

Rash, K.M

Johnson, D.C

David Cassels Johnson is Professor of Multilingual Education at the University of Iowa and Visiting Professor of Language Policy and Planning at Shanghai International Studies University. He holds a PhD (with distinction) in Educational Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. His areas of expertise include Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, ESL/Bilingual Education, and Language Policy and Planning. His research, teaching, and service focus on how language policies impact educational opportunities for minoritized language users in schools and society. Before coming to the University of Iowa in 2013, he held faculty positions in education and linguistics at Washington State University and Texas A&M University and was a visiting lecturer at the University of Equatorial Guinea and the University of Costa Rica. He consults and lectures about language policy and educational equity in different parts of the world. He has published over 45 books, book chapters, and journal articles and serves on the editorial board of six journals.

Language policy, educational equality, and dual language bilingual education in the U.S. (20120)

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Rash, K.M

Johnson, D.C

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