Agenda for Inaction:
A Critique of the National Research Council Report
Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children
by James Crawford
This article was first published in the International Journal
of the Sociology of Language, 155/156 (2002): 93-99, commenting on a
featured monograph by Eugene E. Garcia. Copyright
© 2002 by Walter de Gruyter.
Research on bilingualism in American schools has more often addressed the
preoccupations of policymakers than the needs of students, parents, or educators.
Large-scale studies, following passage of the Bilingual Education Act of
1968, were designed primarily to justify or repudiate existing policies.
Funded largely by the federal government, they focused largely on program
results: Was the government getting good value for its money? did bilingual
education “work”? would English-only instruction be more “effective”? This
emphasis came at the expense of more complex investigations into the learning
of diverse student populations under diverse conditions. Generally speaking,
pragmatism reigned while theory was slighted; simplistic questions were asked
and, as a result, few of the answers were pedagogically valuable.(1)
Such shortcomings are hardly unusual in government-sponsored research. What
has distinguished research on language-minority education, however, has been
its increasing politicization. Since the early 1980s, bilingualism has become
a lightning rod for ethnic tensions in the wider society. Hence the undue
emphasis on language of instruction. The question of whether or not to use
minority mother tongues in public school classrooms became charged with political
symbolism. Though hardly the only variable in outcomes for English language
learners, it was often treated as such in policy deliberations, including
those involving the design and interpretation of research.
One sure constant in the policymaking process has been advocacy, with two
“sides” lobbying for and against bilingual education. Ironically, this polarized
environment has tended to limit rather foster a vigorous debate within the
field. Researchers have learned to be careful in what they say, knowing their
words can and will be used against them in other forums, often distorted or
out of context. Few would deny that such polarization interferes with serious
studies of language and learning. Certainly, it tends to distort the process
of making pedagogical decisions for students, whose interests are often subordinated
to ideological concerns. Yet among researchers today there is no firm consensus
on how to respond to this state of affairs, at either the scientific level
or the political level.
Professor Garcia suggests that the remedy for politicization is a different
kind of research agenda. Rather than pursue the chimera of a universally effective
program model for English learners, he favors developing a “knowledge base”
of “best practices” shown to have long-term benefits “for bilingual children
and families with different characteristics under [varying] circumstances,”
along with an understanding of why specific interventions are beneficial.
“It is the lack of answers to [these] critical questions,” he argues, “that
places educational services to Hispanic students(2) in jeopardy of haphazard and highly politicized
policy initiatives like California’s Proposition 227,” the ballot measure
that dismantled most of the state’s bilingual programs. Presumably, if researchers
and educators could do a better job in shaping effective pedagogies, voters
and politicians could be dissuaded from their rash actions.
This approach is consistent with recent recommendations by the National
Research Council (NRC) in Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children:
A Research Agenda: “We need to think in terms of program components,
not politically motivated labels. ... Theory-based interventions need to
be created and evaluated. ... A developmental model needs to be created for
use in predicting the effects of program components on children in different
environments” (August and Hakuta 1997, p. 138). In effect, the NRC
panel called for a cease-fire in the debate over language of instruction.
It concluded that “beneficial effects” were apparent both in “programs that
are labeled ‘bilingual education’ [and] in some programs that are labeled
‘immersion.’ ... We see little value in conducting evaluations to determine
which type of program is best” (p. 147). In a press release announcing its
report, the NRC panel (1997) went even further in characterizing the state
of the research: “Evaluations have proved inconclusive about which teaching
approaches work best” (p. 2). Therefore, it urged policymakers to call off
their hunt for the best “one-size-fits-all program” and support instead “a
model for research and development that would be grounded in knowledge about
the linguistic, social, and cognitive development of children” (p. 3).
With its even-handed criticisms and distaste for “advocacy” by “all sides,”
the panel sought to stake out a sensible center between ideological extremes.
It appealed for a separation of pedagogy from politics that would free researchers
to function as scientists without partisan interference, better able to study
the diverse needs of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students and to provide
constructive advice to policymakers. A high-minded prescription, hard to fault
in principle. But is this the right medicine for the patient?
Since the NRC issued its report, policymaking in this area has become more
politicized, not less. In 1998, voters adopted a law mandating English-only
instruction in the public schools of California, home to 40 percent of the
nation’s LEP students. Researchers in bilingualism and applied linguistics
played a limited role in the campaign; few made any serious effort to inform
the public about the scientific evidence supporting bilingual education.(3)
Meanwhile, academic critics were stepping up their activism. Although these
enthusiasts of English-only, “structured immersion” approaches represent a
tiny slice of the research community, they are expanding their influence over
pundits and politicians, lending credibility to media assaults on bilingual
programs, aligning themselves with conservative advocacy groups, and unabashedly
supporting initiatives like Proposition 227. The epidemic of restrictive legislation
continues to spread, jeopardizing bilingual program options for an increasing
number of students. As a result, decisions on how to teach English learners
are being made not in the classroom but in legislative chambers and voting
booths; not on the basis of educational research data but on the basis of
public opinion, often passionate but rarely informed.
Clearly, the malady of politicization is growing worse. Will the NRC’s advice
“to move [research] beyond the narrow focus on language of instruction” (p.
14) – in effect, to withdraw from the feverish debate on this issue – contribute
to a cure? Is Professor Garcia’s prescription, a better theoretical grasp
of the pedagogical issues, likely to remedy the epidemic of English-only initiatives
spreading from California? Should researchers stick to their specialties
and leave politics to the “advocates”? Or are there flaws in this diagnosis?
I believe there are several, beginning with its concept of politicization
itself.
The NRC report seems to equate politicized with political. The two are not
the same. Research becomes politicized when external interests – the quest
for power, status, influence, resources, etc. – come to dominate and distort
the process of scientific inquiry. Polemic takes the place of collegial discussion.
Objectivity is compromised, or at least disputed vehemently, by each side.
Politicization hinders the production and dissemination of research findings,
as evidenced by the current state of the bilingual education controversy.
Yet virtually all research, especially educational research supported with
tax dollars, takes place in a political context. The questions asked, the
protocols adopted, the programs included and excluded, and the funding allocated
(among other things) are all influenced to a greater or lesser extent by
stakeholders. This is inevitable and normal. Like it or not, researchers must
contend with such realities – for example, the continuing public skepticism
about the benefits of native-language instruction in promoting the acquisition
of English.
Moreover, the debate over education policy, with its broad impact on individuals
and society, inevitably involves the distribution of power and resources –
that is, politics. In a democracy, how could it be otherwise? The Bilingual
Education Act was a product of the 1960s movement for civil rights. It stressed
the principle of equal opportunity for language-minority students, whose educational
needs had long been ignored. Expert opinion alone would never have prompted
this sweeping reform; a political movement was required.
No pedagogical approach was prescribed by the federal government until the
mid-1970s. At that time it began to require some use of native-language instruction
for LEP children, first for school programs receiving bilingual education
grants and later, as part of the Lau Remedies,(4) for school districts found to have violated
these students’ civil rights. These decisions were based less on expert opinion,
which tended to regard bilingual education as a promising experiment, than
on the perceived need to break the resistance of many school districts to
effectively addressing language barriers in the classroom. Policymakers were
seeking a radical reform – something more than an add-on class in English
as a second language(5)
– that would force resisters to revamp curriculum and instruction for LEP
students. Native-language instruction filled the bill. It also broke with
an English-only regime that devalued minority languages and, especially in
Southwestern schools, punished students for speaking them. Bilingual education
thereby promised to challenge ethnic power relationships and bolster the
self-esteem of minority students. For enthusiasts at the time, the field’s
pedagogical potential was in no way diminished by the limited research base
on program effectiveness. They expected it to materialize. Which it did over
the next two decades, even if – as the NRC report complains – the number
of high-quality experimental studies(6)
remains limited (owing largely to federal funding constraints).
Certainly this was a “political”orientation, as indeed the early advocates
of bilingual education saw it, a continuation of the struggle for equal educational
opportunity. But it was a far cry from “politicization.” Contrary to the
frequently leveled charge, this agenda had little or nothing to do with ethnic
nationalism or separatism or even language maintenance. For example, when
La Raza Unida Party captured a majority of seats on the school board in Crystal
City, Texas, it instituted a transitional form of bilingual education; English
acquisition was its chief goal (Shockley 1974).
To locate the source of today’s politicization – and that would seem essential
to combating it – one needs to examine the modern English-only movement and
the neoconservative forces that have exploited it for political advantage.
U.S. English, founded in 1983, struck an unexpected chord with many Anglo-Americans
by charging that government accommodations for limited-English speakers, bilingual
education in particular, were an invitation to balkanization and language
conflict. William Bennett, secretary of education during the Reagan administration,
soon took up the cause. He charged that bilingual education had become “an
emblem of cultural pride” for minority children at the expense of teaching
them English (Bennett 1985). Rather than grapple with research evidence to
the contrary, he pronounced the research “inconclusive” and called for increased
federal funding of “structured immersion” in English, a demand that Congress
granted in 1988.
Bennett’s advocacy, along with efforts to declare English the nation’s official
language, served to politicize bilingual education as never before. By the
1990s, the tepid response of language-minority advocates to these attacks,
the failure of bilingual educators to explain their mission to the public,
and the rise of anti-immigrant fervor, had combined to weaken the standing
of the field even further.
In 1997, a perceptive politician named Ron Unz recognized both the political
vulnerability of bilingual education and the issue’s potential to boost his
brand of conservative Republicanism (not to mention his own hopes as a candidate
for high office). With the support of academic critics such as Christine Rossell
and Rosalie Porter and pundits such as Linda Chavez of the rightist Center
for Equal Opportunity, Unz launched Proposition 227. No longer was it a question
of eliminating a “mandate” for bilingual education; the goal was eliminating
native-language instruction altogether and replacing it with a one-size-fits-all
English-only program “not intended to last more than one year.” California
voters approved the measure in a 61 to 39 percent landslide.
Would the outcome have been different if researchers in language education
(not to mention the ineffectual No on 227 campaign) had played a more active
role in explaining the issues to the voters? No one can say. But polling data
make it clear that many fair-minded Californians, not just the mean-spirited
nativist elements, voted in favor of Proposition 227 because they saw bilingual
education as an alternative, not a means to teaching English (Crawford
[1999]).
If researchers continue to resist this “political” role, as Unz and like-minded
advocates expand their campaign to other states, the future of native languages
in the classroom is dubious at best. No doubt some excellent programs will
survive – as they have survived in California, post-227. In particular, two-way
bilingual education, or dual immersion (its politically sanitized label),
remains popular with many English-speaking parents grateful for the opportunity
to provide their children a second language. A certain number of language-minority
students will be needed to make these programs effective (i.e., to “service”
the needs of the Anglo students). The broader trend, however, points toward
a two-tier system, in which the great majority of LEP children are denied
an opportunity to develop their first language skills.
Absent a change in political climate, bilingual education will come under
increasing pressure at state and federal levels. One likely result is that
it will be increasingly marginalized, transformed into a gifted-and-talented
program serving only a small fraction of the students who need it most. Or
it will be reduced to a quick-exit, remedial program that limits native-language
development, an approach that flatly contradicts findings from the most rigorous
research to date (e.g., Ramírez et al.1991).
Under the circumstances, to advise researchers to ignore the language-of-instruction
controversy and focus their attention on less political matters seems a bit
like preaching disarmament in the face of invading Cossacks. Not a very effective
tactic for the peasants.
References
August, D., and Hakuta, K. (eds.). 1997. Improving Schooling for Language-Minority
Children: A Research Agenda. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Bennett, W. 1985. In defense of our common language. Rpt. in J. Crawford
(Ed.), Language Loyalities: A Source Book on the Official English Controversy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Crawford, J. [1999]. The campaign against Proposition 227: A post mortem.
Bilingual Research Journal 21, no. 1.
Cummins, J. 1999. Alternative paradigms in bilingual education research:
Does theory have a place? Educational Researcher, October, 26-41.
Krashen, S. 1999. Condemned Without a Trial: Bogus Arguments Against
Bilingual Education. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
National Research Council. 1997. Political debate interferes with research
on educating children with limited English proficiency. Press release, 14
January.
Ramírez, J. D., Yuen, S. D., & Ramey, D. R. 1991. Final Report:
Longitudinal Study of Structured Immersion Strategy, Early-Exit, and Late-Exit
Transitional Bilingual Education Programs for Language-Minority Children.
Executive summary. San Mateo, CA: Aguirre International.
Shockley, J.S. 1974. Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town. Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Notes
1. Ramírez et al. (1991) stands out as an
important exception to this rule.
2. It is worth noting that students from numerous
other language groups are similarly affected.
3. Professor Garcia and Kenji Hakuta, cochair of
the NRC panel, were among the noteworthy exceptions to this pattern.
4. Issued in 1975, these were a set of civil rights
“guidelines” designed to carry out the Lau v. Nichols (1974) decision
of the U.S. Supreme Court. A proposal to formalize the Lau Remedies as permanent
regulations was withdrawn by the Reagan administration in 1981. The federal
government has never again sought to mandate any pedagogical approach for
LEP students, other than in a portion of school programs funded through the
Bilingual Education Act.
5. This was a concern made explicit in the Lau Remedies.
6. As Cummins (1999) and Krashen (1999) have pointed
out, experimental studies are hardly the only measure of the success of bilingual
education. Theoretically driven research that tests and refines hypotheses
about language and learning is, if anything, more valuable in guiding classroom
practice.
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