Arizona; http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/27/return-of-english-only-schools

[Harold Schiffman]

Are English-only schools coming back?
Jeff Bale looks at a Supreme Court case that could threaten the
education of immigrant students and other children learning English as
a second language.

April 27, 2009


THE U.S. Supreme Court is now considering one of the most
consequential cases about civil rights and schooling in two decades.
At stake are the rights of English language learners (ELLs), and the
responsibility of state governments and local school districts to
provide adequate funding and equal access to schools and the
curriculum for all students. The court heard the case on April 20, and
a ruling is expected by June. But this legal battle was launched long
ago. The Flores v. Arizona case began in 1992, and has wound its way
through lower courts ever since. In fact, the girl after whom the case
is named, Miriam Flores, was a third-grader when the class-action
lawsuit was brought against the Nogales, Ariz., school district.
Today, she is a student at the University of Arizona and applying to
nursing school.

In other words, a generation of students has grown up before the
pressing issues behind the case have been resolved. The suit started
when a group of parents in Nogales, a border city in Arizona, sued the
school system for discontinuing its bilingual programs beyond the
early grades. At the heart of the lawsuit is the 1974 Equal
Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA), which ruled that schools must
take "appropriate action" so that all students can participate in
instruction equally, regardless of English language proficiency. By
2000, the case had evolved to include state funding for English
language education programs. A federal court ruled that the system
Arizona used to fund such programs was "arbitrary and capricious," and
that its system of English language education violated the EEOA.

An epic battle has ensued. On one side is the state department of
education, run by egomaniac and Harvard-trained lawyer (in other
words, not an educator) Tom Horne, backed by the Republican-controlled
state house. Opposing them is a range of education and immigrants'
rights advocates. Several showdowns, O.K. Corral-style, have taken
place since, with federal judges at two different times fining the
state millions of dollars for being out of compliance.

In 2006, the state presented its "last and final" response. It would
increase funding for English language education by $40 million each
year (a mere $200 per student), if:

-- ELLs would be cut off from this extra funding after two years,
irrespective of whether they still needed support in English;

-- all ELLs were segregated into 4-hour-per-day programs to teach
English-only, grammar-based programs in oral, reading and writing
skills;

-- districts applied for additional funding, but only after they
accounted for other state and federal support and asked for the
difference, a practice which has been ruled unconstitutional; and

-- if the EEOC ruling was lifted and Arizona allowed to follow only
the mandates of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in designing and
implementing English language education.

The last lower-court ruling rightfully rejected this argument, thereby
triggering the Supreme Court case.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

TO GIVE a sense of how the dynamics of the case have changed, it is
now called Horne v. Flores--the state superintendent of education
"versus" a mother of school-age children learning English in Nogales.

In addition, although the state has cried poverty and slashed all
sorts of social programs, it has nevertheless hired none other than
Ken Starr (famous for leading the Bill Clinton impeachment crusade) to
present its arguments--to the tune of $400,000 in retainer fees so
far.

Under the mantra of "state's rights," Starr argued that Arizona has
made vast progress with respect to English language education since
the suit was first filed, and that court oversight is no longer
needed. This argument assumes that "progress" means outlawing
bilingual education and replacing it with English-only "submersion"
programs, and that segregation and a couple hundred bucks per student
is all that schools need to educate ELLs.

A victory for Arizona in this case will undo a generation of federal
policy enforcing the language and education rights of immigrant
students and U.S.-born students still learning English.

These rights were fought for and won, often school-by-school, at the
height of the Chicano civil rights movement in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. Chicano activists in California, Arizona, Texas and
elsewhere recognized that schools were one of the main sites of
anti-immigrant and anti-Chicano oppression. Their struggles to improve
schools almost always took up calls for bilingual and bicultural
education.

These struggles led not only to bilingual programs across the
Southwest, but also were codified in federal law and policy. The
Bilingual Education Act of 1968, the EEOC rulings mentioned above, and
numerous Supreme Court cases in the 1970s and early 1980s all expanded
language and education rights for ELLs.

Those rights have been under attack ever since. At the same time, ELLs
have become the fastest-growing population among school-aged children
in the U.S. Numerous studies have documented that ELLs are
disproportionately poor, are pushed out of schools at rates second
only to Native American students, and in fewer and fewer cases get the
chance to benefit from bilingual education.

A victory for Arizona in this case will give the green light to other
states and districts to turn back the clock on ELL student rights as
well. Segregation will be legally mandated again; underfunding will
once more be enshrined in law; and the drill-and-kill, English-only
approach to education mandated by NCLB will gain new support under the
law.

Despite is importance, the Flores case has never really shown up on
the radar screen of other immigrant rights activism and coalitions.
This needs to change. Just as the struggles over immigrant and Chicano
rights drew the connections in the 1960s and 1970s between labor,
immigration and schooling rights, so, too, should we today understand
that the fight for immigrant rights is a fight against workplace
raids, against deportations and for our students having rights in
school, too.

http://socialistworker.org/2009/04/27/return-of-english-only-schools

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