| When: | Back to Calendar December 10, 2011 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm | Where: | John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Conference Room, Department of English (7th Floor) 619 W 54th St New York,NY 10019 USA |
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| Contact: | Effie Cochran ecochran@jjay.cuny.edu |
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| Categories: | Monthly meeting | |
Why Are We Losing Bilingual Education Programs in New York City Schools?: Factors in School Administrators’ Language Education Policy Decisions
Although educational policies for emergent bilinguals in New York City schools have historically favored the provision of bilingual education over other educational program models, the past decade has borne witness to a dramatic loss of bilingual education programs in city schools. The greatest loss has been to transitional bilingual programs, which in the past had always been the predominant model for bilingual education in city schools. Specifically, while 37.4% of emergent bilinguals were enrolled in transitional bilingual programs in the 2002-2003 school year, just 18.5% were enrolled in these programs in 2010-2011.
This study examines the factors that determine language education policies adopted by school principals, through qualitative research in New York City schools that have eliminated their bilingual education programs in recent years and replaced them with English as a Second Language programs. Our findings show how school administrators, and particularly principals, negotiate a wide range of often competing demands to ultimately adopt English-only instruction in their schools, even though most have little to no formal preparation in educating emergent bilinguals. Moreover, although typically overlooked in language policy research, our findings reveal how school administrators play a central role in determining a school’s language education policy. Unlike states like California and Arizona, which have explicit anti-bilingual education language policies restricting the use of students’ home languages in instruction, restrictive policies in New York are primarily implicit; that said, the data from New York shows how implicit policies are also powerful agents in effecting language change.
