Entre la Espada y la Pared: Critical Educators, Bilingual Education ...

JOURNAL OF LATINOS AND EDUCATION, 4(4), 283–293 Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

VOCES: COMMUNITY, PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND STUDENTS

Entre la Espada y la Pared: Critical Educators, Bilingual Education, and Education Reform Edward M. Olivos Division of Teacher Education California State University, Dominguez Hills

Carmen E. Quintana de Valladolid Joint Doctoral Program San Diego State University/Claremont Graduate University

From the perspective of two practitioners who have been influenced by work in the area of critical pedagogy and critical theory, this article examines bilingual education, education reform, and the achievement gap in relation to Latino English Language Learners. The authors integrate personal experiences as they examine underlying assumptions of class, race, and asymmetrical power relations in current education policy and classroom practice. They argue that, despite feelings of being “between a rock and a hard place,” critical pedagogy has allowed them to continue their struggles for educational justice with the help of fellow educators and community members. Key words: critical pedagogy, teachers, bilingual education, education reform, language, achievement gap

Requests for reprints should be sent to Edward M. Olivos, California State University, Dominguez Hills, Division of Teacher Education, 1000 E. Victoria Street, Carson, CA 90747. E-mail: [email protected]

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OLIVOS AND QUINTANA DE VALLADOLID

As educators who have spent their entire teaching careers working with Latino students and their families—one as a classroom teacher/university faculty member and the other as a teacher/administrator—we have often felt powerless or limited in our attempts to do what is best for our students. All too often, we have had to implement policies and practices that have gone against our beliefs and understandings of what constitutes good teaching and learning, particularly when it comes to working with our particular “disenfranchised” community. As educators who have been strongly influenced by work in the area of critical pedagogy (Darder, 1991, 2002; Freire, 1993; McLaren, 1994) and critical theory, we frequently find ourselves struggling to make sense of the education policies that we are expected to implement, particularly the underlying assumptions related to race, class, gender, and asymmetrical power relations. This article is thus our “critical reflection” on how recent trends in education reform are affecting our work as teachers; our fellow educators; and, most important, our student population—Latinos who are English Language Learners (ELLs). We offer this work through two distinct lenses: The first is through the firsthand experiences of longtime bilingual education teachers working in predominantly Latino communities in San Diego County, CA, and the other is through the eyes of bilingual and bicultural critical educators who consider themselves “critically minded intellectuals” working in the public school setting rather than mere “technicians” (Giroux & McLaren, 1996).

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND CRITICAL EDUCATORS It is difficult to define who is a “critical” educator. So, rather than label and sort our fellow educators as to who is critical and who is not, we instead explain the influence of critical pedagogy in our work and in our worldview. For us, critical pedagogy is a powerful lens that we use to examine underlying assumptions within social institutions, which lead to asymmetrical power relations based on race, class, and gender, particularly in the field of education. Critical pedagogy is essential to us in that it helps us grapple with, in an attempt to make sense of, the complexity of the relationship between our Latino students, their families, and the public school system. Critical pedagogy compels us to acknowledge the profoundly historical and political nature of educational institutions and their practices, practices that are neither “accidental” nor “natural.” In addition, it brings to the fore the asymmetrical relations of power that allow a dominant social group to control and maintain a social system which favors it, while it disempowers bicultural groups, holding them hostage in a subordinate position by virtue of their race, culture and language. (Núñez, 1994, p. 19)

CRITICAL EDUCATORS, BILINGUAL EDUCATION, AND EDUCATION REFORM

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Therefore, for us, problems and penalties in society, particularly in the area of education, are not viewed as inherent deficiencies within specific “disadvantaged” individuals or groups. That is, we do not fall into the trap of exclusively blaming our students or their parents for their academic underachievement. To the contrary, critical pedagogy allows us to look beyond “blaming the victim” and shifts the burden of guilt onto the complex and dialectical circumstances that exist within the broader society, particularly the U.S. capitalist system that gives origin to these inequities, ultimately allowing them to exist and reproduce (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Persell, 1977).

RESPONSES TO THE GROWING LATINO POPULATION Throughout our careers, we have worked in school settings in which Latinos have not been the “minority,” but rather the overwhelming “majority,” a trend that has clearly affected our work as critical bilingual educators. In California, for example, Latino children constitute the majority of the state’s student population, and this is reflected in many of our local districts, schools, and classrooms. To be sure, our institution is fast coming to the realization that it must deal with a high concentration of Latino students, whose lack of power, capital, and status is made up for in numbers (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2003). For certain groups in our state and around the country, the dramatic increase in the Latino population has caused considerable tension and anxiety (Hanson, 2002), often resulting in reactionary ballot-box initiatives and legislation that directly and indirectly targets them and their children in social and educational policy (Hill, 2001; Kerper-Mora, 2002; Mendel, 2003). The passage of initiatives such as Proposition 187 (aimed at barring social services, including education, to undocumented immigrants), Proposition 209 (the end of affirmative action in employment, contracting, and university admissions), and Proposition 227 (designed to end bilingual education in the state) has clearly demonstrated the extent of the societal tensions caused by these demographic shifts and has “resulted in increased discrimination and curtailment of educational opportunities for Latino students, especially those who are classified as language minority and limited in English proficiency” (Kerper-Mora, 2002, p. 30). This naturally has made our job as bilingual educators much more difficult and complex, particularly because we are the ones expected to implement and enforce these policies whether we agree with them or not. We believe equitable educational opportunities for Latinos are being ignored by design. Fear of living in a “brown” California and attempts at social control by the dominant, although diminishing, Anglo population plays a lead role in the manipulation of the provision or the exclusion of educational opportunities for our students and other students of color. The fear factor is evident in these movements, yet

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the underlying issues of social control and cultural invasion often are not (Baker, 2001; Darder, 1991; Hill, 2001; Spener, 1996). The social control becomes apparent, however, through an analysis of the discourse used by the dominant group to portray nondominant languages, particularly Spanish, as problematic to the cohesiveness of the country; the success of Latino students; or, better yet, the comfort of Anglos (Baker, 2001; Hill, 2001).

LATINOS, LANGUAGE, CLASS, AND THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP Despite the dramatic demographic shifts occurring in California and the nation, the educational achievement of Latinos continues to significantly lag behind that of their Anglo counterparts. The disparity found between students of color and Anglo students in academic and social achievement is commonly referred to as the “achievement gap.” For Latinos, the high dropout rate and low performance on English standardized tests are the factors most frequently used as indicators of this academic achievement gap (Fry, 2003). Closing the achievement gap between Anglo students and students of color has been the “stated” primary objective of many educational reform policies during the last 50 years at the federal, state, and local level, yet classroom practitioners and administrators continue to struggle with overwhelming “achievement” challenges. The reality, however, is that the achievement gap between students of color and Anglo students is actually a huge “achievement trap” used to obfuscate the glaring inequities found in our public school system and in society that preclude the authentic participation and integration of communities of color into “mainstream” society (Californians for Justice, 2003; Kozol, 1992). The fact is that a vast majority of our students “were never meant to have access to dominant political and economic spheres” (Spener, 1996, p. 59). The achievement gap is a concoction of the dominant culture used to justify the subordinate position of Latinos, particularly those who are immigrant and/or non-English speaking. This is perpetuated through education policies and reforms that function under a deficit perspective, highlighting our students’ “differences” with the majority culture (skin color, language, etc.). Policymakers portray our Latino students as a homogenous group that shares similar deficiencies, when in fact they are a diverse ethnic group whose similarities are only conveniently emphasized when they serve the interests of the dominant culture. These “differences” are thus presented as the cause of our students’ underachievement rather than the effect of a system of immigrant and bicultural exploitation that is currently in place (Baker, 2001; Spener, 1999). The Latino student population comes from many diverse cultural backgrounds. Latino dropouts and Latinos who perform poorly in school do share certain charac-


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teristics, however. First, underperforming Latinos generally have poor English abilities. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a “lack of English language ability is a prime characteristic of Latino dropouts. Almost 40 percent of Latino dropouts do not speak English well” (Fry, 2003, p. iv). And, of the “14 percent of Hispanic 16- to19-year-olds who have poor English language skills,” their dropout rate is 59%. A second indicator is immigration status. The status dropout rate for Latinos “born outside the United States (44 percent) is higher than the rate for first-generation [Latino] youth (15 percent)” (NCES, 2003, p. 40). This is significant given that “thirty-five percent of Latino youth are immigrants, compared to less than five percent of non-Latino youth” (Fry, 2003, p. iii). And finally, a third characteristic, which is often ignored by policymakers, is the issue of class. Latino children who perform poorly in school generally come from families in poverty. A Latino child who is “living in a family on welfare or receiving food stamps” (NCES, 2003, p. 68) has a greater risk of failing socially and academically than one who is living with middle- or upper-class parents. Thus, although current education reform at all three levels of the government continues to focus on issues of language and immigrant status as correlation evidence of Latino student underachievement, none makes any authentic attempt to engage the issues of class, poverty, and exploitation. We agree that language is a realistic factor in the education of Latino students. The influx of Spanish-speaking Latino immigrants into our schools, and the forming of the re-emerging majority, is a language theme. It is also, however, a race theme, a class theme, an immigration theme, an economic theme, and much more (Corson, 1993; Hill, 2001; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). Yet, this is often ignored when “explaining” the achievement gap. In other words, using the minority language and mother culture as the exclusive causes of low academic achievement and social and economic problems for Latinos is, in our opinion, misleading and unjust and leads to misguided educational policies and reforms, as demonstrated by the many debates over the effectiveness of bilingual education.

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND LATINO STUDENTS Critics of bilingual education programs judge academic success solely on ELL students’ English fluency (Rossell & Baker, 1996). They frequently use two indicators to demonstrate the “failure” of these programs: redesignation rates of ELL students and performance on standardized tests in English. Using these two criteria poses a significant challenge for bilingual educators and students, however, in that it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the use of the native language for the development of literacy skills and cognition in language-minority students

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(Cummins, 1981). It also points to flawed reasoning in relation to a developmental continuum of second language acquisition. In addition, standardized tests provide only a brief glimpse of student performance. They do not demonstrate how our students have grown within a particular year in content knowledge or in English language development. Instead, standardized tests point out how many of our students have not reached certain grade-level expectations, not the reason why. This leads to grave misunderstandings on the part of the general public and certain educators who argue that English language fluency necessarily means improved academic ability (Rossell & Baker, 1996). Indeed, “critics of bilingual education programs with a concern for civil order and social disharmony should also concern themselves with issues of poverty, unemployment, and racial discrimination rather than concentrate on the use of Spanish in schools” (Otheguy, 1982, as cited in Baker, 2001, p. 369). Given our critical view of education, we see bilingual education from a different stance than most of our fellow educators. Although we believe that bilingual education is one of the most effective pedagogical interventions for the development of literacy skills in ELL students, we also feel that bilingual education needs to be evaluated in terms of social justice and not just test scores in English (Baker, 2001; Corson, 1993; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). That is, we recognize the “academic need” for quality bilingual education programs for ELL students; although we also acknowledge that the programs currently in place are often superficial interventions that allow the underlying dominant ideologies embedded in the public school system to go unchallenged. Curriculum content, classroom relationships, teacher expectations, and socialization processes continue to be “Anglo” and “assimilationist” in nature, with the end result being cultural conflict, alienation, and failure for our Latino students (Darder, 1991). Just as it would be simplistic and unfair to blame bilingual education for the academic “failure” of Latino students in the United States, it is equally unfair to claim that bilingual education alone can erase all the inequalities and injustices found in the U.S. public school system (Corson, 1993; Darder, 1991; Macedo, 1997; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981). In other words, just because the native tongue of the students is used in academic instruction this does not mean that an emancipatory education grounded in their interests is being achieved. Language policy and language use on its own is rarely enough to assure quality education and equal access to immigrant groups; “social institutions and ideologies have to [also] be changed to accompany any linguistic reform if it is to be effective” (Corson, 1993, p. 18). Macedo (1997), for example, specifically acknowledges that the “learning of English language skills alone will not enable linguistic minority students to acquire the critical tools ‘to awaken and liberate them from their mystified and distorted views of themselves and their world’” (p. 277). Therefore, the ability to challenge a system that has repressed and marginalized Latinos and other students


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of color for so many years will not materialize without pedagogical instruction and political advocacy that is based in the interests and the cultural capital of the bicultural students and their communities. Latino students and members from their communities (as well as members of the “mainstream” society as a whole) must engage the issues and practices that place values on languages and cultures into a hierarchy that functions to dictate their place in society. Furthermore, Latino students and their parents must be able to reclaim their history and their voice to move their communities forward (Núñez, 1994; Olivos, 2003, 2004).

EDUCATION POLICY, LATINO EDUCATION, AND LANGUAGE In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as the federal response to the inequities of the public education school system, as demonstrated by the lack of resources, poor facilities, poor teacher quality, and low academic achievement in schools attended by poor students of color. It was the federal government’s attempt to right the wrongs of previous generations by assuring that every child in the country, regardless of race or social class, would be provided an equal opportunity to succeed in our nation’s public schools. A fundamental component of the ESEA was Title VII, or the Bilingual Education Act of 1968. When it was signed into law by President Johnson, at the pinnacle of the War on Poverty, supporters hailed it as a victory for ELLs and Latino students. The law provided resources (e.g., federal money) to support school programs that served ELL students through educational material, teacher training, teaching assistants, and parent involvement programs. Although Title VII brought attention at the federal level to the issue of language as a factor in the academic underachievement of ELL and Latino students, it was compensatory in nature in that it equated speaking Spanish with poverty (Baker, 2001; Crawford, 1991). In other words, it placed the blame for social and academic underachievement solely on Latino children’s language rather than on the United States’s socioeconomic environment and the asymmetrical power relations this produces. In 2003, President George Bush repealed Title VII, replacing it with Title III, or Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students, of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This most recent reauthorization of the ESEA poses even greater challenges to Spanish-speaking Latino students in that it reaffirms the traditional federal view of ELLs as deficient and thus in need of compensatory education programs designed to overcome their deficiencies. Specifically, NCLB favors English-only instruction or alternative English language acquisition programs over bilingual education programs (Crawford, 2002a, 2002b). Furthermore, “whereas the 1994 version of the Bilingual Education Act included among

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its goals ‘developing the English skills … and to the extent possible, the native-language skills’ of [Limited English Proficient] LEP students, [Title III of NCLB] stresses skills in English only” (Crawford, 2002b). Consequently, within NCLB, the primary goal of education for ELL students becomes the acquisition of English. This preference for educational pedagogy grounded in English hegemony is accomplished through the law’s emphasis on accountability, “such as judging schools by the percentage of ELLs reclassified as fluent in English each year” and English reading test scores. These factors thus tend to “discourage the use of native-language instruction” (Crawford, 2002b) in most instructional programs. As in all of the other states in the nation, the push for “accountability,” driven by federal policy (e.g., NCLB) and public outcry against “failing” schools, is deeply entrenched in current California education reforms and in our particular school districts. Three accountability areas in particular demonstrate a significant challenge for our Latino ELL students: high-stakes testing used to determine annual yearly progress through the state’s Academic Performance Index, bilingual education in the post-Proposition 227 era, and the California High School Exit Exam. In the classroom, this push for multiple measures of accountability solely in English has caused many of our colleagues to completely eliminate the Spanish component of their programs despite their reservations. Moreover, practitioners who once rightfully questioned the education system that denied educational access to ELLs by denying academic use of primary language instruction are now questioning their own beliefs about how ELLs learn best. Thus, these education reforms are harming our students, our fellow teachers, and our school communities who cannot decide who to trust.

EDUCATIONAL REFORM AND LATINOS: A LOSING BATTLE? The English equivalent to the Spanish saying, Entre la espada y la pared, is “between a rock and hard place.” The Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings (Titelman, 1996) explains the saying thusly, “forced to choose between two unpleasant options” (p. 28). In other words, all the options presented (whether two or more) are likely to lead to undesired consequences or results for either the individual or group making the decision or the individual or group who is the object of the decision. Considering the historic academic underachievement of Latino students in the U.S. public school system, and despite 50 years of education policy reforms at the federal, state, and local level, this saying provides a realistic, although disheartening, look at their academic future. Ever since the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education decision of 1954, “a variety of approaches have been tried for addressing the gap in achievement between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in the United States” (Stecher, Hamilton, &


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Gonzalez, 2003, p. 2). These approaches have centered on the public education system, one of the last large-scale government institutions remaining in the country. Both morally and ideologically, the public education system has been considered to epitomize the notions of meritocracy and equal opportunity. That is, the education system has historically been regarded as the one institution in which individuals from underrepresented and historically oppressed groups have the opportunity to “prove themselves” through merit, talent, and hard work. Critics of the “myth of meritocracy,” however, contend that the education system does little to ameliorate or mitigate the inequities and injustices found in American society (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Darder, 1991; Hinchey, 1998; McLaren, 1994; Persell, 1977). To the contrary, they argue, as we do, that the school system tacitly functions as a social reproduction apparatus creating intergenerational poverty and despair among certain social groups. Thus, the reason that education reform efforts have failed so significantly in the past is because they have never really addressed the root problem of the academic and social inequality—that is, economic injustice; economic exploitation; and social stratification based on race, class, and gender (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Darder, 2002; Persell, 1977). Put bluntly, we are convinced that the public school system serves to enhance and maintain the political, social, and ideological elements needed to sustain our stratified capitalist economy and society. Despite this “gloomy” outlook, however, we as critical educators acknowledge that we must continue to have faith in the education of our students. Even if our fellow teachers and our Latino students someday come to the large-scale realization that the education system functions inequitably, we must all continue to participate in the education process or risk even greater alienation. Hinchey (1998), for example, writes that “students can’t win a rigged game; they also can’t win if they don’t play. Educational inequity is a lose/lose situation for disadvantaged students” (p. 103). Therefore, we have to look at schools with the understanding that they are “sites of both oppression and empowerment” (Darder, 1991, p. 81). In visiting many classrooms and holding conversations with practitioners through our work, the harmonious cry from teachers is the inability to provide the best instruction for their Latino students and the maximum instructional minutes to catch up to basics. We, too, have felt these constraints as we have struggled to do something “different.” Our work as critical educators, however, has allowed us to reject the feeling of despair and powerlessness as we focus our energies on transforming education the best we can for our students’ benefit, and also so that we do not feel like we are “between a rock and a hard place.” Several things in particular have helped us feel empowered in our work with our students, our fellow teachers, and our communities. First, as practitioners, we have developed a “critical lens” as a tool to question and fight injustice and as a daily reminder to keep the faith. We have accomplished this because we have begun to see ourselves as researchers as well as

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teachers. We have stopped relying solely on the words of policymakers and “experts” and have begun to include our own realities of the education setting into our teaching. In addition, we have created a support system of critical educators that allows us to discuss and share our work with our colleagues and school communities. As a result, we are constantly seeking “new ways to make a difference, not only in the lives of [our] students, but also [in the lives of our] communities” (Darder, 2002, pp. 93–94). We also understand that reaching our students is not enough; therefore, we have extended our work to our communities. We believe that parents and community members are those who have the power to advocate for what is best for their children. They are the keepers of bilingual education and progressive teaching programs, and we as teachers need to connect our voices with those of the parents (Núñez, 1994; Olivos, 2003, 2004). Indeed, it has been our experience that our communities stand ready to be supportive. Often, they only need to be invited. Finally, we as critical educators understand that we cannot alter the home environment or the level of poverty of our Latino ELL students, but we can understand and accept them for the experiences that they bring to the classroom (Slocumb & Payne, 2000). Furthermore, and most important, we can continue having faith that our struggles for educational equity are not in vain, for it is in our ability to dream that we find solace and visualize a more equitable and just education system for our students and our communities (Darder, 2002).

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